Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Also known as: The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bouken (JP, FDS) Developer: Nintendo EAD Publisher: Nintendo Platforms: NES, Famicom Disk System Released in JP: January 14, 1987 Released in US: December 1988 Released in EU: September 26, 1988 This game has unused areas. This game has unused graphics. This game has regional differences. This game has revisional differences. This game has a Data Crystal page

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is commonly considered a black sheep of the Zelda series, due to it being a full sidescroller, featuring many RPG-style elements, and having a greatly increased difficulty by comparison with the rest of the series. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a very successful game.

To do: Unused warps.

Sub-Pages

Regional Differences There's a whole lot to cover.

Unused Areas

There's an unused graveyard side-scrolling area if you use an overworld walk-through-walls code to get into a battle on a mountain tile, which isn't normally possible.

In West Hyrule, there are two areas that have no pointers associated to them and therefore are never seen in the game:

This area looks like a plain grotto, with no relief. Its data is located at 0x4EDC.

This area was most likely meant to contain an item, judging by its structure. It appears you were supposed to enter it by falling through the shaft on the right. The black part on the left is actually made of individual breakable blocks, like the ones in the palaces. Every area in the game has data for fully functional breakable blocks, but West and East Hyrule don't have any graphics associated with these; if you fell in this room without the Handy Glove, you would be stuck. Its data is located at 0x4F1C.

Unused Graphics

Palace Windows

Maze Palace	Hidden Palace

Every palace has unique graphics for windows, but the fourth (Maze Palace) and sixth (Hidden Palace) palaces don't actually have any windows, rendering their window graphics ordinarily unused. It is still possible to see them through a glitch involving the Fairy spell which makes the game load Parapa Palace's layout with the graphics of another palace.

Spikes

Spikes exist for every palace. Zelda II has a bunch of hazards, but spikes are not among them.

Broken Wall

Unused "broken wall" tiles which were never adapted to the added palace graphics of the American release. Unsure what this was meant to be for.

Developer Oversights

Leevers

There are Leevers in a desert that are placed too low to appear on the surface of the sand. It is possible to defeat them with spells or down attack.

In the Game Boy Advance version, the Leevers are slightly visible above the sand.

(Source: Dark Linkaël)

Default Filename

At address $1712 (FDS)/$2993 (NES), there is a string which reads "ICHILINK...   × ". While this string is used for the lives screen, the name "IchiLink" is always overwritten (quite literally) by the player's filename. Incidentally, filenames which have less than 8 characters are padded with space characters ($F4), ensuring they're always exactly 8 characters long.

Post-NES Rereleases

To do: Check which revisions the 3DS VC versions use, and have a look at the Japanese GBA version.

Zelda II was re-released for the GameCube in 2003, the Game Boy Advance in 2004, the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, and the 3DS Virtual Console in 2012, some with a few minor changes. Though the American/European/Australian Wii release is straight from the NES version, the Japanese Wii release seems to be based on the Japanese GBA version, so it features some parts of the disk and cartridge plus things like the new 2003 script. Like with the first game, the American 3DS release seems to be based on the original NES version.

The American Wii U release also reverts to the original, despite the Wii U version of the first game maintaining the 2003 changes.

Intro

NES/Wii	GCN/GBA/Switch
AFTER GANON WAS DESTROYED, IMPA TOLD LINK A SLEEPING SPELL WAS CAST ON PRINCESS ZELDA. SHE WILL WAKE ONLY WITH THE POWER OF NO.3 TRIFORCE SEALED IN A PALACE IN HYRULE. TO BREAK THE SEAL,CRYSTALS MUST BE PLACED IN STATUES IN 6 WELL GUARDED PALACES. LINK SET OUT ON HIS MOST ADVENTURESOME QUEST YET… ©1987 NINTENDO	AFTER GANON WAS DESTROYED, IMPA TOLD LINK A SLEEPING SPELL WAS CAST ON PRINCESS ZELDA. SHE WILL WAKE ONLY WITH THE POWER OF THE THIRD TRIFORCE SEALED IN A PALACE IN HYRULE. TO BREAK THE SEAL,CRYSTALS MUST BE PLACED IN STATUES IN 6 WELL GUARDED PALACES. LINK SET OUT ON HIS MOST ADVENTURESOME QUEST YET... ©1987-2004 NINTENDO

The new GCN and GBA versions tried to fix up the grammar again, though being based on the NES version, there's still no mention of the different Zeldas; the copyright date was updated as well, of course (though the copyright date was reverted in the Switch version). As previously mentioned, the American/European/Australian Wii release is pretty much the NES release, while the Japanese Wii release seems to be derived from the previous Japanese GBA version.

Screen Flashing

When losing a life in the FDS and NES versions, the screen flashes rapidly with a rainbow of colors, potentially causing seizures. In the updated versions, the screen just flashes between similar shades of red.

Disassembled Code

The 3DS Japanese Virtual Console release of Zelda II has some unused disassembled 6502 assembly code written in comments in "linkA.tds.patch" that relate to the changes made to adapt to the Virtual Console's automatic swapping of FDS game disk sides when necessary.

00:8452:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF
00:8455:4A        LSR
00:8456:B0 EA     BCS $8442 -> 90 EA    BCC $8442
00:8458:60        RTS
00:8459:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF
00:845C:4A        LSR
00:845D:90 E3     BCC $8442
00:845F:60        RTS
00:8460:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF
00:8463:4A        LSR
00:8464:B0 07     BCS $846D
00:8466:60        RTS
00:8467:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF
00:846A:4A        LSR
00:846B:B0 03     BCS $8470
00:846D:EE 3D 07  INC $073D = #$02
00:8470:60        RTS

PAUSE Text

The 2003 version added a black "PAUSE" box, nowhere to be found in the original FDS and NES versions.

The PAUSE text in the GBA version.