It’s a matter of fact that Zelda II: The Adventure of Link sold over 1 zillion copies, a zillion! A fictional number that is thought to be very high. What’s strange about this title selling so many copies is that most people don’t think it’s a good game… and on multiple occasions I’ve found that I’ve had to defend it. Which is the subject of this post.
I am sick or tired (I can be frustrated by just one of these things.) Okay, I’ll start again… I am sick or tired of idiots telling me why they don’t like the second installment of The Legend of Zelda franchise. It’s the same dumb excuse every time.
“It’s not like the rest of the series,” they say, but if you ask me, a retarded water balloon could think of something more profound.
People are so desperate to have an opinion about anything that they see one thing that’s easily identifiable as different from the sacred original article and they hold onto it as if they’ve actually got a point. Sure, it’s a side-scroller, and sure they incorporated a kick-ass level system, but what is inherently wrong with these things? I didn’t hear anyone bitching when they switched to 3-D, which, believe it or not is a much larger shift. So, I’m sorry that you have to kill goblins at a different angle, but that is a tired fucking excuse and you have no business inhabiting this planet let alone consuming valuable electricity to play precious video games.
Zelda II was released on the NES, and what that system did best was side-scrolling video games, putting Zelda II among the upper echelon of Nintendo games like Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Castlevania, Contra, Mega Man, and Double Dragon. Compare that to the crowd of video games that the original Legend of Zelda is forced to hang around with, bird’s eye view catastrophes like LoLo, Smash T.V. and Railroad Tycoon. What’s really frustrating is that even Zelda II’s Wikipedia page stands in opposition to me, stating that it “bears little resemblance to the first game in the series or later games in the series.” Really, Wikipedia, what about the fact that your playable character is a damn elf wearing a green costume? Is that just a coincidence? The fact is, Zelda II brought many things to the series. Imagine future Zelda games without cities, or a magic system. I think you could also argue that it helped solidify Zelda’s role as an RPG series.
The complaint about Zelda II that I hear probably the second most often, is that it’s too tedious and difficult, which doesn’t make you quite as stupid a cretin as the first, but if I did hear you say that, then I probably wouldn’t leap to the conclusion that you knew how to read either. I would go so far as to say that anyone who thinks that Zelda II is “too difficult” has never actually really played the original Legend of Zelda. The original game’s master quest makes the original Legend of Zelda one of the most difficult video games by far. (that is actually still worth playing.)
On top of everything else, Zelda II was really one of the first games of its kind; the creators managed to make a really unique game while weaving in as many elements of the original as possible. What’s amazing is that anyone finds anything to complain about at all. Basically, all you’re doing in Zelda II is running around killing various monsters. To reiterate, you’re jumping around and killing monsters with a sword to rouse a sleeping princess. That’s it. It’s not claiming to be anything more than that. It doesn’t proclaim itself to be the first game at all… and so am I saying that hating Zelda II is like saying that you hate fun? Yes, and you’re an idiot moron if you do.