Zelda II: The Adventure of Link No-Death Playthrough (Actual NES Capture) - Part 1

This is part 1 of my capture of me playing through Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the NES. This is not an emulator and was not played on the Wii or Wii U Virtual Console. This footage was captured directly from my front-loading NES using a real gold cartridge version of Zelda II.

Following up on my redone Zelda 1 playthrough, here's a new 60 fps playthrough of Zelda II. This is once again a no-death run.

Zelda II was the first Zelda game that I ever played or owned. When I was about 5 (around 1989) my brother bought the game for himself (probably because he saw our neighbors playing it shortly after it came out), but like with all of our other games, we ended up sharing. Ironically, I played the game far more than my brother and beat it countless times whereas I don't know if my brother beat it even once.

Since I was so young at the time, I don't recall exactly how I learned to beat Zelda II (I didn't get Nintendo Power until 1993), but as best as I can remember, my brother asked the neighbors what to do and then passed the information on to me. I can at least recall watching the neighbors playing their copy once or twice. I think I still have some memory of my brother watching me beat the Great Palace for the first time. It was so exciting and rewarding. After that, I kept replaying the game with the same save file (which allows you retain your magic and stats, but you still have to complete the Palaces and pick up heart and magic containers). On special occasions I would start a new save file and go through the game from scratch.

Zelda II is probably my favorite Zelda game, and it has always been that way. It is the most challenging, imaginative and epic Zelda game out there. This was back when the final level had its own enemies, music and styling, and the game didn't hold your hand or interrupt you to tell you about some crap you didn't need to hear. Even the journey to the final level was treacherous and could make or break you. You walked on lava just to get there. Needless to say, the Great Palace is my favorite part of the game.

Although I have most of the game memorized, I used Nintendo Power's NES Game Atlas to help me get through the Palaces more efficiently.

In this first part I learned Shield, obtained the first Heart Container and Magic Container, and completed the first level, Parapa Palace. After that I collected the trophy from the cave and took it to the town of Ruto, where I learned Jump.

Recorded with the Hauppauge HD PVR and a composite connection at 60 frames per second. I used a Toshiba model D-R550 DVD Recorder to upconvert the NES's native 240p signal to 480i so that the Hauppauge could capture the console's audio/video signal.

I'm using an NES Max turbo controller.