Just a note. In Legend of Zelda 2, it actually pays to hold off defeating the end bosses of each dungeon until later. The story can progress as long as you get the special item. After defeating each boss the player gains a free level up, so it pays to wait until you have an obscene amount of XP required, and THEN gain that level (I knew this trick, and forgot about it, so cleared dungeon 1 and messed up one of the opportunities).

One more thing: it is beneficial to focus on upgrading attack before anything else... although, with my rust, I'm going to pass on that... at least for a few levels!

I played further, and kept getting my ass kicked at dungeon 2, so I figured I'd look up a youtube video to figure out why I am sucking so much at dungeon 2 - asking if I should be here yet (I've played and finished this game before! Why do I suck?!?!) - long story short, YES, I should NOT be there yet - the easier path is to go south to death mountain and get the hammer, unlock some more magic and skills, heart and magic containers, level up more along the way (and somehow all of that slipped my mind).  That's when I found this video with a bunch of quick XP gaining tricks - it starts off with some early grind areas:

Some good stuff in this video, mostly for a little while further in the game.

Really? Well that's a pretty neat trick.  Going to have to try that on my next playthrough.

Started my Blaster Master file last night.  Hopefully going to actually beat this game for the first time.  I've played the first few sections to death, but never had the patience to follow through.

I don't even have a subscription yet, but having read Bitmap Books' NES Compendium and with the seemingly imminent arrival of SNES games, that'll likely change. I'd like to take another crack at Adventure of Link, play Super Mario Bros 3 and try Ninja Gaiden for the first time on NES - and definitely Mario All Stars and Legend of the Mystical Ninja on SNES. I'm hoping stuff like Faxanadu makes it onto the NES selection.