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SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...


The last boss isn't "Dark Link" okay? It's Link's shadow. This is an important distinction! You're not fighting some evil clone doppelganger, you're fighting yourself. It's the last courageous act you must undertake to become an adult: defeating your own childish self-centeredness.

That same selfishness that lead to your every defeat


And was there during every proud victory


Because there's no Ganon to fight this time. You're here to awaken a woman in a coma, save a kidnapped child, retrieve a town's trophy, fetch a thirsty woman a glass of water, and a dozen other selfless deeds across the kingdom of Hyrule, and the only enemy (besides the remnants of Ganon's monsters who all want to kill your rear end and use your blood to resurrect their evil master but whatever) is that childish cowardly part of you that wants to give up and go home and play something else because this is all way too hard and tedious and besides it's not like any of this is even your problem, right?

gently caress that! You're a grown-rear end adult!


Anyways don't call the last boss Dark Link, it's always been Link's shadow.

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SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...


But yeah let this be the catch-all thread for the most unique Zelda game ever. Where it's 1988 and Link is a 16-year old brunette traversing a vaguely Catholic and Mediterranean Hyrule overworld.



Where you didn't win by upgrading your items but by gaining EXPERIENCE


When cartridges were gold and no one could figure out what the hell to do without Nintendo Power.


And perhaps most importantly, where you can revitalize yourself by coming inside the houses of remarkably helpful young women waiting outside their front doors clad in red dresses with one hand perpetually placed on their hips!


It's Link's most adventure some quest yet!TM

SidneyIsTheKiller fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Jul 22, 2022

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...
Also this is just my experience but the whole "Zelda II is the black sheep of the series" bit is something that people tend to presume is the case more than it ever actually was true, especially at the time of its release. It was extremely well-received and highly acclaimed.

Jimmy Smuts
Aug 8, 2000

SidneyIsTheKiller posted:

And perhaps most importantly, where you can revitalize yourself by coming inside the houses of remarkably helpful young women waiting outside their front doors clad in red dresses with one hand perpetually placed on their hips!

I can't help but think of what CD-I Link would do in this scenario.

A Fancy Hat
Nov 18, 2016

Always remember that the former President was dumber than the dumbest person you've ever met by a wide margin

I've tried to finish this game so many times and just cannot get into it. Castlevania 2, which gets a lot of similar complaints? I can finish that one no problem.

But the spike in difficulty near the end of this is just too much for me to overcome.

Books On Tape
Dec 26, 2003

Future of the franchise
I will always remember this as the game that got me grounded for a week because I called the nintendo hint line because I couldn't find the hammer. Parents didn't like the phone bill.

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

Jimmy Smuts posted:

I can't help but think of what CD-I Link would do in this scenario.

Whatever I see I shall devour

Meaty Ore
Dec 17, 2011

My God, it's full of cat pictures!

A Fancy Hat posted:

I've tried to finish this game so many times and just cannot get into it. Castlevania 2, which gets a lot of similar complaints? I can finish that one no problem.

But the spike in difficulty near the end of this is just too much for me to overcome.

I've beaten the game in one credit on the cartridge before, but not in one life. Came awfully close one time, though. Usually I lose at least one life in the fourth palace jumping over a lava pit at just the wrong moment for a respawning statue head to swoop down and knock me in, with no/too little magic power left to cast Fairy and bail out for another try. Sometimes I'll lose one in palace 6 through attrition. I almost never die on the path to the final palace, but once I'm there, I'm usually low enough on resources that it can't really be helped. The red and blue lizardmen and the scorpions are tough to deal with. Also the final palace taught me that sometimes it's better to just run from enemies rather than try to kill everything in Link's path. Those bird knight enemies are the absolute worst and if I can't attack them from a safe point, I just wait for them to jump over me and book it to the other end of the hall. Thunderbird gets me sometimes too. At least Link's Shadow is easy to beat.

