Why Would I Play Zelda II: The Adventure of Link In 2022?
Don't ask why, but I had a hankering to play Zelda II: The Adventure of Link this year. With The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom a ways away, I felt like getting my Zelda "fix" through less than orthodox means. Likewise, Zelda II was the talking point to a podcast I guested on a while back. At the center of the debate was whether or not the game counts as an RPG. Likewise, my co-hosts and I wondered if the game's novel ideas equated to a worthwhile experience. At the time, I summarily brandished the game as a failure and outright advised against recommending it to even the most dedicated Zelda fans. However, after toying around with the game for a bit, I have since softened my stance. By hook or crook, Zelda II is a game I continued to think about even after I disavowed playing it, and that alone is worth remarking upon even slightly. So, with nothing to lose, I buckled down and finished the game on the Switch.
If you are wondering, I felt like sticking with the game because of its reputation. Ask fans of the Zelda franchise what their least favorite games in the series might be, and after rattling off the CDi games, Zelda II is always right there near the bottom. Even though I feel the game has its share of issues, I can safely say that the delta between Zelda II and The Wand of Gamelon approaches around twenty to thirty fathoms. Zelda II is guilty of finding new ways to make your life shitty, but it is a feature-rich game with a massive world and gameplay hooks that better capture the spirit of the franchise than either CDi title. Zelda II's most significant flaws come from its attempt to graft an RPG-lite Metroidvania structure to a Zelda action-platformer. The game almost revels in forcing the player into death spirals and situations that extol a mountain of cheap bullshit. Even when you take the time to interact with its mechanics at face value, whenever you think you've started to turn a corner, it throttles you back to square one. As a friend once said, "Zelda II and Kid Icarus are the most 'NES Hard' NES games to come from Nintendo proper."
Nonetheless, in the current era of the video game industry we occupy today, Zelda II is interesting to look back on in another regard. With the industry becoming less competitive and emphasizing sequels and remasters, Zelda II is a hallmark of a forgotten era. Today, when a game is a massive success, and a sequel is announced shortly after its release, it's safe to assume what the follow-up will look like or how much it will "rock the boat." When Ubisoft announces a new Assassin's Creed game or 343 a new Halo, you can make generalized assumptions about how those games will control or even what they might attempt narratively. Back in 1987, no such guarantees existed, and as we will discuss next, anything was on the table. Things could get funky, and that's why I think I've fallen in love with Zelda II.
Remember When Video Game Sequels Could Be "Weird?"
When the NES was the only home console worth talking about, and the arcade was the preeminent place to play games, video game sequels were few and far between. The ones that did see the light of day ranged a wide gamut. For every Street Fighter II, a dozen Space Harrier IIs or Snake's Revenge would reinvent a winning formula for the worse. When it comes to the NES in particular, there was a bit of a trend that Nintendo started for the initial follow-ups to blockbuster titles to resemble their predecessors only in spirit. Super Mario Bros 2 (i.e., The Lost Levels) being a hostile rebuke about the first game being too easy or Fire Emblem Gaiden having dungeon crawling elements and two simultaneous campaigns are reflections of that. And other companies in the industry at the time followed Nintendo's form, with Capcom and Konami being the most prominent examples. Castlevania II: Simon's Quest significantly deviates from its predecessor, and Zelda II shares more in common with Simon's Quest, at least in spirit, than most might think.
If you are asking why developers at the time felt like using sequels to games to try out new ideas or gameplay mechanics, I do not have a clear answer for you. What I have gleaned from a handful of roughly translated interviews is that many developers and programmers would often view the first title in a franchise as being flawless or acceptable as is. If a sequel was going to be made, why would it play exactly like the first when the last game was "perfect?" As such, most developers treated sequels as an opportunity to hone their programming and design chops or to test out ideas that got the ax the first time around. That desire to test things out leads us to Nintendo's reputation and modus operandi during their debut console. While the company gets a lot of credit for refining genres and gameplay ideas for the general audience, they rarely outright invented genres. At the core of the Zelda franchise was an adventure exploration template that was informed by decades of prior releases. Even when Breath of the Wild turned the series on its head, no one claimed it was the first open-world action-adventure game at the time of its release. However, though they rarely invented novel ideas, that didn't mean their games weren't "strange." Nintendo sequels these days are seldom weird, but Zelda II is definitely "weird."
