The Shrine

There's also this in Zelda 2:




Basically, Link to the Past is the Southern area. It makes sense because it's the Northern Palace, rather than Hyrule Castle, that's featured on the Zelda 2 map.

And I never thought I would play playing through Zelda 1 this soon.

I would NEVER do it without a map guide and save states nowadays though. I want to enjoy the interactive experience much more than beat the challenge of this game by killing 8 quickly moving enemies with a butter knife sized sword (much easier to do it in 5-10 attempts using save states, and surprisingly only slightly less satisfying)... am I the only one here who found the notoriously difficult Zelda 2 WAAAAAY easier than the first one?

It helped Nintendo sell Nintendo Power due to that.

Hell I don't even think Castlevania II: Simon Quest is beatable unless you had that one issue of Nintendo Power that tells you to kneel at a wall.