LA (non DX) is the best 2d Zelda game ever... it's also still my favorite handheld game. I prefer the original version -- DX may have (unnecessary) color and a (short and easy) added dungeon, but it also has a lot more hints (the owl statues are all over the place, as opposed to the "one per dungeon" stone tablets...), which make the game noticably easier, something it didn't need... yeah, it's a difficult game, but it's supposed to be hard. I don't want or need all of those extra hints...
avoidable by pressing start and select at once I think... :\ or some other button combo. It was heavily used in speedruns iirc.
B, I think, actually. The only problem is that the DX version removes the ability to skip text boxes... get the original version for that very nice feature.
Anyway, it's just a near-perfect game. Great graphics that look a lot more like the SNES game's graphics than you'd expect from the original Game Boy, the best music the GB ever did (The Ballad of the Wind Fish is beautiful... all of the music in the game is great, though, but that one stands out. That and the insturment songs at the ends of the dungeons.), by far the most original storyline in the Zelda series up to that point (and while some of the more recent Zelda games have good stories too, LA still has one of the best ones... it really shows what you can do with atmosphere and a minimum of text. The way that you slowly come to realize what is really going on on the island and what you will have to do to get off it, and the implications of that, is amazing...), fun sidequests, a great cast of characters and world, awesome dungeons, a fair save system that doesn't force you to redo entire dungeons or start from the middle of the map just because you died... it's a far better game than Zelda 1 or LttP for sure, and it's better than Oracles too, though those two games were also great.
Zelda: LA -- the game where Link destroys the world out of a selfish desire to get off of it... and the Nightmares defend it because they, unlike the townspeople, know what is going on and want to continue to exist. Or at least you could interpret it that way...
The special ending, for if you get no deaths (only Zelda game with multiple endings...), is nice though...
The best Zelda game ever by a big margin (and possibly the best GBC game ever, too). The Capcom ones were decent, but nowhere near in the same league in terms of pacing and puzzle design. The 3D ones had their charms, but had way too much filler to compete.
OoT was better, but LA is definitely second.
