A Surprising Natural Resource

Recently setting up the wireless connection to the Nintendo Wii has opened up all new avenues of gaming to me, however, I've still been mostly playing Link's Awakening. These forays into the Game Boy classic have been characterized by fairly quick runs through the game's dungeons, and an increased level of ease since I now have the pegasus boots.

However, one thing that continually throws me for a loop (other than dying while I'm distracted by trying to edit a podcast while I play) is that so many of the places that look like they'll hide buried treasure (some sweet, sweet seashells!) don't have anything at all.

What I'm referring to are patches of ground on the map that are of a different colour than the rest of the ground, or patches of land underneath rocks (or between them) that are somewhat out of the way. All of these yield nothing - but an errant rupee or heart.

On that note, are hearts the oil of Kohonolit Island? I guess the same could be asked of rupees, but rupees could just as easily be dropped and then buried by dust stirred by the wind. But the only place that hearts can logically come from is from fallen enemies (or pots...but who would bury pots?).

So, are the hearts that you dig up on the island the fossilized remains of long-dead pre-historic octoroks and moblins?

Maybe I'm just overthinking this, and they're just there because of convenience. Rupees, and hearts are the standard power ups of the game, and so rupees and hearts are what the ground hides.

But, on that note, another issue: why aren't there multi-coloured rupees in this game? I mean, yes, the whole multicoloured thing wouldn't be easy for the original version, but a black rupee and a white one, maybe? Having different denominations appear from enemy drops or dig-ups would make farming enough to finally buy the bow so much easier. Though I suppose that's what the monkey and his nuts (down on the beach) are for, right?

At any rate, with the pegasus boots in my bag of infinite holding, I struck out for the dream shrine and collected the ocarina. It's definitely not much compared to the instrument we see in the Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, but it's still a great little item.

What's really the best about it though, is that Link has no proficiency with it out of the gate, if you try to use it without having learned any songs you just get a short animation of him playing some flat notes. This is a mechanic that should be featured in the next Zelda game that features an instrument.

It's kind of what happens with the harp in Skyward Sword simply by virtue of that instrument's having a pretty gentle learning curve to begin with, but whatever instrument Link gets next should be so powerful/useful that you need to actually learn the basics before stringing together known and maybe even original songs to various ends.