Zelda II: The Adventure of Link NES

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is Nintendo’s 1987 sequel, a sharp departure from the original’s top-down overworld design. It splits into a side-scrolling action-platformer for combat and dungeons, layered on an overhead map for traveling between towns, with an experience-point leveling system the first game never had.

The shift proved divisive among players expecting a direct follow-up to the original’s format, and Nintendo itself never repeated the side-scrolling combat approach in a mainline Zelda game again. It remains the series’ most structurally distinct entry — an experiment the franchise tried once and then quietly returned to its top-down roots for every game that followed.