the lag in the music is somehow very nostalgic

28:07 "Error II: The Adventures of Bagu"

I had a strange bugged cartridge of this. The game was unwinnable because the hammer would not spawn. My brother and I had no idea why we couldn't beat the game. We didn't even know what was missing.

After bashing our heads against it for years, we'd experimented by creating our saves with various Zelda character names to see if there was something like a second quest, like the infamous skip in Zelda 1. My brother for some reason played through a game titled "IMPA" and ... lo & behold, the hammer spawned in Death Mountain! Further experimenting showed that just starting a character with the first letter in the name being "I" was enough to make the game work. Bizarre.

It’s called F to pay respects to your ennemies before they die

25:00 - "Elevator Action"

Tee hee.

Not only is this complicated information spoken in an easy-to-understand way, it's presented in a concise and pleasant manner, too.
Seriously, I can only imagine how much work this took!
I hope you reach many, many more subscribers soon!

Dude, can I just gush for a second here? I'm a game designer, and Zelda II is one of my all-time favorite games, so I can barely find the words to describe how excited I am to get this kind of super in-depth analysis of its inner workings. Please do more on this game! Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Patreon page to go visit.

My editor is famous!! I'm honored.
Great explanations and animations.

Back in junior high...1989 or so...I used to leave Link at the edge of the battle screen with a rubber band wrapped around the controller so he continuously attacked monsters while I was at school. Old school macroing to level up ;)

Press F or 0 to pay respects for your enemies.

Holy cow, wow, I got the attack value bug too as a kid, except "A" instead of "F". In the same save, the raft was missing from the normal place you get it (but also not in my inventory) so I couldn't progress the game.

It's odd that there are many reports of attack value and missing items. Never experienced it in any other battery-backed NES game. Feel like there must be some additional factor here to explain why it happens.

Every vid you put out continues to fascinate. Great job.

I'm a nascent 6502 programmer and I really appreciate your content. It's incredibly informative and easy to follow. Thank you for what you're doing.

My wife always asks me, "Why do you still like these old games?" My response is, yeah, they are the games I grew up on. But I love watching NES games cause I slightly understand 6502. I love watching the graphics to see how things were done and music. I watch NES games with a bit of 6502 understanding and I love it.

I did not understand any of that, and I loved every second.
How fascinating, tearing the code apart. Everyone should be doing that.
Keep doing what you're doing, man, I loved this video.

I didn't know I needed Moonwalking zelda enemies in my life.  Thank you for this blessing.

We had the same attack glitch, but ours had a right facing arrow for the value. It happened on my younger sister’s save file. We called the Nintendo hotline and asked them about it. The counselor said “Did you call earlier today because you are the second person to call about this.”

Thought it was a code my sister stumbled upon. She had it happen very early in the game. My mom and I were much farther along in our game, but had so much trouble with the Thunderbird boss we ended up using her file to beat the Thunderbird. Like you said, Shadow Link still took the regular amount of hits. Great series and video.

"F" is an appropriate number for that, you have to feel bad for the enemies not even a fighting chance.

This is incredible and exactly what we need more of on Youtube. Fantastic editing and very digestible but thorough descriptions.

Before the video I was afraid of Assembler... Now I am terrified!!!