END OF SUMMER RETRO SEQUEL TWO PACK - What a horrable night to meet I am Error! (CV2 and Zelda2!)

Let's end summer with a retro TWO pack of TWO's - Castlevania II Simon's Quest and Zelda II: Adventures of Link both with sequel numbers and titles! Enjoy them on your favorite variant of an NES etc.

Both games took their successful original games foundation and tossed it out the damn window, for better or worse?

Top down and side scrolling sword and whip action games moved into the world of the RPGs- stats, level ups, towns folks, magic, currency etc. etc. The worlds in each are much larger than their founders and for some, bigger than any to this day! (Zelda II can still be considered bigger of a world than BOTW)

Many consider these the worst games, but many consider them the best!

Join us as we finish up summer for a retro two pack!

Remember to tag a forum bro, discuss and talk about these games and...

HAVE FUN!

Amod - Sticky plz

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Personally, I love each of these games - and I love them more than their predecessors - yes even Zelda... I love Zelda II and play through it essentially yearly.

I think each of them attempted boldly new things, and yes had a lot of fail with it- but also a lot of good.

Each one of them are actually what the current generation / iteration of their games are... BOTW is the most Zelda II like game, SOTN and MetroidVanias are more like CV2 than CV3 (yes... and CV2 is better!!! ARRGHGH FF8 sucks also!! stop no!!)

Zelda II can actually produce some great sword fights with the knights and has some of the best dungeon design.

CV2 gave us BloodyTears and shoudl be #1 just for that..

More to come as I start to play through them.

Getting to the phoenix in the final castle of zelda 2

Us: Cool should be half way!
Zelda2: *evil snicker* hehe yes, hehe sure

Speaking of awakening - when is that remake coming out!

Okay let us talk about Castlevania 2...

For this I am going to reference CV1 and CV3 - as that typically is what people use, the original as the set the stage and "OMG THE BEST CV THAT MADE SO MUCH PROGRESS CV3!"

Atmosphere: CV2 blows CV1 and 3 out of the water - the day night cycle helps this, towns filled with ghosts and you just having to survive until morning if you are close to death... there is almost 0 screens in CV2 where you are safe, did you just jump off a ledge in a town.. WATER PIT HAHAHA

The music fits this and helps this, we are given /the/ most recognized castlevania music of all time - Bloody Tears.

The mansions are pure terror - false floors and tons of bad guys in a crazy maze all trying to find a random shop keeper while then going back to the orb and retrieving a piece of Dracula - and two have "bosses" that are... kinda hard?

The mansions are dark and the corpses handing throughout gave me chills and nightmares as a kid.

The controls are arguably better than 1 and 3, I would say so... as 3 is imo just like 1.

I like the visuals of CV2 better than 1 and 3... 3 could be a mess of colors and styles in many stages while CV2 was nice and moody and dark throughout.

It was ground breaking, it was ahead of its time.. so much so the same style- lots of RPG elements, a real "world" and together map - it would not be done for 2 console generations and 4 more CV games.. CV3, CV4, Bloodlines and Rando of Blood/Dracula X all where more or less CV1/3 style... it was not until SOTN that we returned to a style of CV2 and SOTN set the gold standard of Metroidvania games... CV2 was spiritually remade in HoD, where you collect Dracula's parts and stuff once more.

Okay now, we are wrapping up Emperor Augustus' month so let us talk about Zelda II: The Adventures of Link!

Zelda II hits you as different from the start - the music is different, not reusing or remixing the orig - and it is still great.

You are greeted with a similar name and save scree and then - boom you are tossed into a side scrolling action setting - a big difference from the top down adventure of Zelda 1.

You then go out into a mini map, kind of similar in the top down, but zoomed out even further than Zelda 1--so still a, same but not same...sheesh! and what are those blobs! what was that horrific sound, wat.gif I am back to a side scrolling, wait, are those bad guys...what the EPILEPTIC SEIZURE is that I am dead!? how the, what the h.... BACK at the beginning? wait...okay, lets do this again.

LOL

Okay I love Zelda II - it is great, I love practically everything about it, even the frustrating and annoying parts. I loved it as a kid even though I never got to beat it as a kid - even one time my brother and I took our cart over to our cousins house who had a game genie - we still did not get past the final castle because it was just, crazy maze.

Not until BOTW have I had a Zelda II exp... it just feels large and huge in scope and area and land and just things to explore and do.

I love almost all Zelda games, but II and BOTW is really my best of's still.