13. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Oracle of Ages/Seasons

When A Link to the Past came out in 1991, it defined a specific type of Zelda game. The sprite-based, top-down dungeon crawler coexists next to 3D Zelda adventures even today. Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Ages, and Oracle of Seasons brought A Link to the Past’s style of adventuring to the smaller, portable, Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

While the sprite work on these games is superior to Nintendo’s previous 8-bit entries, they don’t come close to the level of detail of their 16-bit older brother, A Link to the Past. On the other hand, 1993’s Link’s Awakening has always been applauded for its surreal, dreamlike tone. Seeing classic NES Zelda enemies and a Chain Chomp from Super Mario Bros. on the same screen makes Awakening feel strange, whimsical, and distinct from other games in the franchise.

2001’s Oracle of Ages and Seasons for Game Boy Color brought this style of sprites to the world of, you guessed it, color. They came out on the same date (similar to how Pokémon likes to double dip) and took advantage of the portable’s full color spectrum. The games’ locales transition from warm to cool tones. Some areas even capture the essence of an autumn day. Character designs are minimal but the hardware was able to render memorable locals like Ricky, Moosh, and Dimitri, who are all dudes I would get a beer with. Especially Moosh.

While all three of these games handled the task of fitting a large Zelda adventure onto a portable console, their aesthetic has aged poorly. An extremely serviceable look for the time, but when considered in the context of a ranking, there are simply 12 titles that look better.