Retro games are a hot commodity. With the Xbox Live Arcade and Wii's Virtual Console, it's quickly becoming a prolific segment of the industry. Blogcritics is going to start looking at gaming's generally under-appreciated past in a different way.

Teaming up with classic gaming database Digital Press, Blogcritics will be presenting some lost or under-appreciated classics in short reviews. Extras may include odd facts, the title's impact on the industry, some personal retrospective, different ports the game may have received, and how well they hold up on today's market. Our hope would be to introduce a new generation of gamers, or even those who recently purchased a game console for the first time to those games they missed and the legacy they left behind.

The Game
When people think of the Legend of Zelda series, most of the time they think of the 3D adventures that Link has embarked on since the days of the N64. You’ll have a couple of people mention the original for NES and maybe a few people complaining about the CDI games, but that’s about it. I find in my experience speaking with fellow gamers that the Game Boy’s different takes on the series get cast aside in favor of the longer, shinier versions available. Quite a shame, that fact – one of the best games in the Zelda canon is the 4th installment, Link’s Awakening.

The entire game boy collection of the Oracle games and Minnish Cap were both drawn straight from the original formula given from this game. Various dungeons spread out throughout a large square world, with items to collect in every dungeon. An overhead camera follows you through different squares of the world and underground. You could call the game a polished version of the original NES game The Legend of Zelda, actually.

For an early-ish Game Boy game, the graphics are quite detailed and clear, with all the sprites clearly distinguished from each other. The older Game Boys might have a bit of trouble with blurring when sprites are moving rapidly, but that’s only a minor problem throughout the game. A newer SP or Color won’t have those troubles. The music is well scored, but very repetitive. A few more songs wouldn’t have hurt this game.

As with every Zelda game, the best part of this one is the exploration. For such a small game, there is a huge overworld and big dungeons to go through, so you’ll rarely run out of new places to find stuff to do. Such a huge map occasionally leaves you overwhelmed and lost at times, but fortunately a well placed group of warp-zones allow you to effectively navigate around so it doesn’t get too tedious. I’m looking at you, Wind Waker.