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I guess I'm not surprised. I've always heard that messing with music in NES games can be a pain in the neck, so removing it entirely while preserving SFX sounds even more confusing.

...though now I have to wonder whether the Zelda 2 Randomizer's "no music" option actually disables music or if it just removes all sound entirely. In hindsight, I probably should have double-checked that before i even asked. ¦v

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's done this, but I think it speaks volumes that I made an account just to gush about this patch in here.

Anyway, over the past couple evenings I did a run of Redux to take my mind off of studying for my finals this semester, and... it was fantastic. I love Zelda 2 to bits as is (it's arguably in my top 3 Zeldas), but the little graphical touches, magic tweaks  and QoL updates really feel like the 'extra couple months of dev polish' the original game never got. That... might not be a fair comparison to make, granted, but it summarizes how I feel. I can't imagine playing Zelda 2 again any other way - legit, mere hours before a friend told me about it, I was just thinking to myself "I wish I could take the QoL that Z2 Randomizer makes and put them into vanilla". You can imagine how delighted I was to read through the list of Redux's updates. :U

The only critique I think I have is that, while I know you were sticking to the original as close as possible, I wish you'd gone a little further with the graphics. I appreciate the usage of the Zelda 2 Rev Link sprite, but I've got a bit of a soft spot for how that hack tweaked the translation and items to fit more with Zelda 1. Bombs instead of the hammer, the Power Bracelet for the handy glove, etc.

All that said, if I might be so bold... how difficult do you think it would be to get a no-music optional patch? Much as I love the soundtrack, until the day comes when someone finally manages to hack these albums into Z1/2, having the option to disable music would be nice. There were a couple times where I just disabled the emulator sound and played the song, but without the sound effects, it's not really the same, you know? :p