Let’s Play The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link! Pretty sure this was another XMAS day gift. Damn that gold cartridge was sweet (I made it a point to get the gold Ocarina of Time as well).
I believe that this was the first year where I announced the theme of playing a Zelda game for Valentine’s Day. The idea was that The Legend of Zelda is one of the most romantic video game franchises not just for the NES but for video games in general. Stretch? Does it matter?
Let’s Play The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link:
I played Rambo for the NES a year or so later at the request of a subscriber and I marveled over how much of a rip off of The Adventure of Link it was. It’s crazy but a lot of games just took what they thought people liked in the biggest games for the NES, typically NES made games, and copied it verbatim into their games while changing the character animation slightly along with the title.
This is unrelated to that tangent I was just going off on, but now that I think about it, the direct sequels to Nintendo’s biggest series completely reinvented themselves, but it completely worked every time. Mario 1 to Mario 2 in the US is a major example, and Zelda 2 is another.
Zelda 2 resembles very little of the first Legend of Zelda, but it was just as easily a classic as the first one was. Abandoning the top down view for a side view, Zelda 2 packed just as many palaces and even more exploring and a much bigger world map than the original game.
This game invented the whole “town” concept, though I’m not sure that that’s something which needs to be recognized as being invented. I know that the first game didn’t have it and subsequent games seemed to have them.
Yeah, no never mind that, I’m just very impressed at Nintendo’s ability to reinvent their franchises while still turning out innovative and unique game play every time, at least in the late 80’s/early 90’s. You can’t make an argument that Mega Man 2 was decidedly different from the first one. What’s my point? Don’t worry about it… what’s next?