The plot is that Dracula, right before he died in Castlevania, placed a curse on Simon that would kill him. Obviously not wanting to die, Simon sets out to resurrect and then re-kill Dracula by collecting his body parts (collecting Dracula's body parts would pop up again in some later games in the series).

To do this he needs the help of various villagers. Some give helpful tips, others sell Simon weapon upgrades, Holy Water to throw, or other items. This is where a significant flaw becomes apparent: the text was written by somebody with seemingly no grasp of the English language, meaning some villagers that give necessary hints spew complete nonsense. This makes the experience extremely confusing and hard to figure out at times.

When you are inside towns or travelling outside killing monsters, every five minutes or so a box will pop up in the air which tells you that it's becoming day/night (during this you can do nothing for about 10 seconds). During night-time monsters are stronger, houses/shops are closed and enemies even appear in towns. Killing monsters will eventually level up Simon, making him more resistant to damage and giving him more life, while these beasts also drop hearts with which items can be bought.

In mansions there are some stronger monsters, while your objective is to find a salesman somewhere who will sell you an Oak Stake. With this, you have to go to the end of the mansion to find a glowing orb — throw the Stake at this to break it open and find one of Dracula's body parts. Only two of the five mansions actually have bosses, although they can just be walked past. Defeating them gains you a special item, but this is unnecessary. An annoying part of mansions, meanwhile, are invisible pits - it is impossible to discern normal floors from blocks you can fall through. Sometimes this means you will have to constantly throw Holy Water to make it through a whole mansion (as the bottles will fall through fake floors). Some jumps in the game also require you to be pixel-perfect, or else you'll fall down a floor and have to backtrack, or worse, you die.

After collecting all of the body parts you must go to Dracula's castle which, strangely, just consists of empty hallways with no enemies at all. When you reach the end, Simon will use the bodyparts and Dracula will appear. Disappointingly, Dracula is very easy and can be killed in no time with a certain trick, which will make him never get a hit in; after this, the ending is shown. There are better endings if you took fewer days to kill Dracula.

One thing worth praising is the music: this game has a fantastic soundtrack and formally introduces one of the now most frequently used Castlevania tunes - Bloody Tears. It was used before in the arcade game Haunted Castle, but not many people have played that particular machine.

Castlevania II, while introducing some neat ideas, ultimately doesn't feel that much different from other classic Castlevania games, other than the use of items and the overworld (which has some ideas that would be reused in "Metroidvania" Castlevania games). The game is relatively easy, possibly the easiest Castlevania game, though if you lose all lives, you lose all your hearts (which act as money). This can be frustrating if you do die frequently.

Gameplay

The goal of The Legend of Zelda is to collect the 8 , defeat Ganon, and to rescue Princess Zelda. To obtain the pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom, the player must take on the role of the hero, 

Controls

D Pad: Moves Link around and selects his secondary item

[1]

A: Sword Attack

[2]

B: Secondary Item

[3]

Start: Brings up the sub screen

[4]

Select: Moves the cursor on the save select screen and pauses

[5]

Save Select

The Legend of Zelda was the first NES cartridge in North America to have a battery-backed save feature.

[6] On the select screen, the player can continue their progress, register a name, or eliminate a file. When the player registers a file name, they start a new game and create a name for the file. In elimination mode, the player is able to erase one of the files so they are able to start a new game on that file. The numbers below the name of a file represent the number of game overs that occurred while playing on that particular file. The hearts under "Life" represent the amount of remaining health in Link's quest.

Development

Main article: The Legend of Zelda Staff

The Legend of Zelda and the original Super Mario Bros. were being designed simultaneously by the same development team. They had set out to make the games opposite of one another. Mario would follow a linear pathway, while The Legend of Zelda would have a more open world experience. 

