Many people are familiar with David Lynch's screed against watching films on smart phones. I agree with Lynch that watching films on phones sucks, though people certainly take it further. If you spend enough time talking about movies, you will encounter the "well you didn't really see the movie watching in that format" argument: only this cut, on this size screen, projected in these specifications, colour graded this way, with this quality of sound, sitting in this seat, and knowing this historical context is the only true experience of a film. Undeniably these factors can impact your appreciation of a film but I will maintain that, unless you stopped watching, you did see the movie. When my dad saw Mad Max: Fury Road on a plane and didn't like it, he was seeing it equally as much as I did in a theatre with a packed crowd or when he saw it on a big TV and enjoyed it a lot more.
You'll find this sort of discourse in any artistic medium, and as I've gotten more into video games, I've both seen and advanced similar arguments myself. Beyond the obvious instances where controllers differ substantially in form and function or a CRT provides a more authentic image, you have hundreds of invisible technical quirks that can affect the experience for better or worse. It becomes easy to just recommend/instruct people to play a game you enjoyed in the exact way you did and not risk the potential differences of emulating or going back to original hardware or whatever undermining their enjoyment. There will also always be the argument in gaming for the highest specs and most modern conveniences possible: give me a 30 year old 8-bit game running on my 360Hz 4K OLED monitor with save states, rewind, debug menu available, whole nine yards (and if I like it there better be a randomizer mod I can try out afterward).
This is a long way of saying I don't really care how you play Link's Awakening: on a pea-green Game Boy, on your Switch, on your phone; in its original, DX, or remade version; for a couple hours, to the end, to 100% completion, etc. Go nuts. There's value in all its iterations, and all of it is Link's Awakening. However you played it, you played it, and I wouldn't be concerned about what someone in a discord or on here will shame you for.
But if after all that you'll indulge me one thing: I think you should play it handheld, because I think that's the point.
Worlds in (single player, offline) games materialize when you boot them up and disappear when you turn them off. Multiple games have made artistic hay under that particular sun, tending towards the "the best thing you can do is stop playing" conceit. Link's Awakening is distinct. I've heard Koholint Island being a dream described as a twist, when in reality it is much more a premise. I'd say the twist is that despite being the destined hero who always saves the day in other Zelda games, here there is nothing you can do to alter the transience of this world. Yet the game wants you to keep playing, and see it through to its conclusion.
We make and unmake every dream we have, inherently. Turning an idea into something material or corporeal is both creation and destruction: the result is never exactly what is in your mind, and you can never quite go back to what it was as just an idea. That disconnect can make anyone despondent if they dwell on it; if they let it convince them there is no value to making something no one will see just as you see it, if they see it at all. "Verily, it be the nature of dreams to end."
The Wind Fish is right, but it is also the nature of all things to transform. Experience becomes memory becomes premonition becomes experience and on and on. Dreams deferred will dry/fester/stink/crust/sag/explode. The story in the author's mind becomes the story in the cartridge becomes the story in my mind. You know it's just images moving really fast, it's just words put into a specific order, it's just code rendering. But when I take out my Switch and boot up this game, I feel like I am holding a world in my hand. I know it will textually evaporate when I finish it, I know it will literally evaporate when I turn it off, I know it was never really there to begin with.
But they only ever made and remade this game for handheld devices. And when I hold it I feel it. And maybe by telling that to you, you'll hold this game and feel it too. Or maybe you'll feel something different because you've held these words in your head. I'm fine with whatever.
You'll find this sort of discourse in any artistic medium, and as I've gotten more into video games, I've both seen and advanced similar arguments myself. Beyond the obvious instances where controllers differ substantially in form and function or a CRT provides a more authentic image, you have hundreds of invisible technical quirks that can affect the experience for better or worse. It becomes easy to just recommend/instruct people to play a game you enjoyed in the exact way you did and not risk the potential differences of emulating or going back to original hardware or whatever undermining their enjoyment. There will also always be the argument in gaming for the highest specs and most modern conveniences possible: give me a 30 year old 8-bit game running on my 360Hz 4K OLED monitor with save states, rewind, debug menu available, whole nine yards (and if I like it there better be a randomizer mod I can try out afterward).
This is a long way of saying I don't really care how you play Link's Awakening: on a pea-green Game Boy, on your Switch, on your phone; in its original, DX, or remade version; for a couple hours, to the end, to 100% completion, etc. Go nuts. There's value in all its iterations, and all of it is Link's Awakening. However you played it, you played it, and I wouldn't be concerned about what someone in a discord or on here will shame you for.
But if after all that you'll indulge me one thing: I think you should play it handheld, because I think that's the point.
Worlds in (single player, offline) games materialize when you boot them up and disappear when you turn them off. Multiple games have made artistic hay under that particular sun, tending towards the "the best thing you can do is stop playing" conceit. Link's Awakening is distinct. I've heard Koholint Island being a dream described as a twist, when in reality it is much more a premise. I'd say the twist is that despite being the destined hero who always saves the day in other Zelda games, here there is nothing you can do to alter the transience of this world. Yet the game wants you to keep playing, and see it through to its conclusion.
