Shigeru Miyamoto thinks Zelda 2 was "sort of a failure," and A Link to the Past is the "real sequel"

Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link.

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.