I have the feeling that this was already discussed in another thread, but I can't put my hand on it...

The first thing that comes to mind with this idea is that you lose a significant part of the game. Some people don't like the Overworld in Zelda II, probably because they compare it to the other overhead Zelda game and think it's limited and annoying. Although some random encounters can become repetitive, now without them you will simply walk around indefinitely, left or right, having no real idea of where you are in Hyrule. So I figure the game to be located in no man's land, with only the memorization of the places that you need to visit to beat the game. If you remove the Overworld, you lose the north and south dimension of the game completely. You can't say: go north to find the palace. There's no north...

Now, take the technical features of the game into consideration. The "outside" part of Zelda II (everything that is not in a palace or town) has 4 regions (north-west, south-west, north-east, south-east), with a maximum potential of 63 screens each. It means 252 screens, which is great. Now imagine all these screens placed in a very long horizontal stretch, without any interruption. The only break that could be inserted in such a map is by using elevators. And then add the palaces and towns. Ouch...

Or you could go with a compromise, and use very little Overworld, the minimum needed to transition between the outside, palaces and towns. Other than that, the game allows any combination between areas (within the same region), so there's no real limit to the number of consecutive areas strung together, in any direction...

If you prefer the absolute path of side-scrolling alone, you need to take into consideration some important technical points. Transitions, for example, are made from the Overworld to another screen, or vice-versa. If you have only scrolling screens, you need to rewrite the engine accordingly. You need to change the music if necessary. You have to keep in mind that some items, like the Raft, Boot or Flute, cannot be used as conditionals to reach certain parts of the world, so you will have to either convert them to something else, or ignore them completely...

In other words, the playability of the game in at stake here. If you have the technical skills, go for it, we may get a nice surprise...

I beleve there are four banks of sideview rooms, one for towns, caves, and random battles, another bank for levels 1,2,4 and another for 3, 5, 6 and one whole bank for the last palace.

So that means for each of the exits in a room, you can go too any of the 256 rooms in that bank. I don't know how doors work, so there might be something there. What that means is you won't be able to utilize all the possible rooms without returning to the overworld, changing how exits work, or something. Again, doors may work differently.

The graphics are also a concern. I don't think the room graphics get reloaded when you walk into anoother room, so if you enter a cave, you'll stay in a cave untill you leave. Doors might also solve that or not.

The Area Data in Zelda II follow this distribution:

Bank 1: West Hyrule and Death Mountain
Bank 2: East Hyrule and Maze Island
Bank 3: Towns
Bank 4: Palaces 1,2,5 and Palaces 3,4,6
Bank 5: Great Palace

However, it doesn't mean you can go from West Hyrule to Death Mountain directly. You still have to go to the Overworld and step on a specific spot (Grotto or Bridge, their location is hard-coded) to switch worlds. Same for the Palaces. You can't go from Palace 1 to Palace 3 directly, but you could go from Palace 1 to Palace 2, although you may end up with wrong graphics and probably other things that don't belong...


All rooms in Zelda II have 4 bytes that determine where you go when you leave the room, up, down, left and right. The rooms are indexed using 6 bits, and room code 3F always mean "return to the Overworld". That's why the maximum number of rooms per world is 63, not 256...

I was more or less thinking of the Zelda equivalent to Faxanadu or Battle of Olympus though without all the crazy passwords.


Basically with that you're talking a graphical Zelda 1 change with Zelda 2 weapons and an overhead graphics style from Zelda 2. Something like that I would imagine could be done, but I would think hacking the Zelda 1 ROM would be more feasible to do it since Zelda 1 already has an overhead battle system.

Either that or I'm thinking an extremely extensive Metal Gear: Snakes Revenge hack where virtually everything is changed. (since in Snakes Revenge you can use a Knife which would serve basically as Link's Sword, you can jump and use an Elevator which are basically elements of Zelda 2) In addition to virtually changing the whole Snakes Revenge game around extensively, you'd also have to add in a save system. This would be a crap load of work and a pretty big challenge.

Basically, all of you who want an overhead Zelda 2 are probably thinking something along the lines of an Ocarina of Time - like game play with a Zelda 2 storyline in 8 or 16 bit. That really does sound like a great idea. I like that also.

BTW I'm sorry guys. I guess I forgot, I did bring this up before:

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,11734.msg173680.html#msg173680

Depends of what you are refering to. If it's about the indexing of screens, then you'll have to discard the rest of the information bits. If it's about changing worlds between screens, then yes, it's probably feasible. But the worlds connectivity must be implemented in some ways that the original engine doesn't do by default. The only reference you have when you pass from one screen to another is the connectivity data, 4 bytes for each direction. Each byte uses 6 bits for the screen index, and 2 bits for the starting X coordinate on the destination screen. If you need more bits, to store world destination for example, then you would have to create a new data table from scratch...

Personally, I find the concept of hacking a game to make it look like another game very weird. If you like game X, why make Y look like X instead of just hacking X to make it better? Zelda II without the side-scrolling is not Zelda II. Hacking Zelda 1 to integrate other features is interesting, but it's still Zelda 1. Spells in Zelda 1? Why not? But it would be off-topic, since it would be a hack of Zelda 1...

As for those who think Zelda II is too hard and should be made easier, I know dozens of tricks to do so. This video demonstrates how ASM Hacking can make a game harder, but you could use the same techniques to make enemies easier, if that's what you're aiming for...

Secret of Mana is a good candidate for a Zelda 2 overhead overhaul Hack. It pretty much has everything you need. Also if its changed into a Zelda 2 hack then Squeenix can't chase after you with a Cease and Desist. The only thing that would have to be added in would be a jump feature. Here is the control scheme for Secret of Mana Natively:

D Pad: Moves character
A: Dash (Hold)
B: Attack, confirm in the menu screen
X: Bring up/switch computer controlled party member's menu ring
Y: Bring up current character's menu ring, cancel in menus
L + R: Check your weapon and magic levels on the Level menu
Select: Switch controlled character
Start: (For player 2 or 3) Join/Exit game

You'd have to change it to fit in a Jump feature. Like this:

D Pad: Moves character
A: Dash (Hold)
B: Attack, confirm in the menu screen
X: Jump
Y: Bring up current character's menu ring, cancel in menus
L: Check your weapon and magic levels on the Level menu
R: Bring up/switch computer controlled party member's menu ring
Select: Switch controlled character
Start: (For player 2 or 3) Join/Exit game

You would need to do some heavy duty hacking as far as the controls are concerned to basically include everything Secret of Mana has but separate the L and R buttons as both of them double as doing the same thing. So this way, everything can be included as well as possibly implementing a jump feature.

The rest I assume would be all graphical, map and music changes.

So er yeah still kinda a big job though the spell system is at least already there.

I've looked into the rom for a few things.  First of all, I made a hack that took away the exp graphics, and in return allowed for total customization of items.  Any item can be placed anywhere in the game, and each palace has it's own custom graphics for each item.  Not only that, but I made spells an item pickup, the upstab and down thrust are now technique scrolls, as well as reflect(now reflect blows enemies off screen).

I digress though.  I discovered that doors, how they work, is that they somehow synchronize up with the towns, though the way it works makes them unusable without some serious shifting.  With some data relocation, it could be possible to match doors up so that it works more like the way it does in Rambo(that's what you want, right?).  As for region swapping, well that shouldn't be too hard.  A new data field that changes the bank should fix that problem easily.  Of course space is limited, so it might not be easy.  The only other problem with doors is that it's hardcoded to play the inside house music so changes to the door ASM would need to be made.  It's certainly not impossible.