We make and unmake every dream we have, inherently. Turning an idea into something material or corporeal is both creation and destruction: the result is never exactly what is in your mind, and you can never quite go back to what it was as just an idea. That disconnect can make anyone despondent if they dwell on it; if they let it convince them there is no value to making something no one will see just as you see it, if they see it at all. "Verily, it be the nature of dreams to end."
The Wind Fish is right, but it is also the nature of all things to transform. Experience becomes memory becomes premonition becomes experience and on and on. Dreams deferred will dry/fester/stink/crust/sag/explode. The story in the author's mind becomes the story in the cartridge becomes the story in my mind. You know it's just images moving really fast, it's just words put into a specific order, it's just code rendering. But when I take out my Switch and boot up this game, I feel like I am holding a world in my hand. I know it will textually evaporate when I finish it, I know it will literally evaporate when I turn it off, I know it was never really there to begin with.
But they only ever made and remade this game for handheld devices. And when I hold it I feel it. And maybe by telling that to you, you'll hold this game and feel it too. Or maybe you'll feel something different because you've held these words in your head. I'm fine with whatever.
4 Comments
I didnt finish my DOOM point, what I meant to say is in some ports of doom there is vertical control, which betrays the experience of DOOM. This entirely fulfills your point about why controller authenticity can be vital for proper assessment.
All great points! The function of a controller and the question of how to adapt less conventional control schemes to current hardware has been on my mind a lot lately between the Goldeneye re-release and the Metroid Prime remaster. In both cases I saw people getting on high horses over using the now-standard FPS dual analog controls on games in which that wasn't previously an option.
To clarify my own stance a bit further, I believe there are definitely critical insights and tangible appeal to be gained from engaging with a game like Metroid Prime in its original GameCube specs and control scheme. But when that reaches a point of inhibiting someone from engaging or where it's not feasible (due to cost, availability, etc.) to play in that format, I fully endorse any means of modifying from that original if it helps you connect to a game (not to mention that including that sort of customizability from the start is the right thing to do for accessibility reasons). I trust that people who want to engage a game in good faith will deviate from its "authentic" format with deliberate intent and sensitivity to the impact those deviations have, because that's what I try to do when I emulate a DS game on PC or play an old arcade game on a current console or use a fan translation.
In the case of Link's Awakening specifically, if you're particularly interested I'd say even playing it on your phone through an emulator is a feasible way of getting at the sensations I did my best to describe. And if you go some other route, I hope you share anything unique you get from that route with other people.
To clarify my own stance a bit further, I believe there are definitely critical insights and tangible appeal to be gained from engaging with a game like Metroid Prime in its original GameCube specs and control scheme. But when that reaches a point of inhibiting someone from engaging or where it's not feasible (due to cost, availability, etc.) to play in that format, I fully endorse any means of modifying from that original if it helps you connect to a game (not to mention that including that sort of customizability from the start is the right thing to do for accessibility reasons). I trust that people who want to engage a game in good faith will deviate from its "authentic" format with deliberate intent and sensitivity to the impact those deviations have, because that's what I try to do when I emulate a DS game on PC or play an old arcade game on a current console or use a fan translation.
In the case of Link's Awakening specifically, if you're particularly interested I'd say even playing it on your phone through an emulator is a feasible way of getting at the sensations I did my best to describe. And if you go some other route, I hope you share anything unique you get from that route with other people.
Wonderful review! Link's Awakening is my favorite game, and I'll admit I hadn't considered "handheld" to be an essential part of its nature. But I think you're right. Maybe that's why the copy of the Switch remake that I bought several years ago (with the intention of playing on the TV) is still in shrink wrap.
That snap of the Game Boy Color's on/off switch, the imperfect dissolve from the game to a blank screen -- it is so much like waking up -- or, from another perspective I suppose, so much like falling back to sleep.
That snap of the Game Boy Color's on/off switch, the imperfect dissolve from the game to a blank screen -- it is so much like waking up -- or, from another perspective I suppose, so much like falling back to sleep.
Erato_Heti
1 year ago
In some ports of DOOM, a game meant for the PC, you can control it vertically. For the record controller arguments as a core design point are really vital, its just that you cant really get on your high horse about it for 1 obvious reason: Most people into games are kinda poor. Or at least dont have access to those systems to replicate. You can't pirate software onto a DS particularly easily so when you tell somebody that this is the intended play experience you're really telling them they need to buy more controllers. Telling people who have an Xbox remote they could use an N64 one or even a Playstation controller is a hard sell. Literally. If I get out of poverty I'll definitely play things on the intended controllers (but NOT the intended hardware), PSP games on the PSP controller etc. For now its just sort of a perusal in the meantime. A museum version of the cathartic experience.