Zelda II: The Adventure of Link - Development and Releases

Development and Releases

Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the original The Legend of Zelda, intended to make Zelda II: The Adventure of Link fundamentally different from its predecessor. A different team was assembled to develop the game. However, Miyamoto was the producer, and Takashi Tezuka returned to write the story and script. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was directed by Tadashi Sugiyama, for whom it was the first project at Nintendo. The game's music was composed by Akito Nakatsuka, who was credited under the pseudonym "Tsukasan".

The Adventure of Link was originally released on the Family Computer Disk System (FDS) before its worldwide release. Like its predecessor, the FDS version appears to be an earlier version of the game, with a few obvious differences. In the English release, the dungeons each have different colors, whereas in the FDS version they are all gray. Also, the two dungeon bosses Carrok and Volvagia (the latter being initially named Barba in the NES release) have different graphical appearances. The game over screen in the English version features the silhouette of Ganon from the chest up, with the text saying "Game Over/Return of Ganon", whereas the FDS game over screen is a plain black screen with the text saying "Return of Ganon/The End". There are some slight additions to the dungeons, as well as a handful of differences on the dungeons themselves. Due to an additional soundchip that the Disk System has, when Nintendo ported Zelda II over to the NES they had to eliminate some musical elements, especially from the title screen. On the main map, the icons denoting attacking monsters look different, but the most significant change is the spending of experience points, as Link's three attributes cost the same, unlike the worldwide release. Further, the game is designed to promote balanced leveling, as the saved game on the disk will only let the levels for the attributes go as high as whatever is set the lowest (e.g. if Life is at 5 and Strength is at 4, but Magic is at 1, then the saved game will reflect all as level 1), while still saving the data regarding crystals that have been placed and items that have been collected. These differences make leveling up in the game very different.

The Adventure of Link was re-released in 2003 on the The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition disc for the Nintendo GameCube, and again in 2004 as part of the “Classic NES Series” for Game Boy Advance, with changes. The intro text has been changed to read "third Triforce" rather than "No.3 Triforce" and the copyright date has been altered to read "1987- 2004". The death animation removed flashing colors in an effort to prevent seizures, replacing it with a solid red color. There were also various graphical and audio tweaks. It was released as the 100th title on the Wii's Virtual Console in Japan on January 23, 2007, in Europe and Australia on February 9, 2007 and was released in North America on June 4, 2007. The text changes weren't made in this version, but it does feature the solid red color in the death animations from the GameCube and Game Boy Advance versions.

The game was released yet again in September 2011 on Virtual Console (this time on the 3DS), bundled with its predecessor as part of a free giveaway of 10 original Nintendo Entertainment System games to 3DS owners who purchased the console before the price drop. It is now available to purchase on the Nintendo eShop for the 3DS in Europe. This version is a direct port of the original NES release and, consequently, features the flashing color death scene and none of the text alterations of previous re-releases. Although the game features the save option, fully resetting the software currently results in the save game being deleted, meaning that the user should not do this unless that is the desired outcome.