Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is an action role-playing game developed and published by Nintendo. It first released in Japan for the Famicom Disk System in January 1987 and reached North America on the NES in late 1988, arriving, like its predecessor, on a distinctive gold cartridge. It is the direct sequel to 1986's The Legend of Zelda.
The game departs sharply from the original's top-down design. Players move Link across a top-down overworld map, but towns, dungeons, and combat play out in side-scrolling areas. Zelda II introduces role-playing systems new to the series: Link earns experience points from defeated enemies and spends them to raise his attack power, magic, and life. Towns are populated with characters who offer hints, healing, and spells, and several of those spells are required to progress. The quest sends Link to place crystals in six palaces before reaching the Great Palace and the game's final guardian.
The title is remembered for its steep difficulty, its limited lives and unforgiving later dungeons, and for introducing Dark Link, the shadow opponent Link faces near the end. The Zelda the story revolves around is not the princess of the first game but an earlier sleeping princess for whom the royal line's daughters are named.
For years Zelda II was treated as the odd entry in the series because of its format change, though later reassessment has been kinder to its ideas. Its experience system, spell list, and town interactions fed forward into the design of later Zelda games even as the side-scrolling structure was retired. It has been reissued repeatedly through Nintendo's classic collections and subscription services.
