{"id":120,"date":"2011-09-09T13:57:50","date_gmt":"2011-09-09T13:57:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=120"},"modified":"2013-03-07T01:23:35","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T01:23:35","slug":"zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-nes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)"},"content":{"rendered":"

This next entry deals with a \u201cblack sheep\u201d of sorts, even though it\u2019s a tremendously awesome game in its own right.<\/p>\n

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1988 – NES (Nintendo)<\/p><\/div>\n

Before I was even born, our next-door neighbors were very close friends with my family.\u00a0 Two years after I came around, the couple welcomed a daughter.\u00a0 As time went by, the daughter and I became friends as well, joined at the hip (although, not literally \u2013 can you imagine???).\u00a0 The plan was that we would eventually get married and have babies and live together forever – we had plenty of pretend kids by\u00a0the time I was\u00a07.<\/p>\n

In any case, her father was into computers, trains and ocean liners of all things.\u00a0 He also owned an NES with very few games, but one of them happened to be a shiny gold cartridge.\u00a0 Intrigued, I pressed for more information on it…\u00a0 was it similar to The Legend of Zelda<\/em>?\u00a0 It was gold, sure, but it said \u201cLINK\u201d in blue (not \u201cZELDA\u201d red) on the front of it, so I couldn\u2019t quite tell what it was.<\/p>\n

As it turned out, it was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link<\/em>…\u00a0 Wait…\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t playing *as<\/strong>* Zelda in the first game?<\/em>\u00a0 Of course, my reading skills weren\u2019t quite at 100% at that point, and my only concern was playing through the game.\u00a0 The story wasn\u2019t that important to me, so I would never wait for it to scroll up after the title screen.<\/p>\n

I was struck by how different the game felt from the first one.\u00a0 The simple change from the overhead perspective to the side-scrolling portions blew my mind.\u00a0 Not only that, but Link looked like a grown man!\u00a0 He was so short and stubby in the first one, and he was given the gift of limbs for the sequel.\u00a0 Fantastic!\u00a0 Every dungeon from the first game had a different colour, but this game\u2019s palaces had different colours AND differently shaped bricks.\u00a0 I thought, perhaps just a wee bit too much, that that was AWESOME.\u00a0 The dungeons also felt somewhat similar to\u00a0those in Super Mario Bros.<\/em>, which definitely didn’t go unnoticed.<\/p>\n

I know levelling up is a standard procedure now, but being introduced to it with Link<\/em> had me somewhat confused.\u00a0 I just killed a bad guy!\u00a0 Awesome, now onto \u2013 OK, what\u2019s with this screen?\u00a0 Yeah, OK, whatever.\u00a0 Start.\u00a0 Let\u2019s keep going.<\/em>\u00a0 Perhaps my friend\u2019s dad had explained the concept to me, but again, I was probably just too busy with the game itself to listen to what he had to say.<\/p>\n

When I\u2019d be done playing the game, I\u2019d go back to playing with Barbies with the little girl, or whatever her random thing of the week was…<\/p>\n

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Cabbage Patch Kids. There were certainly many of those in her room…<\/p><\/div>\n

Fast forward a few years, and they would be set to make a move closer to the city.\u00a0 Though we were both just past ten years old, it was tough on us kids, never having known any other neighbors, or knowing how often we\u2019d see each other in the future.\u00a0 Her father gave me two parting gifts, however.\u00a0 One was a very old book about the Empress of Ireland<\/em>, an ocean liner that sank with great loss of life in the Saint Lawrence River \u2013 his love for boats such as that one was passed onto me, and that vivid interest exists to this day.<\/p>\n

The other was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link<\/em>, with the box it came in and the instruction manual to go along with it.\u00a0 Of the hundreds of cartridge-based games I own, that is the only one I have with the case intact.\u00a0 Needless to say, it\u2019s a valued possession.<\/p>\n

When her father suddenly passed away recently, it was remarkable how hard it hit me.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t just the silly game, or even how he had been the first to show me what the Titanic<\/em> was.\u00a0 It was yet another reminder that life, though each passing day seems so slow, actually goes by a hell of a lot quicker than you really want it to.<\/p>\n

Time<\/em>.\u00a0 Heh.\u00a0 The Zelda <\/em>series knows a few things about that, too.<\/p>\n