This recent folly wasn't my first rodeo with the game. Nonetheless, this time around, I tried to play the original Famicom Disk System version, the PAL NES version, and the most recent Switch port. Each version has its quirks, but, as we will discuss shortly, the Switch version now provides what I consider the "definitive" Zelda II experience. The Disk System original provides the most unadulterated experience with the "crouch glitch" for the final boss absent. It also boasts one of the evilest save mechanics I have ever experienced. For those wondering, in the Disk System version of Zelda II, not only is your stat growth slower, but upon saving, the game identifies your lowest stat category and applies that value to all of your core attributes. For example, if your health points were level three, your strength score level four, and magic points level one, all of your stats would level out to level one after saving. I read the warning for this design idiosyncrasy in a guide but saved my game accidentally and, upon seeing my progress wiped clean, never returned.
Playing the original NES version without save states or tool assists is only marginally better. The lack of an in-game economy beyond your stat growth makes exploring Zelda II's world a continually risky affair. Every nook and cranny in the game wants to murder you. Likewise, controlling a level one version of Link doesn't feel great. Including instadeath causing traps, pools of lava, or bodies of water in Zelda II does not result in the same platforming snappiness as the first three Mario Bros games. Constantly respawning in the same central temple after running out of lives makes the game's back-half an absolute chore because you replay the same four to five interstitial levels ad nauseam. When I checked the recorded credits for Zelda II, I was not exactly surprised to see this game represented many people's first go at making what is ostensibly an RPG. It is admirable that they used a well-known game's sequel to test out a genre they had never done before, but the results are incredibly raw. However, something immediately came to mind as I interacted with Zelda II's RPG-like mechanics. It is a friendly reminder of my previous claim that the Zelda series, and Nintendo in general, are far from being guilt-free of copying other people's homework.
Zelda II Is A Case Study On How Even Nintendo Wasn't Immune to Dragon Quest Fever
The topic of the "Mt. Rushmore of Video Game Developers" comes up quite often on the internet. Regardless of people's stance on the console wars, everyone has come to an uneasy agreement that Shigeru Miyamoto deserves the top position, and positions two through four are the ones that are honestly up for debate. I think there's a point to be made on how you fill those remaining three slots, saying a lot about how you eased into the hobby of gaming. However, if we look at this exercise as a list of developers purely in terms of their importance and industry impact, if Yuji Horii isn't on your list, then you're telling me you don't know what the fuck you are talking about in the first place. As a fun exercise, I checked out a nearly ten-year-old NeoGAF thread debating this "Mt. Rushmore" topic. I thought I was about to blow a fucking gasket when I saw people rank Fumito Ueda, Yoshinori Ono, Goichi Suda, Hideo Kojima, and Todd Howard as more critical to the history and evolution of the video game industry than Yuji Horii.
The usual dismissive remarks that Dragon Quest simply represents video game "comfort food" actively ignore how essential and revolutionary the 8 to 16-bit era Dragon Quest games were. The series has had an indelible mark on the Japanese video game industry, and there's no denying that. I'd even argue the small changes and improvements across its timeline are not the "small potatoes" its detractors might characterize. The first game took the core systems of Wizardry and made them palatable for younger audiences; no small feat. The second game introduced a party system; the third a class system and JRPG roles every subsequent JRPG would copy verbatim. The fourth game employed a caravan system and revolutionized the JRPG overworld. Finally, the fifth game nigh invented the New Game+ gameplay concept! I'm sorry, but you cannot be more of an industry disruptor than what the Dragon Quest series was to Japan for an almost thirty-year crease! Nonetheless, even during the NES era, Nintendo has never definitively recognized Dragon Quest and its role in moving millions of console units. However, Dragon Quests I through VI helped shore-up Nintendo's domestic dominance for two console generations, and the franchise pioneered the hallmarks of an entire genre.
