Despite acclaim, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link was considered “sort of a failure” at Nintendo, with A Link to the Past viewed as the “real sequel” to the original game
by HatingGeoffry
Nintendo
Despite acclaim, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link was considered “sort of a failure” at Nintendo, with A Link to the Past viewed as the “real sequel” to the original game
by HatingGeoffry
42 Comments
I loved Zelda 2.
I didn’t know it was acclaimed. Nowadays I feel like for the most part it’s only liked by the people who played it back in the day
I want a Zelda 2: 2.
It’s the original Dark Souls 2…
It’s not BAD…just DIFFERENT
I’d love for them to take a second try at Zelda 2’s formula
It feels like it was too ambitious for the NES
Like Mario 2 to me
I always liked Zelda 2. There was a fantastic fan-made “remake” of it released on the PC a year or two back that made it even better.
What acclaim? This article doesn’t say that. ~~You added that.~~
**Per OP, the site changed the headline after this was posted.**
The actual current headline is:
>**Shigeru Miyamoto felt Zelda 2 “was sort of a failure”, and Nintendo actually considered A Link to the Past as the “real” Zelda sequel**
I’m not saying it’s a bad game (I’ve played through it a few times myself), but this post’s headline asserts a retroactive reappraisal that doesn’t exist.
Zelda 2, Spirit Tracks, and Phantom Hourglass. The 3 Zeldas I genuinely can’t make it through because it’s such a bad time for me.
I feel like modern Ys games are the spiritual successor to Zelda II if not the souls-like games.
But I really would LOVE for Nintendo to let a 3rd party take a crack at a remake. Because, in theory, a 2D action platformer RPG version of Zelda is really fun. The OG game was just a tad too tedious and cruel. But so were many games of the era. Easily fixed!
Man, that author of the article must be using internet explorer
It was too damn hard. I beat it once but never again. I did enjoy the world building with the villages and residents
If they remade it with some modern quality of life improvements, I’d be happy to give it another shot.
IMO it still has one of the best soundtracks of the series.
I never meant anyone in 1988 that liked Zelda II.
It has gained some fandom in the late 90s when it became available through emulators and even more so recently, but back in ‘88 it was not beloved at all in the 6-15 age group
It’s a failure in a way to be a true sequel to the first one.
But it’s not remotely close of being a failure of being a really good game.
Is the “acclaim” in the room with us
I wanted to love this game as a kid, but it was just too hard. The Palace music still freaking rocks tho
I never could enjoy the game or really get the appeal. That is until I played the Adventure Time 3DS game which is a secret modern remake/clone of Zelda 2 – it’s really fun and shows what’s good about Zelda 2 and that type of game, without the elements that have aged poorly. Really recommend it and I hope Nintendo does a real Zelda 2 remake like that someday.
Not by me
It’s the one Zelda I really have no desire to try.
Idc I still want a Zelda 2 remake at the very least
I don’t like Zelda 2 but I appreciate how it experimented with things and didn’t necessarily set out to fulfill expectations.
It was brutally difficult in a way that the 1st was not, in terms of the side scrolling fighting demanding more technique. It wasn’t the sequel to TLoZ that I wanted as a kid, but I played it and beat the game and remember it being one of the more challenging games I had beaten as a kid…replayed it via emulation with save states and cheesed my way through it lol and that was fun, but at the time wow. Some people didn’t like it for the difficulty. Some didn’t like the random-ish encounters (I mean yeah you could see the little monsters appear and sometimes you could avoid if I’m remembering right but often they’d appear right on top of you lol). It seems really clear that most people wanted a sequel like A Link to the Past, which in many ways feels like the definitive classic Zelda more so than even the original. That’s cool if folks are “rediscovering” Zelda 2, and maybe playing it now with custom remake versions or save states OR JUST HAVING GUIDES TO USE is a more enjoyable experience now than it was at release?
It was acclaimed? Thats strange, I personally enjoy it but I thought it was largely negatively received.
I remember playing Zelda 2 as a kid and hating it and being confused it was nothing like the first game. Probably should give it another go lol.
Adventure of Link is my favorite game of all time. I play it 2-3 times a year.
Zelda II is my favorite Zelda.
“Sort of a failure”?
It WAS a failure for how stupidity hard it was.
Title is crazy, Zelda 2 has never been acclaimed
I kinda enjoyed Zelda 2 back in the day, when I was a little kid and I didn’t have the built-in expectation of reaching the ending within a week or two (or at all) whenever I picked up a game. I never beat it until I played it on an emulator when I was in college in the mid-2000s (and I’ve still never beaten it as-intended, i.e. without using save states), but I had a ton of fun wandering aimlessly through the world and dying over and over again when I was like 3 or 4.
I’m tired of people openly hating this game when they’ve A) never played it B) forget it’s literally the second game in the series and games of that style were common at the time C) looking for clicks
It was a favorite rental of mine back in the NES days. I would love to see a modern version of it… 2d temples with an overhead overworld. Maybe develop it as a side series with Impa or Sheik as the main character.
I never heard that Zelda II was a bad game, it was just a really difficult one and didn’t do well due to that fact
Zelda II was among my top 5 NES games of all time. Sad to read nintendo considered it a failure.
This may be a hot take: if Zelda 2 wasn’t a Zelda game, but rather a new first-party universe, it would’ve been the first game in a long-running action game franchise. It isn’t a bad game. Balls-hard, yes, but it isn’t “bad”. It’s the black sheep of the franchise, but that doesn’t make it a bad game. If you re-skin Link with a new swordsman sprite, and change the names, you’d have a good game, but just not one in the Zelda lineage. ‘New Fantasy Sword Guy: The Adventure’ would be a good game, and if it sold well, could’ve become a new, long-running franchise.
I think you still would have gotten ALTTP, because so many SNES games were largely pseudo-remakes of NES classics (Castlevania 4, Super Metroid, Super Punch-Out). ALTTP certainly falls under that, and Zelda 2 wasn’t a necessary bridge to get there. Zelda 2 is a good game, and should be played, and should have evolved through sequels… It’s just not a great “Zelda game”.
I played the NES version of Zelda 2 and found it to be a frustrating experience.
I played the PC remake version of Zelda 2 and found it to be a masterpiece.
I’d love to see a more streamlined version of that style game made again . But it is so different from the first.
I loved Zelda 2, even though I didn’t play it until a few years ago. Maybe the single most “different” game in the series. Think of how few sequels today actually try to completely change things like that. But it’s obviously one you need to play with a guide and (tasteful) save states to enjoy today. It’d be a great candidate for a remake, just because it’s always been something of a black sheep.
That’s how me and my friends always viewed it. It seemed like a misstep even back then, as the very next game was “LoZ 1 but better”, and they need went back to the style of 2 again.
Yeah, it’s kinda shit.
I’m all for innovation but they went too innovative with Zelda II. It’s hardly a Zelda game, I see it more of a Castlevania spin off than a Zelda sequel.
Personally I have always found it not interesting enough to make it worth the frustration of playing it.