I don't think this game requires much introduction or explanation.

Originally, I was going to say how much I like the Game Boy Zelda games, and how this one title was so important to the direction the series went in on the handheld platforms.

While I'll never redact that statement, I think there's something else I'd like to point out about this game.

That it's friggin' creepier than hell.

Okay, lemme try and explain this so I don't sound stupider than a Slowpoke at a debate club meeting.

First thing that came to me around the second or third dungeon: Link doesn't have an overriding goal. Technically, he's trying to get off the island. However, he doesn't have a time limit. There's no pressure from anything to make him leave. Really to me the place seems like a kind of paradise, so why would you want to leave? Sure maybe he was sailing in that storm for an important reason, though it has been shown in future titles that Link'll sometimes just travel for his own sake. Like when he goes to Termina to find Navi in Majora's Mask (why would you wanna do that).

This lack of a goal makes the entire plot feel a little bit hollow. Hell, the bosses actually don't want you to leave by waking the Wind Fish. Granted you can say that waking the Wind Fish from the Nightmares that keep him asleep is the overall objective, but that brings me to the second creepy point.

Around halfway through the game you come across a piece of evidence that shows that the entire island is a dream of this Wind Fish character that sleeps in the egg atop the island's highest peak. Good. You're in a nightmare filled dream of some demi-god. Awesome. No need to explain that point.

But I do have one that came to me while getting to this point in the story. One of the Owl Statues/Gossip Stones on the island gives you a cryptic message concerning your quest:

THE WIND FISH IN NAME ONLY, FOR IT IS NEITHER

Okay. WHAT? What does that mean?

To me, it implies that the Wind Fish is merely Link's subconscious. That all the monsters and nightmares are just in Link's head.

That would explain Marin looking like Zelda, and similar monsters from other adventures/titles.

I guess other folks wouldn't find this creepy at all, but personally I find it uncanny. It almost implies that Link's got some serious shell shock after all his work in Hyrule, and this three-hour-tour of a boat trip just helped to exacerbate it all.

Link's mid-life crisis, perhaps?