Swilo
Jun 2, 2004
ANIME SUCKS HARD
:dukedog:
Z2 is the best in the series.

Check out this QOL romhack if the base game is too hard or you just want a more casual replay: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5440/

There's also a pretty cool TC that came out last year: https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6292/

MadDogMike
Apr 9, 2008

Cute but fanged
I don't care what you call that last boss, I never beat that rear end in a top hat back in the day so I mostly called him a bunch of words I wasn't supposed to say when I was that young.

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...
I think what I was trying to get at is I think Zelda II has an underappreciated sophistication in story and presentation for such an early console release. It was the first game I can recall being able to sense that it was "about something."

You can argue that Zelda II being a metaphor for maturation and becoming an adult is SO obvious it doesn't even count as subtext, but the game never does say anything as on-the-nose as "it's time to grow up now, Link," and even then its obviousness only suggests they intentionally gave the story a level beyond the "wake the princess and save Hyrule" surface plot.

Whether intended or simply a result of the limited tech, Zelda II presents its theme with a remarkable amount of showing rather than telling, from your upgrades being experience and learned skill (rather than strictly items) and how the Game Over screen reminds you of your personal responsibility this time around: there is no giving up or letting someone else handle it, it is on you specifically to prevail or else the world is hosed!

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...

MadDogMike posted:

I don't care what you call that last boss, I never beat that rear end in a top hat back in the day so I mostly called him a bunch of words I wasn't supposed to say when I was that young.

Fun fact: the notorious birdmen enemies introduced in the final palace are named "fokka" and "fokkeru." :v:

Meaty Ore
Dec 17, 2011

My God, it's full of cat pictures!

SidneyIsTheKiller posted:

Fun fact: the notorious birdmen enemies introduced in the final palace are named "fokka" and "fokkeru." :v:

Yes, they certainly are. Often, too! :dadjoke:

SidneyIsTheKiller
Jul 16, 2019

I did fall asleep reading a particularly erotic chapter
in my grandmother's journal.

She wrote very detailed descriptions of her experiences...
It should be noted that this game is available on the Switch online service, which has an on-the-fly rewind feature.

Also, Rewind might be the single greatest development in all videogame history.

Jimmy Smuts
Aug 8, 2000

SidneyIsTheKiller posted:

Whether intended or simply a result of the limited tech, Zelda II presents its theme with a remarkable amount of showing rather than telling, from your upgrades being experience and learned skill (rather than strictly items) and how the Game Over screen reminds you of your personal responsibility this time around: there is no giving up or letting someone else handle it, it is on you specifically to prevail or else the world is hosed!


This death screen was extremely creepy, I would sometimes reset the console before it would come up just to avoid it.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
For some reason I got a notion to play all the Zelda games in order, skipping LA because I've played the remake recently. I beat Zelda 1, including the Second Quest, but Zelda 2 made me quit because the last stretch of the game is so unbelievably tortuous to play and I now have a much lower opinion of the game

Basically if you enjoy this game, don't ever play it again!

FishMcCool
Apr 9, 2021

lolcats are still funny
Fallen Rib
Never managed to get into Z2, however I absolutely adored Gargoyle's Quest on GB which pretty much follows the same model, go figure... :shrug:

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

the combat in gargoyle's quest is way better. i kind of appreciate zelda 2 but i don't think it's really a great game, it's nice that the game exists and is different but it doesn't measure up to the standard of the other games

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

Shibawanko posted:

the combat in gargoyle's quest is way better. i kind of appreciate zelda 2 but i don't think it's really a great game, it's nice that the game exists and is different but it doesn't measure up to the standard of the other games

I agree with this, but it's saying something that Zelda 3 is called A Link to the Past, and it's not just that it stars Link. What really stood out to me about the transition from 2 to 3 is that the single mechanic that 3 retained was the magic meter, and they made it a thousand times more forgiving in 3. They straight up tell you multiple times that you will not be able to proceed in a dungeon unless you have magic power available, where 2 is like "you can stab statues and it might give you a red potion or it might spawn a red Iron Knuckle who will murder you outright, good luck rear end in a top hat"

