Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is an action role-playing game developed and published by Nintendo, released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan in 1987 and on the NES in 1988. Link must find the Triforce of Courage to wake Princess Zelda from a sleeping spell, while Ganon’s followers hunt Link, whose blood would bring their master back.

It swaps the top-down view of the first game for side-scrolling combat, with a top-down overworld between towns and palaces. Link gains experience to raise his attack, magic and life, and learns spells and sword techniques in towns. It is known as one of the hardest games in the series.

A native PC port exists: z2rs, a reconstruction of the game in Rust.