The Legend of Zelda series is responsible for many of the most memorable musical scores in the history of gaming, but there is one in the series that has been woefully ignored over the years. I refer, of course, to the black sheep of the Zelda family tree, 1987's Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom. Maybe it's because The Adventure of Link is the only console Zelda game without a score by Koji Kondo, but Akito Nakatsuka's brilliant reimagining has been all but forgotten – save for the palace theme, resurrected for the Temple stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Here, listen to Zelda II's overworld theme, the opening bars of which are the only link to Kondo's original Zelda score:
Much has been said over the years about Zelda II and its relationship with and differences from the rest of the Zelda games, so I won't harp on about that. I will point out, however, that Zelda II features an intense battle between Link and an evil Dark Link clone (seen above), a concept that has since been repeated in such other Nintendo games as Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Metroid Prime 2 and 3, Super Mario Galaxy, and pretty much every other game in the world. Cheesy and cliché as it is now, this was totally awesome back in the '80s.
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