Well, pleasant dreamers, as Kyle Machlachlan said in Dune, “the sleeper has awakened.” In this case, the sleeper has been not only the titular hero of the Legend of Zelda franchise, but also the Wind Fish of Koholnit, besieged by mysterious nightmares and beguiled by a fantasy island inhabited by otherworldly denizens and peppered with secret underground lairs. After all has been said and done, all the buttons pressed, hatches opened and shadow monsters destroyed in puffs of smoke as black as oil, the game has been finished, the great Castanadian owl having fulfilled his role as spirit guide on the vision quest that this portable experience has been. In true handheld fashion, the point of completion was reached out in the open on the Metro-North, and while this time I’m not sure I have anything significant to say in the way of portable-versus-console gaming culture, I’m pretty certain I’ve cracked some of what’s important about this game itself, and how it makes me feel about games in general. At the heart of this is the question of something I have been during the course of this game, because it doesn’t quite fall under the term player, just as Link and the Wind Fish have both merely acted as sleepers, instead of something else.
I, like you, faithful readers, have been a dreamer.