The fundamental tenet of Yuji Horii's output throughout the years he's been in the industry is as clear as day. If you put in the work to play his games, you'll see the ending; it's just a matter of time. For the most part, that holds for the JRPG genre to this day. Even when you reach a tricky boss or what initially appears to be an impossible dungeon, as long as you keep at it and continue to level up your characters; eventually, you will turn the corner and be able to beat the game. Sure, sometimes you'll need lady luck and RNG on your side, but no matter what, in most circumstances, you'll have something to show for your time wailing away against trash mobs or Byzantine dungeons.
Miyamoto's core team attempted to graft that idea to an adventure platformer and called it Zelda II. However, they also put their own "spin" on the already institutionalized conventions of the JRPG by throwing in a few monkey wrenches. First, Zelda II has no economy beyond your collection of EXP or heart containers. Second, not all enemies reward experience points, and when you take a hit, some will even take away from your pool of "uncashed" EXP. Also, the usual collection of items and new abilities in a Zelda game feels bizarre in Zelda II. Picking up the expected "1-Ups" in the Zelda franchise, but for them to have zero permanency in the scope of an RPG is one of many examples of Nintendo's patchwork fraying at the seams. And all those core mechanics constantly clashing with each other is beside the game's overall cruelness, which we need to discuss separately.
But If You Are Looking For The Answer To My Question, "Yes" this Game Is Hard, And "No" It's Not That Bad
Zelda II is a challenging game. That part of its reputation is well-earned. As mentioned, even when you attempt to engage with its RPG mechanics at face value, it finds ways to make your life shitty. You can't upgrade Link's shield or sword, and the length of his only offensive tool is woefully impotent. Your sole projectile option is only available if Link is at max health and losing that ability makes every enemy or boss encounter demonstrably harder. The progression with his magic and advanced combat skills is all over the place, with some early-game powers scaling better than most of your late-game ones. Finally, there's a certain rawness to Zelda II, throwing you into the fray and against a wide assortment of new and old Zelda foes, with barely a functional version of Link to boot. The game starts you with enough stats to keep Link breathing, but only slightly. The first two dungeons are among the hardest in the game because you have half the resources needed to succeed at that point in the game, and things get worse as it rachets up the stakes as you progress further.
Death Mountain. Those two words hold a lot of cache to people who enjoy the original Zelda. The final level in OG Zelda features over fifty rooms packed to the gills with Wizzrobes, Lanmoles, lava pits, and a fucked up Ganon boss battle. What often gets overlooked is that Zelda II repeats this dungeon, but in the form of a series of caves and as its SECOND GODDAMN DUNGEON! Death Mountain in Zelda II remains one of the most INSANE difficulty spikes I have ever seen in an official Nintendo-made product. As you can hopefully see in the screencap above, it is BY A COUNTRY MILE, one of the cruelest tasks Nintendo has ever asked its audience to complete. Conceptually, I understand what Nintendo is attempting with Death Mountain. At some point, the team behind Zelda II looked at Dragon Quest and noticed that JRPGs tend to have mid-game "gear checks," which force the player to engage with leveling mechanics before they move any further in a game's story.
Nonetheless, it's malicious. There's a baffling number of dead ends that all but spell the player's doom as returning from whence you came is no easy task. Every individual cave features streams of knights, goons, and dragons, which in this case, are spaced apart by centimeters rather than by whole screens or rooms. Finally, I cannot emphasize enough how this is the second required combat environment in the entire game. Unless you have found a spot to power grind, you must ferry Link across dozens of mini-dungeons with only two to three levels into his base stats and a paltry number of his usual abilities. It's insane that this part of the game got past Nintendo's much-ballyhooed QA team in its current state. Likewise, there's a level of coherence lost in the move from the top-down dungeons of the original Zelda to the dungeon-crawl third-person action-platformer ones in Zelda II. After reaching Death Mountain, I tend to suspect Nintendo wanted to push the technological limits of the Disk System and original NES, and they went too far. Every temple and dungeon goes on far longer than it should, and Death Mountain is the first example of this problem. To see the issue reach a breaking point, look no further than Zelda II's final dungeon, the Great Palace.