Jimmy Smuts
Aug 8, 2000

My copy of Zelda II had glitchy SRAM, probably from a dying battery. Sometimes I'd start my save slot and I would have items I never earned, and other times I'd lose stuff that I required to progress through the game. So between that and the sheer difficulty, I never came close to beating it. I wonder if this was/is a common thing with SRAM games.
Zelda 1 and 3 were of reasonable difficulty and more fun.

mysteryberto
Apr 25, 2006
IIAM
My favorite part of Zelda 2

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

what do people think of battle for olympus vs zelda 2? it's certainly a more forgiving game

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
Battle of Olympus is one of those games I wouldn't look twice at when I was younger because it was a "ripoff" but now I understand it is the superior game in many respects

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



mysteryberto posted:

My favorite part of Zelda 2


I love how this sparked a huge debate about how "Nintendo obviously mistranslated his name and its supposed to be Errol/Ellor/whateverthefuck" and it turns out that there was a mistranslation... on his friend's name, which is supposed to be Bug. It's a Bug and Error in a video game :buddy:

Meaty Ore
Dec 17, 2011

My God, it's full of cat pictures!

Randalor posted:

I love how this sparked a huge debate about how "Nintendo obviously mistranslated his name and its supposed to be Errol/Ellor/whateverthefuck" and it turns out that there was a mistranslation... on his friend's name, which is supposed to be Bug. It's a Bug and Error in a video game :buddy:

I never knew that. That's wonderful.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦

Randalor posted:

I love how this sparked a huge debate about how "Nintendo obviously mistranslated his name and its supposed to be Errol/Ellor/whateverthefuck" and it turns out that there was a mistranslation... on his friend's name, which is supposed to be Bug. It's a Bug and Error in a video game :buddy:

I was sure it was Errol for years

Coffee Jones
Jul 4, 2004

16 bit? Back when we was kids we only got a single bit on Christmas, as a treat
And we had to share it!
This bit of the gigaleak has been scratching my brain for years.


Scrapped BS Zelda 2 remake, maybe too ambitious for a BS game. I'm trying to think of a game that has the same sort of "Okay we're dropping you in the middle of a sidescrolling world. Figure it out." from the 16 bit era, and I'm drawing a blank.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
The bloody sword is weird

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



I don't think it's supposed to be blood, I think it's supposed to be light reflecting off the blade, just with the wrong pallet applied. Unless Link also learned how to shield bash in Zelda 2.

Chinook
Apr 11, 2006

SHODAI

Seeing that golden cart is probably one of the most noticeable rushes of nostalgia that is available to me as a 41 year old. Actually really feel the “-algia” part of the word. As a 9 year or, or whatever, that gold paint was really magic and it was a pretty special thing.

TOOT BOOT
May 25, 2010

It's interesting how a lot of Part 2s around that time were very different than the original game. Then for the third game they usually go back to the original formula somewhat.

Meaty Ore
Dec 17, 2011

My God, it's full of cat pictures!

TOOT BOOT posted:

It's interesting how a lot of Part 2s around that time were very different than the original game. Then for the third game they usually go back to the original formula somewhat.

Were there really that many? Castlevania and Super Mario Bros. are the only others that come immediately to mind. A lot of the other big sequels I remember from that time stuck to the format from the first game, with some changes or refinements--games like Mega Man II, Lifeforce, Super C, Ninja Gaiden II, and so on.

