The Legend of .... Neutopia?

Neutopia gets a bad rap for being an unapologetic 'Zelda Clone' almost EVERY time it's brought up. I mean.. yeah- the visual similarities are pretty obvious and the gameplay style is very carefully copied from the original Zelda on the NES, but really... can we blame Hudson for trimming some of the most charming elements of the beloved Nintendo 

Well.. hold on now... How much of a Zelda clone really is our Turbo action RPG? The first Neutopia game developed for the PC Engine was released on November 17th, of 1989 then later brought to the US for the Turbografx-16. While no one should argue which came first as the original Zelda was released in February of 1986 which Neutopia takes most of it's inspiration from. Sure.  But, then in 1987, Nintendo developed the sequel - Zelda II: The Adventures of Link, and brought it to the US in 1988. Zelda II takes an entirely different spin on the action RPG genre as it has more in resemblance to games like Faxanadu or Legacy of the Wizard (Xanadu series).  

Was Nintendo taking the Zelda series in a different direction? Were they going to create a third Zelda game in the fashion of a 2D side scroller or traditional action/RPG?  We wouldn't find out until 1991 in Japan and 1992 in the US when Zelda returned to it's original form with the stellar "Link to the Past". 

It could actually be argued that Zelda III- A Link to the Past borrowed ideas and style from Hudson's Neutopia games while in development. I mean, Neutopia could be considered the evolution step between both Zelda (NES) and Zelda III (SNES). Perhaps Hudson did some of the work for them? Neutopia basically did everything that the original Zelda did, but better, and then Zelda III took those efforts and advanced them further... right?

Is any of this to be taken seriously as an argument on which series is better?... of course not, Neutopia is a fun 2 game series, but never truly holds a candle to the entire Legend of Zelda series.  What I truly needed was an excuse to share my recent playthrough of Neutopia II playlist below, so if you're really bored and want to see me play this game for hours on end, feel free to check it out and listen to my rambling about the series in the below playlist!  Thanks for reading!