Instructions:
Your objective in this Lost Adventure is to work your way through the maze, defeating the guards and finding Marin. Use the arrow keys to control Link and the 'a' key to swing Link's sword and advance dialogue. Swing your sword at the guards to defeat them. Once you find Marin, approach her to start the conversation. If you reply "yes" to her request, wait a minute and then press the 'a' key to restart when asked to do so. If you reply "no", gameplay continues indefinitely, although you can have the same conversation with Marin again.
Scenario:
In 1993, Nintendo released one of their most popular games to date: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening for the Game Boy. Link, the player's character, washes up on the shore of the mysterious Koholint Island and is rescued by a young woman named Marin. One of the recurring sub-plots in the game is Marin's developing romantic interest in Link, although she only ever hints at her feelings. The game ends before Link and Marin can form any kind of relationship.
In reality, the game's developers meant to explore Link and Marin's relationship more explicitly. In a lost mini-adventure toward the end of the game, Link stumbles on a secret underground shrine of Marin's and confronts her about her feelings toward him. However, following the Mortal Kombat controversy and the threat of congressional hearings, the developers yanked this adventure from the game to avoid upsetting the parents of hundreds of thousands of potential underage buyers. This lost adventure was quietly buried and never revealed to the public...until now.
Analysis:
Link's Awakening remains one of the best video games I've ever played, and this Adventure functions as both a tribute to and a parody of it. It's also a study of the effects of juxtaposition in video games: what happens when you inject something like suggestive sexual content into something as seemingly innocent as the Legend of Zelda series? The song Marin sings if you reply "yes" to her request is the song she sings whenever she's feeling happy, and it turns out Link needs to play this song to wake the Wind Fish and win the game. How does this song--and the game's theme of "awakening"--take on a different meaning in this new context?
Thanks to Nintendo for designing the original game and providing the inspiration for this one. Thanks also to charas-project.net and zeldaelements.net for providing the sprites, fonts and music.