When developing a sizeable adventure for hardware as humble as the Game Boy, coding trickery and compromises are inevitable. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX on the Game Boy Color - and the non-DX original - naturally falls into that category; it's a lovely game, and also has some rather entertaining glitches to manipulate.
It's now had the treatment from the A+Start "Son of a Glitch" series - we get to check out some funny corrupted pixels, including friendly NPCs attacking Link in a fit of rage - and some rather handy shortcuts. There's even, through a fairly complicated set of processes, a way to beat the game in about 10 minutes.
All show the limits of making games with such limited memory, with quick screen transitions often throwing up some quirky results. Check it out below and let us know if you'll be trying any of these out.
Comments 17
I always loved the glitch in there original Link's Awakening where you could bring up the map as you went to a new area and it would warp you to the other side. It was my favorite glitch. I used it to bypass so much stuff, but I usually wound up getting stuck somewhere in Eagle's Tower. Great game, great times.
I loved playing with "Screen Warping" in the original version.
It was disappointing to discover it got fixed in the DX version.
The scary old lady enemies at 8:07- when I did it nearly 20 years ago, instead of them throwing what looks like the little boy, they fired Bowwow out of their mouth (it replaces the crystal/rock attack) Little old ladies, spitting angry, metal dogs with giant teeth.
It was the stuff of nightmares.
There's an even better glitch at the end of the first dungeon in the original release. If you fall down the pit in the Moldorm's boss room and use the Roc's Feather and press Up just as you enter the 2D room underneath, you'll get a boost upwards and through the ceiling. This puts you in a giant debugging map where you can (Carefully!) access any dungeon in the game. This lets you get the Power Bracelet, Flippers, Level 2 bracelet and several other items immediately!
I played around with the Bow-wow back entrance room glitch a bit. If you don't have your sword, most areas are impossible...great to hear there's a way to beat the game in 10 minutes...I wonder if we'll see some of that during SGDQ this year!
I did one of these glitches in the VC release and I got half if the items before the game even started.
Glitches are always fun to find but I enjoyed the game for it's normal difficulty and challenges.
Never knew about any of these so it was fun to watch.
Must be slow news day if we're still talking about this game.
It was the first game I played on the game boy color. very nostalgic. this is madness, tho.
@Pahvi You don't like the colors from the VC version? Just curious, I always found those colors much nicer to look at than a grayscale, and gives them a Game Boy Pocket feel.
I've never liked the green mode though, it adds more motion blur and is just ugly.
@Pahvi I think he is referring to gb games on 3ds that you can change between green and grey display.
back in the day the gameboy was awesome but it was a pain to play outside cause of the dot matrix green screen.
specialy for people that have sight problems like myself.
Hey guys I discovered a glitch for zelda majoras mask 3d,I was messing around with another glitch and found out how to do this one,this is a link to the vid I made,sorry for the resolution and shaky cam,i used a web cam around my neck to record this,at least I made an useful vid on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcaxvQq47Z4
@Pahvi Sorry, for whatever reason I thought you were talking about this game as if it were the original GB version when you mentioned grayscale, now I realize It's not even on the eshop.
But it's a bit curious, Nintendo darkens NES, GBA, N64 and DS games but not GBC games, they were darkened when played on a GB Player though.
People who can walk on water: Jesus, Peter, any DC Comics speedster, any decent ninja in the "Naruto" universe, and now Maron.
I was impressed when i watch how to beat Pokemon Gold.
Guy named his boxes .
Watched last summer how guys beat games on live:
https://gamesdonequick.com/
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