Just finished playing through this hack and all I can think is wow. Just wow. This is obviously a project that was very intense in it’s creation and lovingly crafted by someone who truly knows their art.

The short of it would be something like “It looks like Link’s Awakening, plays like Link to the Past and takes the best parts of all of the classic Zelda franchise and tries to boil it down into one cohesive experience.”

There are some wildly innovative concepts [when compared to the basic framework that is the original Zelda 1] that I never even considered the NES was capable of, let alone working from the Zelda 1 ROM. Nothing quite like having an amazingly functional Roc’s Feather in Zelda 1. Being able to equip two other items alongside it to a cycling hotkey was icing on the cake.

But to say this is just a Zelda 1 hack is doing it a terrible disservice. The game world is expanded so much that I managed to get lost a few times until I started taking some notes. The Overworld Map item in game is incredibly useful at helping to keep you on track to finding the dungeons and figuring out where to head next, even if I did most of the dungeons out of order. [I think I went like 2,1,3,X,5,4,7,6,8?] Needless to say, there is an illusion of choice here reminiscent of A Link to the Past.

The fusion of new ideas with classic designs from past games just feels so good to experience. Transitioning from a dungeon that would feel right at home in Zelda 1 to scenery that makes me think I’m walking along the shores of Koholint Island then down into another dungeon with the rocking music from a Palace in Zelda 2 playing is all just really well thought out and seems to fit together near-perfectly. The secret-laden world never failed to disappoint my explorer’s soul as I trekked from one end of this new Hyrule to the other and back again.

Now for all that praise, it isn’t a perfect hack. The pits you can fall into are just a little too sensitive to Link’s hitbox and I get the feeling that that is a holdover from the same detection code for when the Stepladder would trigger over water. If so, it’s an understandable mechanic, but there were more than a few times I got irate over not being able to get over a pit in less than 6 tries. [My controller and my frustration could also be partly to blame for a few missed jumps in those bad runs.] Also, I would have loved to see just ONE shop with bombs in it. Being able to cut bushes to find them is great and all, but more than a couple times I would have liked to just been able to buy them instead of clear-cutting a field and hoping some dropped. Beyond there, there are a few extremely minor glitches here and there that might make a player “wtf” for a moment, but nothing that detracts from the enjoyment of the whole experience for more than a brief moment.

If you’ve gotten this far, I don’t know what else I could possibly say without going flat into spoiler territory. This is a wonderful hack and everyone who loves the classic Zelda games should give it a play. You won’t regret it. Infidelity and his crew that made this whole thing possible have done something amazing and certainly something to bew proud of.