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The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was my first Zelda game. I remember Koholint Island as a weird and wonderful place populated by familiar faces from other Nintendo franchises. I instantly fell in love with the series.
There was one problem, though. My preowned cartridge’s battery died soon thereafter. So as a young boy eating up too many AA batteries, I played the opening hours a lot. I didn’t beat the game at the time because of this inconvenience, but I later rectified that childhood travesty on Nintendo 3DS with Link’s Awakening DX. Given my history with Link’s Awakening, it’s fitting that my 20-minute E3 2019 hands-on demo with the Nintendo Switch remake started from the very beginning.
You probably already know this, but Link’s Awakening is visually marvelous on Switch. Link’s adorable design resembles a toy doll, and the world is bright, colorful, and inviting. The isometric camera perspective is close-in, so you can take in the charming sights of Koholint Island.
Sadly, the fresh art style was undercut by performance issues. I only had the chance to play in console mode, but the framerate — especially when faced with enemies — frequently dipped. The stuttering animations made Link’s movements look robotic at times. Performance miscues didn’t ruin my experience, but let’s hope Nintendo is able to make Link’s Awakening run smoother for the September launch.
As an authentic remake, Link’s Awakening‘s gameplay may feel jarring to those used to modern Zelda games. The tried-and-true dungeon loop featured in nearly every Zelda game pre-Breath of the Wild is here, but it’s much less guided than recent top-down Zelda games. It’s a bizarre game — weird Nintendo at its finest.
After grabbing your sword at the beach, you have to head to the Mysterious Forest to speak with a raccoon about a mushroom. Without previous knowledge, it might take some time to know where to go. Once you locate the patch, it’s you’ll meet up with a witch. She brews the mushroom in her cauldron and hands over the concoction: Magic Powder. Throwing a handful of the Magic Powder at the raccoon turns him back into a man. Why? Who knows.
This weirdness is why I’ve loved Link’s Awakening for two-plus decades. At face value, the moving parts are disjointed, but they inexplicably come together.
Outside of framerate issues, the combat was fun. Nintendo smartly mapped the shield to the right trigger, which frees you up to equip two items to the face buttons. Deflecting javelin throws from Moblins and slashing them with my sword in the Mysterious Forest felt great.
Though I didn’t go beyond the start of the first dungeon, Link’s Awakening is a nearly 1:1 remake. As such, you’ll likely happen upon lots of dead ends. Paths are blocked all over Koholint Island. Sometimes it’s boulders that need to be lifted with the Power Bracelet, other times it’s holes that need to be leaped over with Roc’s Feather (neither of which I acquired during the demo). Narrow pathways can be easily overlooked, so you have to pay close attention to your surroundings.
The map might be your best friend, and keep you from walking in circles. The remake lets you mark heart pieces on the map so you can easily find your way back later on after securing whatever item you needed.
I stumbled across a new house in the remake that seems to track and hold collectibles hailing from Super Mario Bros. (like Shy Guy and Boo). If anything, Nintendo has leaned more into Link’s Awakening’s wacky crossover elements with the remake.
Link’s Awakening will even have a dungeon building tool called Chamber Dungeons. Level tiles from completed dungeons can be found throughout Koholint Island. If you bring the pieces to the gravedigger Dampé, you can create a mix and match dungeon to run through for rewards. Dampé hails from Ocarina of Time, so it’s odd to see him here. His presence makes me wonder if anyone else will appear.
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening launches September 20 on Nintendo Switch. The endearing art style feels like a perfect fit for Koholint Island. I wouldn’t worry much at all about the performance issues in the E3 demo. There’s a better chance of Super Mario Bros. releasing on PlayStation 4 than Link’s Awakening not living up to Nintendo’s rigorous standards.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.