Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is commonly considered a black sheep of the Zelda series, due to it both being a full sidescroller and having many RPG-style elements. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a very successful game.

To do: Unused warps.

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Regional Differences There's a whole lot to cover.

Unused Areas

There's an unused graveyard side-scrolling area if you use an overworld walk-through-walls code to get into a battle on a mountain tile, which isn't normally possible.

In West Hyrule, there are two areas that have no pointers associated to them and therefore are never seen in the game:

This area looks like a plain grotto, with no relief. Its data is located at 0x4EDC.

This area was most likely meant to contain an item, judging by its structure. It appears you were supposed to enter it by falling through the shaft on the right. The black part on the left is actually made of individual breakable blocks, like the ones in the palaces. Every area in the game has data for fully functional breakable blocks, but West and East Hyrule don't have any graphics associated with these; if you fell in this room without the Handy Glove, you would be stuck. Its data is located at 0x4F1C.

Unused Graphics

Palace Windows

Maze Palace	Hidden Palace

Every palace has unique graphics for windows, but the fourth (Maze Palace) and sixth (Hidden Palace) palaces don't actually have any windows, rendering their window graphics ordinarily unused. It is still possible to see them through a glitch involving the Fairy spell which makes the game load Parapa Palace's layout with the graphics of another palace.

Spikes

Spikes exist for every palace. Zelda II has a bunch of hazards, but spikes are not among them.

Broken Wall

Unused "broken wall" tiles which were never adapted to the added palace graphics of the American release. Unsure what this was meant to be for.

Post-NES Rereleases

To do: Check which revisions the 3DS VC versions use, and have a look at the Japanese GBA version.

Zelda II was re-released for the GameCube in 2003, the Game Boy Advance in 2004, the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, and the 3DS Virtual Console in 2012, some with a few minor changes. Though the American/European/Australian Wii release is straight from the NES version, the Japanese Wii release seems to be based on the Japanese GBA version, so it features some parts of the disk and cartridge plus things like the new 2003 script. Like with the first game, the American 3DS release seems to be based on the original NES version.

The American Wii U release also reverts to the original, despite the Wii U version of the first game maintaining the 2003 changes.

Intro

The new GCN and GBA versions tried to fix up the grammar again, though being based on the NES version, there's still no mention of the different Zeldas; the copyright date was updated as well, of course. As previously mentioned, the American/European/Australian Wii release is pretty much the NES release, while the Japanese Wii release seems to be derived from the previous Japanese GBA version.

Screen Flashing

When losing a life in the FDS and NES versions, the screen flashes rapidly with a rainbow of colors, potentially causing seizures. In the updated versions, the screen just flashes between similar shades of red.

Uncompiled Code

The 3DS Japanese Virtual Console release of Zelda II has some unused 2A03 code written in comments in "linkA.tds.patch" that relate to the changes made to adapt to the Virtual Console's automatic swapping of FDS game disk sides when necessary.

00:8452:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF

00:8455:4A        LSR

00:8456:B0 EA     BCS $8442 -> 90 EA    BCC $8442

00:8458:60        RTS

00:8459:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF

00:845C:4A        LSR

00:845D:90 E3     BCC $8442

00:845F:60        RTS

00:8460:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF

00:8463:4A        LSR

00:8464:B0 07     BCS $846D

00:8466:60        RTS

00:8467:AD 32 40  LDA $4032 = #$FF

00:846A:4A        LSR

00:846B:B0 03     BCS $8470

00:846D:EE 3D 07  INC $073D = #$02

00:8470:60        RTS

PAUSE Text

The 2003 version added a black "PAUSE" box, nowhere to be found in the original FDS and NES versions.

The PAUSE text in the GBA version.