Link’s Awakening Intro Animated in Hand-Drawn 2D

From pixels to now 2D animation, it’s the opening of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening! And it’s fantastic in motion!

The Legend of Zelda Links Awakening Animated by Chris Cross header image

Remember the opening to The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening? Well, if you’re any respected Zelda enthusiast, the sight of Link struggling to hang onto a ship’s mast during a violent storm should instantly pop in your head. Rightfully so, too. For a portable outing on the Nintendo Game Boy, it was a pretty striking intro to a remarkable game. And now thanks to the magic of 2D animation, it comes to life in a new awesome way.

From the brilliant cartoon-making talents of Chris Cross, it’s the opening of Link’s Awakening hand-drawn in 2D animation; and great goolely mooglely does it look absolutely outstanding. Not only that, but it matches almost perfectly to its actual in-game representation. Heck, forget The Wind Waker HD. How about this lovely remake instead?! (uh, actually no, I take that back! Or preferably both would be nice! Please Nintendo!)

Even more impressive, Chris went out of his way to not only make a non-colored version of his Link’s Awakening intro – to properly match the non-DX port of the game, of course – but if you visit his YouTube channel, you can also catch a side-by-side comparison video that shows how close to the original Chris’s take is.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVHRnwJOD7U&w=600&h=338]

Simply spectacular! And you should see the side-by-side comparison video, too. Actually, Chris has a bunch of cool animated cartoons – mostly Pokémon related, but he’s starting to branch out into other videogame series – on his YouTube channel, so please go check that out a.s.a.p.

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