Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto revealed some previously unknown feelings regarding the NES title Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. According to the mind behind Mario and Zelda, that game represents missed opportunities and the faults of hardware limitations at the time, and Shiggy wishes Nintendo could’ve released a more polished product.

“I wouldn’t say that I’ve ever made a bad game, per se, but a game I think we could have done more with was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link,” Miyamoto told Kotaku. “When we’re designing games, we have our plan for what we’re going to design, but in our process it evolves and grows from there. In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, unfortunately all we ended up creating was what we had originally planned on paper.”

One of the disappointments of Zelda II for Miyamoto relates directly to the Famicom version of the game released in Japan. While entering different areas, players would have to wait a few seconds at a loading screen. Given that Zelda II was the sequel to one of the grandest games of the NES era, it’s easy to see how this could be cause for a bit of frustration on the part of the developer.

Another thing that bothered Miyamoto was the size of the enemy sprites, which he felt were too small. “The other thing is it would have been nice to have had bigger enemies in the game, but the Famicom/NES hardware wasn’t capable of doing that,” he explained. “Certainly, with hardware nowadays you can do that and we have done that, but of course nowadays creating bigger enemies takes a lot of effort.”

Zelda II has often been heralded by many as one of the poorer entries in the franchise. Personally, I think it’s a hell of a game — one of the best in the entire series even. That said, Miyamoto’s gripes are definitely justified.

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