Heath
Apr 30, 2008

🍂🎃🏞️💦
I think there wasn't really a solid idea of what "a sequel" to a game ought to look like. Would people really just want more of the same? (Turns out, yes)

Shibawanko
Feb 13, 2013

Chinook posted:

Seeing that golden cart is probably one of the most noticeable rushes of nostalgia that is available to me as a 41 year old. Actually really feel the “-algia” part of the word. As a 9 year or, or whatever, that gold paint was really magic and it was a pretty special thing.
i liked the sword as well. the hilt had inlaid gemstones and everyone knows a sword is more kickass than a shield

Jimmy Smuts
Aug 8, 2000

Meaty Ore posted:

Were there really that many? Castlevania and Super Mario Bros. are the only others that come immediately to mind. A lot of the other big sequels I remember from that time stuck to the format from the first game, with some changes or refinements--games like Mega Man II, Lifeforce, Super C, Ninja Gaiden II, and so on.
Technically, LifeForce isn't Gradius 2, it's more of a side story. There's an actual Gradius 2 that was released on the Famicom, and it's a national travesty that it wasn't released in the US. It pushes the Famicom/NES hardware to it's very limits and has the most responsive controller-input programming of any game I've ever played: it's peak '80s Konami. That being said, Lifeforce experimented with horizontal scrolling stages that went away with later iterations of the series.

PaletteSwappedNinja
Jun 3, 2008

One Nation, Under God.

Meaty Ore posted:

Were there really that many? Castlevania and Super Mario Bros. are the only others that come immediately to mind. A lot of the other big sequels I remember from that time stuck to the format from the first game, with some changes or refinements--games like Mega Man II, Lifeforce, Super C, Ninja Gaiden II, and so on.

There were lots of them in arcades - Donkey Kong Jr's more about climbing than jumping, and then Donkey Kong 3's a weird Galaga-like thing.

Dig Dug 2 went from side-scrolling digging to an overhead thing where you're detonating chunks of the ground.

Mappy went from a side-scrolling game about grabbing stolen loot to an overhead game where you're bouncing around on a pogo stick. (The NES originals are more like the original arcade game.)

Wonder Boy went from a Mario-style platformer to an action game with equipment and magic and stuff (not too dissimilar from Zelda 2, actually), and the arcade game after that is a weird auto-scrolling platformer/shooter.

There are other NES/Famicom games that tried something weird the second time and ignored it for the sequels - Final Fantasy 2's battle/stat systems basically became their own series (SaGa), Fire Emblem Gaiden went more full-on RPG and then went back to more standard strategy for the next ten or so games, etc.

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

There are other NES/Famicom games that tried something weird the second time and ignored it for the sequels - Final Fantasy 2's battle/stat systems basically became their own series (SaGa), Fire Emblem Gaiden went more full-on RPG and then went back to more standard strategy for the next ten or so games, etc.

I dunno about the Final Fantasy one, "We changed a major part of the game system in the new game" kind of became Final Fantasy's thing.

AngryRobotsInc
Aug 2, 2011

Randalor posted:

I dunno about the Final Fantasy one, "We changed a major part of the game system in the new game" kind of became Final Fantasy's thing.

II is really the only mainline (not sure about spin offs) game in the series that has done the "Stats increase based on what you do specifically in battle" system, which has a direct throughline to SaGa by way of Akitoshi Kawazu.

PaletteSwappedNinja
Jun 3, 2008

One Nation, Under God.

Randalor posted:

I dunno about the Final Fantasy one, "We changed a major part of the game system in the new game" kind of became Final Fantasy's thing.

Fair enough, but I still think of it that way because it's the one game whose game system they continue to attempt to "fix" whenever they remake it, whereas the others are somewhat rebalanced but not massively different.

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Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

Fair enough, but I still think of it that way because it's the one game whose game system they continue to attempt to "fix" whenever they remake it, whereas the others are somewhat rebalanced but not massively different.

That's fair. When the NES came out, RPGs were still in the early days in general. I think Final Fantasy was the first console RPG that both had a wide range of stats to keep track of AND all of your stats were able to increase by leveling up, which ended up becoming the more-or-less standard for RPGs, so dropping the leveling system and having your actions dictate your increases doesn't seem as radical a change. Plus it gave us Saga and Saga 2, two of the best Gameboy games ever made.

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