Zelda: Link’s Awakening tech analysis

Posted on September 19, 2019 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch

Digital Foundry has published a new technical analysis video for The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Switch. We’ll focus on two aspects in our summary post: resolution and frame rate.

Here’s the full rundown:

Resolution

– Dynamic resolution
– Usually 720p
– Can hit 972p in interior locations
– 1080p is uncommon
– For portable mode, it’s 720p in-doors and 576p in busier conditions

Frame Rate

– Targets 60 FPS
– Can fluctuate down to 30 FPS; specifically around Goponga Swamp
– Bounces between 30 and 60 due to the way vertical sync is achieved
– Since a double buffer setup is used instead of triple buffering or adaptive vsync
– Most issues seem to crop up when transitioning between different areas
– Game has other skips and hiccups
– Docked/portable performance is similar

You can watch Digital Foundry’s full analysis on Zelda: Link’s Awakening below.