Zelda 2 was Nintendo at its best: unpredictable

polygon.com:

In a 2016 interview with Nintendo, Tadashi Sugiyama, the game director of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, expressed incredulity that anyone would consider his sequel to The Legend of Zelda their favorite Zelda of all time: “Those kind of people exist!?”

Sugiyama is clearly aware of the divisive reception to Zelda 2, which, despite being a commercial hit on the original NES, did not become the transformative template for future Zelda games. Far from it; Zelda 2’s focus on more traditional RPG and side-scrolling platforming elements were all but excised from the franchise, as top-down adventures in the style of The Legend of Zelda became the norm until (and even beyond) the release of Link’s first 3D game, Ocarina of Time. Sugiyama’s sequel is often derided as the “black sheep” of the long-running series. But the game’s emphasis on combat and swordplay was an obvious influence on Link’s transition to 3D gaming, and Zelda 2 had a major impact on other games — just not those made by Nintendo.

Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link arrived on North American NES consoles in 1988, at a strange time for the game maker. Nintendo was at the peak of its popularity in the late ’80s, when the Japanese company was synonymous with video gaming in America. That popularity led to a chip shortage for Nintendo cartridges, and to lengthy delays for Zelda 2 — the game arrived stateside nearly two years after it launched on Nintendo’s Famicom in Japan.

It coincidentally arrived alongside two other highly anticipated, big-swerve sequels: Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 2 and Konami’s Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest. All three games were notable for their dramatic shift in style from their predecessors: Super Mario Bros. 2 was famously a reskin of another