This game had no right to be as good as it was. Back in the Game Boy days, you were lucky to get anything resembling the home console experience on the go. Clunky ports, clumsy sprite retooling and departures from series staples were the norm, with concessions having to be made to cram things into that tiny cartridge and monochromatic screen. The biggest successes of the platform were games like Pokemon, which took full advantage of the quirks of their hardware, or games like Tetris which simply accepted their place in the market and embraced the idea of being addictive timewasters. Link's Awakening said nuts to that and offered the full Zelda experience, and even managed to buck some series trends way before it was the cool thing to do. Taking place on a mysterious island, the narrative is completely divorced from just about any previously established characters or concepts, save for Link himself and a single name-drop of Zelda at the beginning. The twist at the center of the game isn't a particularly revolutionary one, but it is a twist, and one that was surprisingly emotionally affective for its time. There are minor gripes, of course - the dungeons are a bit simpler, only having two buttons for items (including your sword) means constantly having to jump to the pause screen to swap things around, and you will never want to see another acorn again for as long as you live by the time the credits roll, but otherwise, it's the genuine Zelda experience in the palm of your hands. I love this game and I will happily pick it back up to play it any time I have a long car ride ahead of me. Arguments can and have been made about whether or not this is the best 2D Zelda, but as far as I am concerned, it's the best got-dang Game Boy game ever made, and that's a title it gets to keep forever.