Shigeru Miyamoto got the idea of the open world experience from his childhood, where he would go out exploring into the wilderness.[7] Miyamoto was less concerned with Zelda being a game of getting the most points or reaching the end of a linear path. Instead, Miyamoto wanted gamers to relax and enjoy themselves as they made their way through the adventure. It was because of this that some basic gameplay elements, such as communicating with characters and shop owners were included.[8]

The name for 

Princess Zelda was inspired by Zelda Fitzgerald. Miyamoto stated, "Zelda was the name of the wife of the famous novelist Francis Scott Fitzgerald. She was a famous and beautiful woman from all accounts, and I liked the sound of her name. So I took the liberty of using her name for the very first Zelda title."[9]

On February 21, 1986, The Legend of Zelda released as a launch title for the 

Famicom Disk System; it was released alongside several other titles including a re-release of Super Mario Bros, along with a number of sports titles.

Story

The story of The Legend of Zelda is very simple and follows most fairy tale ideas; Princess gets captured by a giant monster, hero must save princess, hero travels all over the land to save princess, hero defeats monster and saves princess. The only hint to a story and motivation of saving the princess was a short paragraph at the beginning of the game. Here it is, keep in mind that this is the original NES English localization:

"MANY YEARS AGO PRINCE DARKNESS GANNON STOLE ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH POWER. PRINCESS 

ZELDA HAD ONE OF THE TRIFORCE WITH WISDOM. SHE DEVIDED IT INTO 8 UNITS TO HIDE IT FROM GANNON BEFORE SHE WAS CAPTURED. GO FIND THE 8 UNITS LINK TO SAVE HER."

This was later revised to fix all the translation errors, such as GANNON being updated to GANON, and TRIFORCE WITH POWER/WISDOM to TRIFORCE OF POWER/WISDOM. For the whole plot of The Legend of Zelda see the PLOT section below.

Plot

A long, long time ago the World was in an age of Chaos. In the middle of this chaos, in a little kingdom in the land of 

Hyrule, a legend was being handed down from generation to generation, the legend of the "Triforce"; golden triangles possessing mystical powers.

One day, an evil army attacked this peaceful little kingdom and stole the 

Triforce of Power. This army was led by Ganon, the powerful Prince of Darkness who sought to plunge the World into fear and darkness under his rule. Fearing his wicked rule, Princess Zelda, the princess of this kingdom, split the Triforce of Wisdom into eight fragments and hid them throughout the realm to save the last remaining Triforce from the clutches of the evil Ganon. At the same time, she commanded her most trustworthy nursemaid, Impa, to secretly escape into the land and go find a man with enough courage to destroy the evil Ganon. Upon hearing this, Ganon grew angry, imprisoned the princess, and sent out a party in search of Impa.

Braving forests and mountains, Impa fled for her life from her pursuers. As she reached the very limit of her energy she found herself surrounded by Ganon's evil henchmen. Cornered! What could she do? ... But wait!

All was not lost. A young lad appeared. He skillfully drove off Ganon's henchmen, and saved Impa from a fate worse than death. His name was Link. During his travels he had come across Impa and Ganon's henchmen. Impa told Link the whole story of the princess Zelda and the evil Ganon. Burning with a sense of justice, Link resolved to save Zelda, but Ganon was a powerful opponent. He held the Triforce of Power. And so, in order to fight off Ganon, Link had to bring the scattered eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom together to rebuild the mystical Triangle.

If he couldn't do this, there would be no chance Link could fight his way into Death Mountain where Ganon lived. Can Link really destroy Ganon and save the Princess Zelda? Only your skill can answer that question. Good luck. Use the Triforce wisely.

 

Legacy

The Legend of Zelda was paramount in establishing the Action-Adventure genre.Several games in the late 80's and 90's replicated the formula with games even today being referred to as being Zelda-like or Zelda-clones. Some games such as 3D Dot Game Heroes have been cited as being almost exact replicas of the Zelda series.All development versions of subsequent 3D Zelda games have used A as the sword button, despite the fact that B is always used as the sword button in release versions.

The original The Legend of Zelda started the Legend of Zelda, a series that has lasted over 25 years and featured over 20 games, including the various side stories and multiplayer games, while selling over 60 million games as of 2011.

 

 

 

Items