As we can read on Wikipedia, Link’s Awakening began as an unsanctioned side project; programmer Kazuaki Morita created a Zelda-like game with one of the first Game Boy development kits, and used it to experiment with the platform’s capabilities. Other staff members of the Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development division joined him after-hours, and worked on the game in what seemed to them like an “afterschool club”. The results of these experiments with the Game Boy started to look promising, and following the 1991 release of the Super Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, director Takashi Tezuka asked permission to develop a handheld Zelda title; he intended it to be a port of A Link to the Past, but it evolved into an original game.
Tezuka recalled that the early free-form development of Link’s Awakening resulted in the game’s “unrestrained” contents, such as the unauthorized cameo appearances of characters from the Mario and Kirby series. Tezuka intended the game’s world to have a similar feeling to the American television series Twin Peaks, which, like Link’s Awakening, features characters in a small town.
He suggested that the characters of Link’s Awakening be written as “suspicious types”, akin to those in Twin Peaks—a theme which carried over into later Zelda titles. Tanabe created these “odd” characters; he was placed in charge of the subevents of the story, and wrote almost all of the character dialog, with the exception of the owl’s and the Wind Fish’s lines.
Check artemis251’s website for more infos about the unused Link’s Awakening sprites
Thanks to MathUser & Robert Seddon for some of these screens!
You can find more info about Zelda: Link’s Awakening in the Zelda Wiki!
Images:
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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More awesome unseen games:
![Zelda: A Link To The Past [SNES - Beta]](https://www.unseen64.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/zeldasneslgo.jpg "Zelda: A Link To The Past [SNES - Beta]")
Why are so many of the screenshots for the final versions using the GBC version? Sure, they’re mostly the same game, but it irks me.
Also obviously not mentioned in this article, is that Link’s Awakening used the same engine as A Link to the Past, hence why the worlds are so freakin’ similar. Note that many of the items are the same as well. There’s obvious differences, mainly the dungeons, but yeah.
The “final” screens are from the GBC version just because it was easier to find such screens already online :P
Well, admitting to laziness is the first step, heh. ~_^
@ Hydrozor
this cannot be the same engine, there is no fluent scrolling in ALA which leads to smaller area parts… It is similar, but thats to expect from a game of the same series. Only looking at a game and saying they have the same engine, because they have similar sprites and level design can be misleading
link no longer works
http://artemis251.fobby.net/zelda/unused.php does though
Guys, check out the following image:
http://archive.li/VkYMr/e8dc0ad31c8b9784d6278013fc854b65dac81e24.jpg
Maybe there was going to be a NIGHTMARE WORLD variant of Zelda 3’s Dark World?!
Drat:
For some reason I thought that the picture I just posted was missing from this page, but I double-checked, & now I see/remember that you have it!! -_-;; -_-
Sorry for reposting it!! :-( :(
Here’s another URL on the same topic:
http://archive.is/VkYMr