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The Legend of Zelda is one heck of a long-lived series. Never count it out, either critically or financially; just when sales were beginning to slump, Breath of the Wild came along and gave it an incredibly fresh lease on life. But looking back to the franchise’s origins, it’s hard not to notice that, while the original game has proven formative, the first of many sequels… is odd.
That doesn’t mean Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a bad game. Well, there are lots of folks who would say so, and there’s also something to be said about the fact that the next game in the series followed the first one’s formula instead. But Adventure of Link does have its fans. Here’s to you - let’s see what accounted for such drastic shifts.
No True Identity… Just Yet
In modern times, it’s hard to fathom a point at whichThe Legend of Zelda lacked a strong sense of brand identity. We’d go so far as to say that, by the time the fabulous Ocarina of Time rolled around in 1998, the notion was becoming bizarre. But when any new IP is born, be it a video game or just about anything else, it’s experimental by nature.
Shigeru Miyamoto and his talented team at Nintendo knew the first game, appropriately titled The Legend of Zelda, had been successful. The game receivedhigh marks from critics, soldover a million copies in its first week in Japan,and hittwo million in sales in the United States within its first two years.Praise was given to the dungeon designs, the soundtrack by Koji Kondo, and really, just about everything else.
But few legendary creators seek to constantly innovate half so much as Shigeru Miyamoto, and why not? The Legend of Zelda performed pretty darned well - and has gone on to sell further millions since - but deciding which aspects to carry over into a sequel couldn’t have been easy. It’s worth considering thatmore elements from the first game were brought into the sequel than is commonly considered.
Dungeons are back. An overworld returns, albeit differently. Link still battles with a sword and shield, important artifacts of great power are gathered. Link, Zelda, Impa, and Ganon all factor.In our analysis, this is an ample degree of carryover when a series is so new as The Legend of Zelda was back in 1987.
It Wasn’t Even Going To Be A Sequel… Per Se
But back to Miyamoto-san. An early edict for Adventure of Link was thatenough would be altered from the first game’s core mechanics that it would be labeled and marketed as a spinoffrather than a sequel. In fact, it was only further into development, when the team decided tofeature Link and Zelda a few years after their debut appearances, that the idea coalesced of considering it adirect sequel and titling it ‘Zelda II’.
Zelda II: Adventure of Link was to be so far removed from the experimental approach of its predecessor - just as experimental a second time around.Miyamoto gathered a largely different development team, sans himself and Takashi Tezuka. This was almost certainly not done out of any ill will toward his fellow creators of The Legend of Zelda, but rather, to emphasize the deviations.
The Legend of Zeldawas directed byShigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, and written byTezuka and Keiji Terui.Adventure of Link, by contrast, was written again byTezuka, but directed byTadashi SugiyamaandYasuhisa Yamamura. Even now, changes in a game’s director(s) will no doubt cause noteworthy shifts between installments within a series. Back in the 1980s, when development teams were far smaller even on major titles than they are in today’s AAA landscape,such shifts were enormous.
Reconsidering The Legacy
In some ways, The Legend of Zelda: Adventure of Link is comparable toother early sequels in long-running game series, such as Final Fantasy II.In both cases, much is (rightly) made over how divergent they are from not just the first game, but most of the games to come. Yet, both Link’s black sheep sidescroller and the odd approach to stat growth in FF2 alsointroduce plenty of things which have become emblematicof their respective series.
The Adventure of Link is the Zelda franchise’s introduction to some seriously timeless tidbits.The Triforce of Courageis one such example. The ability forLink to learn magicis another. The notion thatGanon could be revivedwas never before established - after all, how would it have been?
Back to Ocarina of Time for a sec, andeach of that game’s sageswas so named during development in honor ofthe various settlements in Adventure of Link.We can go one more on that score - there weren’t evensettlementsto begin with in The Legend of Zelda. And rememberDark Link? Who can forget him? That infamous villain began his tenure right here in Adventure of Link, under the nameLink’s Shadow.
Indeed, the list goes on. Adventure of Link is undeniably a far different beast than The Legend of Zelda, and it’s clear which broad approach has had greater success. Adventure of Link sold well, and reviewed well, but not to the extent of its fellow NES chapter, and we don’t want to speak for Miyamoto and Nintendo at large, but wesuspectthis factored into the decision togo back to the first game’s formula from A Link to the Past onward.
But for all its perceived eccentricities, there is something to be said about how much of Adventure of Link’s ‘DNA’ is mixed in with the rest of the series. Even today, its legacy is felt; after all, who is it we’re up against in both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom?A demon king capable of resurrection,that’s who!
