Fan remakes Koholint Island in 3D

Shortly after the Game Boy started development Kazuaki Morita created a Zelda styled game in order to test the Game Boy’s platforming capabilities. Other members of staff grouped together after hours to experiment and the results were promising. After the release of A Link to the Past, director Takashi Tezuka wanted to port the game to the Game Boy using the experimental programmes. Instead, the game evolved into its own game with a brand new story taking place on Koholint Island. Now, a fan has recreated Koholint Island in 3D allowing you to explore the island in a whole new way but is the recreation as cool as it sounds?

Take the jump to find out!

Even though I’ve been a huge fan of the Zelda series for many years, I’ve never played Link’s Awaking but, from what I’ve heard, it’s incredibly emotional, has some great characters and and very upsetting ending and I can guess why considering the title!). If this was a recreation of the original Zelda or Adventure of Link, I’d probably be a bit more overcome with nostalgia wondering around the new 3D environment. Even so, I still found it fun wondering around the island and even I recognised the beach Link is found washed up on.

As you can see it’s not exactly HD but, considering it’s fan made, it’s incredibly well done.  It must have taken ages for them to re-create every square inch of the island, including inside all the shops, houses, pits, caves and even, what I’m assuming where some of the dungeons so there’s a huge amount to explore. If you’ve played the game a lot and know the island well, you’ll probably have a great time wondering around and re-discovering all the places you used to travel in the game. The cheery on the cake is the changing music depending where you are like the relaxing, chilled out tunes in the shops, the intense, sinister theme in the caves and the main Zelda theme when you’re running around fields in true Zelda fashion.

Unfortunaely, it’s not perfect. Link isn’t animated so he just hovers over the map. None of the other characters have been developed so there’s no-one to interact with or even get all nostalgic about your favourite character from the game. None of the enemies are in it, either. I did stumble across a single Octorok but he just stared at me as I walked past. While going through some of the caves and dungeons, the scenery had been created but nothing else. It’s understandable they wouldn’t be able to put in the actual puzzles to solve but it would have been nice if they weren’t quite so bare.

There are a few glitches with it, like constantly flicking between rooms when you go through cave or door into a new area, but they are few and far between. Even with the glitches and issues above, it’s still an amazing remake of the island. I’ve spent over an hour wondering around and I still want to keep going to see what else there is to find and wonder what the places were actually like.

What do you think of the remake? Is this one of the games you’d like to see get a full remake or would it be better left alone? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go on Amazon and buy Link’s Awakening DX.

Source: Go Nintendo