Zelda II's Great Palace will forever stand as one of the most unrelenting dungeons to ever grace the Zelda series. It's a massive labyrinth that requires backtracking, item collection, and the expected end-game boss rush. Also, anything you can imagine from this era that would make an individual level actively unfun is present in the Great Palace. Pits of lava that immediately kill you? Yup, that's here! Zero checkpointing, so you must do the whole level from scratch if you die? You bet that's here! The cherry on top has to be the Thunderbird boss, whose main gimmick is that you can only beat it if you have a unique magical ability (i.e., Thunder). However, this spell is NOT present in the dungeon and can only be obtained by completing an unmarked quest in a nearby town. And if you're going to employ the Angry Video Game Nerd's "pro tip" about ducking and stabbing at Dark Link's knees, know that that tip only applies to the PAL NES release. In future releases and the original Disk System version, Nintendo programmed the final boss in the game to leap and attack you from above if it sees you crouching. That's right, over time, Nintendo has made Zelda II harder!
The Switch Version Of Zelda II Is Low-Key A Good Time
Many people behind Zelda II, including Miyamoto, have recognized it as an aberration. Nonetheless, Nintendo has never attempted to whitewash it from the history books. The game has been made available or re-released for virtually every single platform Nintendo has launched since the game debuted on the Famicom Disk System. The game's most recent re-release on the Switch is notable for one particular quality of life addition. If you fan through the menus, you'll find an official ROM-hacked version of Zelda II. With this version, the game provides Link with max stats across the board and entirely allows the player to ignore the game's leveling system. As a result, with its RPG mechanics thrown to the wayside, you can enjoy the game far better and navigate its innate bullshit more easily.
Not needing to worry about unlocking levels or new abilities allowed me to appreciate the ambitious size of Zelda II's world. The game is so much larger than its predecessor that, even while I was cursing the game, I couldn't help but respect the effort put into it. Yes, the dungeons are labyrinthine to a fault, but they also have so much variety in how they play and function; you cannot help but commend the team behind the game for thinking outside the box. The enemy variety is enormous, and the game does a fantastic job crafting this sense of biomes or different ecosystems in the world of Hyrule. It's still a flawed experience with traps that spell immediate doom at every corner, but when I didn't have to fret about RPG stat growth, I admit I had a better time. Also, the Switch version of the game replaced the original English translation with one that is far more coherent, which makes knowing what you need to do in the game far easier.
Nonetheless, the part of the game that clicked with me the most was its combat. Until you learn the three or four exploits that break this game sideways, Zelda II emphasizes Link engaging in one-on-one sparring matches. The clearest example in the game involves the Iron Knuckle enemies. These knights have an almost uncanny intelligence as they raise and lower their shields when dueling Link, forcing you to treat your battles like a chess match. You must pay attention to visual cues and time your button presses, almost as if you are playing a rhythm game. If you check out any speed runs for Zelda II that feature commentary, you will find that is a recurring comment about the game. It's a cool thing to see and experience in a video game made in 1987, and with Souls-like titles all the rage today, I think a growing population should consider checking the game out when possible. It's a messy, ambitious, crunchy, and beautiful game that underscores the creative heights and limits of Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto.
Even if you come away from Zelda II hating the game, it has one massive feather in its cap that Wand of Gamelon can never claim to have. Zelda II has a legacy. Zelda II was an early pioneer of action RPGs or platformers with light RPG elements. Faxanadu and Crystalis came AFTER Zelda II and did much to refine and hone many of its ideas into more playable and enjoyable packages. However, there's no denying either title borrowed HEAVILY from Zelda II and likely would not have existed in their current forms without its presence. Modern titles, too, owe much to the game. Shovel Knight is the clearest example of a game drawing mechanical inspiration, not from Zelda 1, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, or Breath of the Wild, but Zelda II instead. Shovel Knight's side-scroller format and boss design utilize the same vinegar strokes as Zelda II, but in a complete package that sands off the rough edges. In that regard, Zelda II is on par with the de Havilland Comet. A flawed early pioneer that tried ideas before anyone else did and committed design flaws others likely would have made if they were in Nintendo's place at the time. And hopefully, in playing it, you'll understand why I think pairing it along the likes of Wand of Gamelon or Zelda's Adventure is entirely unfair.
Log in to comment