Download New Awakening ROM Hack

New Awakening readme

New Awakening is a hack of Link's Awakening DX, created using the LALE utility. Credit for the utility goes to Fatories. To install the hack, put the patch in the same folder as your Link's Awakening DX 1.2 rom and double click it to apply it to the rom (you need LunarIPS to do so).

This hack was first completed in roughly two weeks, but has changed a great deal since that first version. All dungeons have undergone major revisions, along with the overworld, but the island has generally not been rerouted. You can find the eight dungeons in the same places. Some sprites may not be rendered correctly due to conflict between sprites and the "sprite banks" they receive their image from. Opening and closing the inventory screen will correct the sprites in a given room. Most areas, however, do not have this problem.

The game sequence has been altered somewhat. The dungeons are expected to be completed in a different order, and the overworld has been tweaked to be a bit more open. The sword has been moved from the beach to Bottle Grotto (the beach is still worth visiting, though), requiring the player to use the Powder and Bombs as weapons for a while. This is not actually a large handicap: the Powder and Bombs are surprisingly effective (sometimes even more so than the sword itself), though most players rely on the sword. The expected dungeon order is:
1: Tail Cave
2: Bottle Grotto
3: Key Cavern
4: Turtle Rock
5: Catfish's Maw (reached through Angler's Tunnel)
6: Angler's Tunnel
7: Eagle's Tower
8: Face Shrine
Turtle Rock must be opened with the Frog's Song of Soul as in the original game, but the route to the dungeon has been tweaked so that the Mirror Shield is no longer necessary (though it does offer a shortcut).

This order is not required, but it should be the most balanced for the player, since the later dungeons are the most difficult. The difficulty increases gradually so that we can include challenging puzzles without throwing everything at the player at once. I have also included visual and textual clues where I felt the difficulty was excessive without them. Most of the owl statues in the dungeons give new pieces of advice, as do some of the books in the library, Old Man Ulrira, and several other places as well. If you have any questions about the hack, you can send me a personal message (katage at romhacking.net).

There are many extra Heart Pieces available to adjust for the new difficulty. The game is balanced assuming the player sometimes buys Crazy Tracy's medicine, but does not spend much time searching for extra Heart Pieces, finding the second sword, or completing the Color Dungeon (which has a new entrance that can be reached at any time). Note that there is a bug in which saving and quitting will sometimes result in a lost heart piece. There are enough extra Heart Pieces to compensate for saving and quitting the game once or twice per dungeon. Also note that if the player gains more than 14 Heart Containers, the maximum possible, the game will crash (but this requires some very diligent heart hunting to reach).

The dungeons and overworld have received cosmetic revisions. Some places have new recolorings to better suit the mood (the Face Shrine is very grim) or simply to make the scenery more attractive (the tiles on the overworld have been reorganized to look less blocky, among other things). There are also many extra prizes and shortcuts to be found, should the player seek them out. Early shortcuts, in which the player could walk through a wall in the overworld, were removed due to complaints. If the player is inquisitive, he or she can find not simply extra rupees, but also seashells, Pieces of Heart, and even late game items very early on.

Overall, the hack offers a variety of new of puzzles and challenges, along with cosmetic improvements and textual edits to make the game text a little more charming and fun to read. The hack requires and rewards new techniques, and there are many different ways to play the game. The hack does not, however, require save states or perfect gameplay to complete, and there are clues for the tougher puzzles. This hack was made to offer something new and entertaining to the player, and every area altered by the hack has been designed in pursuit of that goal.