Link’s big date in Link’s Awakening marked a sea change in the franchise

destructoid.com:

My favorite moment in the Zelda franchise, without question, is when Link picks up Marin like an item in Link’s Awakening. No matter how many times I see it, the “do-do-do-doooooo” and flavor text describing Marin gets a laugh out of me every single time.

It’s the type of meta-joke that I could see a cheeky indie developer making in 2010. Except this is an official Nintendo Zelda game from 1993. Honestly, this may be the first joke I ever laughed at in a video game. Like everything in Link’s Awakening, this moment is whimsical, silly, yet strangely poignant. It’s scenes like these that make Link’s Awakening my favorite Zelda game ever made.

Yet what if I told you that this scene was more than a good laugh? That its meaning extends far beyond the bounds of Link’s Awakening and into the Zelda franchise as a whole? As many Zelda fans know, Marin would never return in a mainline Zelda game. However, not only can we feel her presence in every Zelda game since, but other Nintendo flagship franchises as well. Join me as we unpack the seed that blossomed into gaming’s most foundational love story.

NOTE: The following contains spoilers for A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, and Ocarina of Time.

If you know anything about the development of Link’s Awakening, you know it was never going to be a “normal” Zelda game.

Developed after the release of the legendary A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening originally wasn’t even a Zelda game. Rather, the team working on it consisted of prominent developers from the SNES Zelda title who still had leftover ideas that didn’t make the cut. The group banded together and began testing the waters of their creativity on the Game Boy, even after they had full days of work at Nintendo developing