Every time I had played Zelda II - The Adventure of Link I wondered what the area below Spectacle Rock was all about. There's a graveyard, one larger and a smaller forest area, but nothing hidden in all of these places. It seemed weird. However, one day it struck me like a lightning, which led to one of my biggest WTF-moments in gaming. It's also probably the most shocking easter egg in the entire Zelda series. That tiny area is supposed to be the Hyrule from the first Zelda game!
Just take a look at it. You have the Spectacle Rock, where originally the final dungeon was located, as well as the rest of Death Mountain. In the middle you can see the lake area, where Level 1 and 4 used to be. Then there's a large forest area and a graveyard in the west. And there's a smaller lake and a forest in the east, surrounded by desert and beach. This is without a doubt supposed to be the old Hyrule.
It's so shocking when compared to the rest of the world in Zelda II. That's not even 5% of the entire overworld. It makes sense in a way, because villages and the castle are displayed as one block after all... but so are Link and roads. So, you usually don't think that you're dealing with a landscape of this massive size here. This lets the overworlds of all other Zelda games look really tiny. And there's actually a graveyard area in the game, which is larger than this! Imagine an entire graveyard in the size of Hyrule. (Actually that's kind of cool, now I definitely want a large graveyard area for Skyward Sword.)
I always thought it would be cool if any future Zelda game were to play in Northern Hyrule. But Nintendo is probably too afraid of the massive size.
Fun fact: In the extended Hero's Cave in Oracle of Seasons you can see a similar miniature image of Holodrum made by different floors. There you had to open eight treasure chests in the right order, the treasure chests basically represented dungeons.
Just take a look at it. You have the Spectacle Rock, where originally the final dungeon was located, as well as the rest of Death Mountain. In the middle you can see the lake area, where Level 1 and 4 used to be. Then there's a large forest area and a graveyard in the west. And there's a smaller lake and a forest in the east, surrounded by desert and beach. This is without a doubt supposed to be the old Hyrule.
It's so shocking when compared to the rest of the world in Zelda II. That's not even 5% of the entire overworld. It makes sense in a way, because villages and the castle are displayed as one block after all... but so are Link and roads. So, you usually don't think that you're dealing with a landscape of this massive size here. This lets the overworlds of all other Zelda games look really tiny. And there's actually a graveyard area in the game, which is larger than this! Imagine an entire graveyard in the size of Hyrule. (Actually that's kind of cool, now I definitely want a large graveyard area for Skyward Sword.)
I always thought it would be cool if any future Zelda game were to play in Northern Hyrule. But Nintendo is probably too afraid of the massive size.
Fun fact: In the extended Hero's Cave in Oracle of Seasons you can see a similar miniature image of Holodrum made by different floors. There you had to open eight treasure chests in the right order, the treasure chests basically represented dungeons.
1 comment:
I agree with everything you say about the Zelda 2 map. I didn't discover that the Death Mountain Area was Old Hyrule from Zelda 1 until 2007. Great blog!
Check out mine:
http://worthyblog25.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-inception-of-zelda-map-within-map.html
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