Zelda: Link's Awakening is considered a parody of the saga by its developers - iGamesNews

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is an action-adventure title developed and published by Nintendo for Game Boy in 1993. As all fans know, it’s about the fourth installment official of the series and the first for a portable console.

Its main peculiarity is that it is one of the few Zelda games that does not take place in Hyrule, Princess Zelda does not appear (although it is mentioned once), neither does the Triforce appear and that it does not face the main antagonist of the series, Ganon . Instead, Link is surprised by a strong storm while traveling by boat on the high seas. It is carried by the current to the beaches of the Koholint Island

. Later, upon learning that the island is guarded by a mysterious sleeping creature named Wind Fish, Link must fight monsters and solve a series of puzzles to find eight musical instruments that will wake her up. If he doesn’t, Link will be trapped on Koholint Island forever.^{This title has had several versions, such as Link’s Awakening DX on Game Boy Color and a remake en Nintendo Switch. However, some of you may not know that many features that the developers implemented in the game are the result of it being seen as a kind of zelda parody.
These are the details that have been shared:

Throughout Link’s Awakening, players will come into contact with many characters that seem to come from other games: Chain Chomps, Goombas, Yoshi dolls, an enemy looks almost exactly like Kirby, and a man who looks suspiciously like Mario (who tells Link that he ate a mushroom and turned into a raccoon).

These events could be explained by the fact that the game takes place almost entirely in a dream, but the developers of Link’s Awakening say otherwise. According Iwata Asks, Link’s Awakening developers had the feeling that they were making a parody of the series. They point out that the inclusion of characters from Mario in a Zelda game would never be allowed today, and that was the result of Link’s Awakening was not authorized in its early stages of development.
The developers describe the work on Link’s Awakening as a «after school clubIn which they experimented with what was possible on the Game Boy. As there was no official project for the development of the game, added characters from other series

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Although character appearances are now usually quite a serious topic from a legal point of view, the developers jokingly recall how the inclusion of Kirby In Link’s Awakening: “Kirby was still a fledgling character back then, so I think people thought it was an honor that he appeared in a Legend of Zelda game,” said Iwata.
Iwata told them, “Today, yes [los desarrolladores] go ahead using characters similar to Mario and Luigi (even if it was for a Nintendo game) would be quite a trouble«. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has always been characterized as being somewhat of a delivery strange in the series, and knowing that the developers felt like they were doing a parody explains some of the peculiarities of the game.

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