Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Difference between revisions

Development of {{TAoL|-}} started with [[Shigeru Miyamoto]]'s idea of creating a side-scrolling action game which used up and down movements for attacks and defense.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= Development started with Mr. Miyamoto saying he wanted to make a side-scrolling action game that made use of up and down movements for attacks and defense. It's rooted in actions like jump strikes, downward strikes, and high and low shield defense moves. Types of moves that weren't possible in the first game.|name= Tadashi Sugiyama|url= https://nintendoeverything.com/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-director-on-how-development-started-title-difficulty-and-more/|title= Zelda II – The Adventure of Link director on how development started, title, difficulty, and more}}</ref> This idea was developed as a new sword and shield action game that did not follow the system seen in the first ''The Legend of Zelda''.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= Rather than being a continuation of the series, it started as a new sword and shield type of action game. We were experimenting while producing the game so we didn't really have the first game's systems in mind while developing it.|name= Tadashi Sugiyama|url= https://nintendoeverything.com/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-director-on-how-development-started-title-difficulty-and-more/|title= Zelda II – The Adventure of Link director on how development started, title, difficulty, and more}}</ref> At the end of development, the game was considered a type of spin-off until it was decided on a story where Link would be 16 years old, attaching the ''Zelda'' title to it.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= As for it being unique within the series, we were searching for new ways to play so you could say it's like a spin-off. At the end of development we decided on a story and that Link would be 16 years old then attached [The Legend of Zelda 2] and released it as the second game in the series.|name= Tadashi Sugiyama|url= https://nintendoeverything.com/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-director-on-how-development-started-title-difficulty-and-more/|title= Zelda II – The Adventure of Link director on how development started, title, difficulty, and more}}</ref>

The leveling up system was added so players could battle enemies multiple times, while encounters on the overworld added a luck factor to the narrow map.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= There were various restrictions at that time so we put in the level up system as a way to have players battling enemies time and time again. As for the symbol encounters, the field map was narrow so the system added a luck factor to it.|name= Tadashi Sugiyama|url= https://nintendoeverything.com/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-director-on-how-development-started-title-difficulty-and-more/|title= Zelda II – The Adventure of Link director on how development started, title, difficulty, and more}}</ref> The high difficulty of the game was implemented to extend playing sessions due to the lack of content in games at the time.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= The foundation of action games at the time was to feel difficult for everyone. Games didn't have a ton of content at that time so in order to have them played for as long as possible we felt like we couldn't make them easily clearable.|name= Tadashi Sugiyama|url= https://nintendoeverything.com/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-director-on-how-development-started-title-difficulty-and-more/|title= Zelda II – The Adventure of Link director on how development started, title, difficulty, and more}}</ref>

*Acording to series creator [[Shigeru Miyamoto]], {{TAoL|-}} is the only {{TLoZ|-}} game he considers a failure,<ref>{{Cite person|quote= Compared to Legend of Zelda, Zelda II went exactly what we expected... All games I make usually gets better in the development process, since good ideas keep coming, but Zelda II was sort of a failure...|name= Shigeru Miyamoto|url= https://www.nintendoforums.com/articles/40/super-play-magazine-interviews-shigeru-miyamoto-about-zelda|title= SUPER PLAY MAGAZINE INTERVIEWS SHIGERU MIYAMOTO ABOUT THE LEGEND OF ZELDA}}</ref> this due to the limitations of the hardware.<ref>{{Cite person|quote= I think specifically in the case of Zelda II we had a challenge just in terms of what the hardware was capable of doing, [...] So one thing, of course, is, from a hardware perspective, if we had been able to have the switch between the scenes speed up, if that had been faster, we could have done more with how we used the sidescrolling vs. the overhead [view] and kind of the interchange between the two. But, because of the limitations on how quickly those scenes changed, we weren't able to. The other thing, is it would have been nice to have had bigger enemies in the game, but the Famicom/NES hardware wasn't capable of doing that. Certainly, with hardware nowadays you can do that and we have done that, but of course nowadays creating bigger enemies takes a lot of effort.|name= Shigeru Miyamoto|url= https://kotaku.com/shigeru-miyamotos-bad-game-514017583|title= Shigeru Miyamoto's 'Bad' Game}}</ref>