A new PC version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening lets you zoom out on the entire in-game map to see everything at once.
Just below, Digital Foundry's John Linneman noted the "truly amazing" player creation for the classic Zelda adventure. The fan-made PC version of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening has a feature that lets you zoom all the way out and see the entire in-game world active at once, as every character and enemy moves around simultaneously.
This is truly amazing. Playing Link's Awakening at 1:1 pixel scale with 120 fps scrolling - you can zoom the map alllll the way out and the entire world is active.https://t.co/H1ZLpd3sqy pic.twitter.com/wVjqhzAVu6December 13, 2023
It's pretty mind-blowing that you can see every section of the Link's Awakening overworld being active at the same time. As one of the comments on Twitter says, it's basically a massive game of Where's Wally, as you try and spot not just Link, but also certain enemies and specific locations like the volcano and the beach.
That every map space around Koholint Island running simultaneously is also really wild. You've really got to hand it to the PC port's creators for having pulled this off, and from the looks of the comments at least, it sounds as though the entire thing runs pretty seamlessly on PC.
One other tweet points out that this isn't the only classic 2D game to pull this trick. It turns out a classic Castlevania HD game on the PS3 - likely Harmony of Despair - also had a feature where you could pull the camera out and see the entire 2D game running at once.
Now we're wondering whether the Link's Awakening remake has any tricks like this quietly going on in the background. With the visual fidelity at which the remake runs, and on 2017 hardware at that, it's really hard to imagine the Link's Awakening remake could have the whole map of Koholint Island running at once.
Head over to our upcoming Nintendo games to see what the Zelda-maker has in store for the next year and beyond.
