AoL: Would LoZ Have Ended There?

[Owner828]

The second installment of the Legend of Zelda series, Adventure of Link, is one of the not so popular titles. The side-scrolling, and difficulty made it very unpleasing to some fans. It is very much disliked, so what if Nintendo gave up on The Legend Of Zelda series right there? Since it was unpopular, they could have been afraid that the next game would be too. Could they have given up on the series right then and there? I think Link would of been very sad at that act . And I think a franchise that would turn out to be the best in the world would have been shut off from a dis-liked game. Do you think this could have happened?

 

[Crash]

There's always a possibility, but they didn't! That's what really matters right? They faced adversity and using new technology that came out they created more games. Nintendo's second in command (though I think should be first) is Link and the Zelda games after all. They wouldn't have quite when it was Zelda that made the saving and starting up later addition to gaming. There are a select few games and such that I believe should have stopped long ago... but Zelda is definitely not one of them. They keep up with new ideas, new innovations, and a new story with every game that entrances their fans the world over with each new addition. So no, they had a good feeling and a good system and it's worked

 

[Faedeur]

It's possible. I heard Final Fantasy was called such because Squaresoft was so deep in the red they were almost out of business and it was going to be their final work at a game (which oddly saved them, and now we have FFMGMCXIX or whatever number we're on )

Funny, though, that I hear more people like The Adventure of Link nowadays than back when it was made.

 

[bulbasaur]

When i first read the title I thought this was going to be about the timeline lol.

Anyway Zelda 2 was kind of an expiriment to where they could go with the series. After the popularity of LOZ i would have thought they would give Zelda at least one more chance even if AoL flopped.

Also i may be mistaken but didn't AoL sell preety good anyway? Not as exceptional as some games but nintendo didnt lose money on it or anything.

 

[MW7]

Well AOL was more of an interesting experiment than anything else. It still sold over 4 million copies so Nintendo wouldn't have cared if people thought it wasn't as good as the original. They were going to milk the idea of the first as long as it made them money. The original game was a smash hit, and think about it, what do companies do when something is popular-make sequels until people stop buying them. They tried something different with AOL and it didn't do as well as it could (still was a success though) so the obvious course of action was to go with something more similar to the original with ALTTP. It makes sense that you would milk the series for all its worth; nowadays the original game is consistently ranked as one of the most influential/greatest games of all time.

Now if you're wondering what the world would be like without Zelda after AOL, I would be very interested in finding out what I would be addicted to instead of this series. At least we would still have the first 2 games still though.

Edit: haha I didn't even see your post bulbasaur before posting this, but it seems that we think alike.

 

[Dekunub]

Zelda II. The Adventure of Link. This is actually my all time favorite Zelda game, period. Though it is kind of an oddball, it's the first game I played EVER as a kid. And then I had it for my nes, and got the original a year or two later. As a kid, I whizzed right through the game, and loved it. To this day, I still do. Nintendo wanted to make a "platform" version of Zelda, I believe, and even though it is considered the black sheep, I am head over heels in love with it. And I believe the game sold tons of copies to. But this is just a guess.

 

[JuicieJ]

Really, I don't think the fact that it wasn't widely accepted would have made Nintendo quit on Zelda. It was mainly fans that rejected the game, and reasonably so. But I think it may have actually helped the Zelda series in some ways. I'm sure Nintendo realized how much people liked that overhead style when the fans back-lashed at them for making it more like a traditional arcade game. I think it helped them realize how revolutionary Zelda was, and I know it helped A Link to the Past get more sales. Fans swarmed to ALttP like locusts because their beloved franchise had returned to what it started as. So, really, I think Zelda II's negative feedback actually helped the series. Miyamoto and Nintendo are not ones to back down and they actually listen, they put the series back on track and took it to greater heights from there.

 

[blubb]

[...] Adventure of Link [...] is very much disliked [...]

Oh really? I have to disagree here. According to GameFAQs, AoL takes the #3 spot in their Top 10 NES Games lists. The average reader rating is 7.9, and if you disregard the upper and lower 10% of the reviews (to cut down both "fanboy" and "hater" influence), then the average is 8.2, which is nowhere near "bad" at all, especially if you keep in mind that there are several reviews out there which even give Skyward Sword "only" an 8/10. Out of the 75 reviews for AoL, there are fourteen 10/10s but only one 2/10, three 3/10s, three 4/10s and two 5/10, everything else is above that! So people mostly do enjoy AoL. It might have a relatively low perception compared to other Zelda games, but if you compare it to games in general, it stands well. So AoL isn't really underrated but rather "under-percieved", just wanted to clarify that.
But enough with the statistics... it's hard to tell what would've happened if the series had really ended there. Action-adventure gaimg could be really far behind now, but maybe there could've been other series taking the role of Zelda by incorporating all the elements of it that we love. In reality I think that the series faced a much larger threat of ending after the CDi games (they sold really badly and the scores speak for themselves: WoG 5.7, FoE 4.7 and ZA 3.2, I'm using average user ratings here only because there are very little full user reviews for those games - in fact there's only one review for each of those games respectively)

 

[Dekunub]

I've seen snippets of those cdi games. and were those AWEFUL looking. I like to pretend they never happened. besides, who owned one of those, anyways? I recall seeing not even one.

 

[seahawk1]

When i first read the title I thought this was going to be about the timeline lol.

same here. yeah, that could of been it. i would've had to settle for some of pathetic excuses for fantasy games we have now. I'm talking to you kingdom hearts!

 

[onidarklink2]

I definately don't think they would've given up after AoL. AoL wasn't very well received because it either differed from the first game in undesirable ways, such as side-scrolling, or had other qualites that many people didn't like, such as the difficulty. The first Zelda title, which was more of a representitive of the series as a whole, was extremely well-recieved, and I think that they figured that, as long as they stuck with the mechanics and flow of the original title, they would be just fine. Just because they screwed up a little on one game(I still think it's a very good game btw) doesn't mean they will screw up on others, they just had to find out what works and what doesn't, and that's exactly what they did, and it worked extremely well.

 

[Deniro]

isn't Aol the 5th best selling NES game? after Zelda 1 and the Mario bros, not too shabby if you ask me

 

[Cel-Shaded Deku]

I've seen snippets of those cdi games. and were those AWEFUL looking. I like to pretend they never happened. besides, who owned one of those, anyways? I recall seeing not even one.

Phillips made and owns them and they're only play-able on the Phillips Cd-i. Nintendo simply game them the rights to use Link and Zelda (also Mario). They're not even part of the Zelda cannon (aka not official).

On topic: No, The Adventure of Link, even if it was worse than it was, probably couldn't have ended the series by itself. Zelda 1 was much more successful so they would have made a game modeled after it rather than Zelda 2 (which they did with A Link to the Past). If Nintendo decided to make more games modeled after The Adventure of Link, which defies all common sense, then gamers wouldn't be interested in the series anymore and stop buying the games. Or that style could have taken off and become dominate. Well, nonetheless, the franchise is successful the way it is.

 

[Trio the Punch]

Your premise is flawed. When it was released Adventure of Link sold like crazy. It's only later on that it has become unpopular.