Legend of Zelda, The - Link's Awakening DX (France / SGB Enhanced / GB Compatible)
Game Boy Color
🇫🇷
Reviewed in 1998
91
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✪ Reviewed on October 14, 2023
87
The color overhaul of the unforgettable Game Boy Zelda, with an exclusive color dungeon and a bonus photo grotto. The dreamlike Koholint story still ranks as top shelf writing, the dungeons still dazzle, the magic stays intact. An absolute essential of Nintendo's handheld.
Your verdict
Category
Action Adventure1 player7+
Description
Link is shipwrecked on Koholint Island and must awaken the Wind Fish to return home in this colour remake of the Game Boy classic. Published by Nintendo, released in France in October 1998. Full colour version of Link's Awakening with an exclusive Colour dungeon, bonus photography cave, Super Game Boy compatibility. French edition.
Legend of Zelda, The - Link's Awakening DX review
MAX
Art direction
★★★★★
"Iconic"
MAX
Music
★★★★★
"Legendary"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
Awakened by colour, the island of Koholint regains its golden beaches, its verdant forests and its warm villages. The Game Boy Color palette elevates already admirable sprites and even adds a brand-new dungeon that plays on hues. This visual rebirth, tender and luminous, has lost none of its dreamlike charm.
At the heart of the game, the "Ballad of the Wind Fish" radiates a melancholy of rare gentleness, signed Koji Kondo and Kazumi Totaka. From the playful Koholint themes to the foreboding dungeons, the music weaves an unforgettable dreamlike tale. This melodic beauty, miraculous on a handheld, remains one of the most beloved in the saga.
Gameplay
"Masterful"
Replayed in colour, the Koholint escapade keeps its finely tuned chain of dungeons, items and interlocking puzzles. The exclusive dungeon and the GBC palette enrich an already exemplary formula without distorting it. The direct handling and perfectly measured pacing make the adventure as gripping as ever, and still worth playing in one sitting.
Fun
"From the very first minutes"
Addictiveness
"Obsessive"
Roaming a colorized Koholint, untangling a dungeon then finding the item that opens the next area sustains an adventure loop of exemplary smoothness. Seashells, hidden secrets and interlocking puzzles always offer a reason to push through the next door. The new color dungeon adds its own spice; dense and tender, this portable odyssey has lost none of its magnetism.
Expanded reissue of the original Link's Awakening, chosen to anchor the GBC launch lineup in late 1998 with a brand-new Color Dungeon, Mr Write's photo shop and Game Boy Printer support. Beyond the game's cult status, value is driven by the spread of physical variants: Rev 0, Rev 1 and Rev 2 pressings that scrub certain sprites, plus the standalone French and German language carts that remain the most sought after on the European market.
Memorable bosses
On Koholint Island, every dungeon closes on a Nightmare of shifting shapes, from the giant fish to the evil eagle, before a protean final boss that borrows the faces of the saga's greatest foes. Combat puzzles, inventive designs and a bittersweet dreamlike mood make these showdowns surprisingly memorable for a pocket adventure.
A cult cover
Washed up on a sunlit beach, Link raises his sword while Marin watches at his side, Mount Tamaranch looming on the horizon. The DX version's warm colorization brightens Koholint's dreamlike isolation and its bittersweet mood. A tender, sunny vignette that hints at one of the saga's most moving tales.
Is Legend of Zelda, The - Link's Awakening DX still worth playing in 2026?
Nearly twenty five years on, the Koholint adventure still carries a narrative punch and a density of design that few portable Zelda games have matched since. Pacing stays tight, dungeons string ideas together with no slack moments, and the DX revision adds an exclusive color dungeon and the photo cave that remain worthwhile even for anyone who only knows the recent Switch remake. The pixel art gains a new warmth on Game Boy Color, and the melancholic tone of the tale still lands with full force.
