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Mario, Donkey Kong, and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto thinks The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the real sequel to the original after the second game failed to live up to the hype.
Speaking to the Swedish Superplay Magazine in 2003 (via Retro Gamer's 40 years of The Legend of Zelda issue) Miyamoto mentions what remains the black sheep of the Legend of Zelda series, Zelda 2: Adventure of Link. The game took the top-down perspective of the first game and made it an RPG-like world traversal system, with the actual action taking place on a 2D plane, feeling more like a progenitor of the Action RPG genre than a traditional Zelda.
Miyamoto says that Zelda 2 "was my original idea, but the actual game was developed by another team." As for why it turned out to be a bit of a rough entry in the series he explains "The games I make usually get better in the development process, since we keep coming up with good ideas, but Zelda 2 stayed the same. It was sort of a failure."
After Zelda 2, however, came what many still consider to be the best Legend of Zelda game of all time; A Link to the Past, which notably took the series back to the style found in the original entry, as opposed to following up Zelda 2. Miyamoto adds "We actually see A Link to the Past as the real sequel to The Legend of Zelda. Zelda 2 was more of a side story about what happened to Link after the events of The Legend of Zelda."
Granted, I'd say Zelda 2 turning out like it did and being a bit of a failure and an entry of the series that most fans don't really love – even if it still has its diehards – is one of the most important things to ever happen to the series. This reception likely inspired the team to go back to the classic Zelda style with A Link to the Past, which not only resulted in arguably the best entry in the series, but laid the groundwork for the series going forward, leading to Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker, and Breath of the Wild.
