The second Legend of Zelda game is the only one with this weird experience point system. Get enough points and you can level up your Attack, Life Points, or Magic Points. And, after a while, it takes a lot of points to get to the next level. Thousands of 'em, in fact.

But, if you go to the end of one of the Castles and set a jewel in the statue at the end, your experience is ratcheted up to the next level, no matter how much you have to go.

So, as soon as the experience starts counting up, pause the game

Do a Quick Save by hitting Up + A on Controller 2

And start a new game (or continue an old one)

You'll notice that your new Link will start to get the rest of the experience points that the old Link was going to get before you paused and exited the game!

Which is great for a few levels early on in the game.

Though this does have rather limited use. You have to actually get pretty far into the game for the amount of experience points that transfer to amount to more than a level or two for the new guy, which kind of implies that you're going to be pretty far in the game (or have finished it at least once). But if you're sharing the game with a less-skilled player, it's a good way to give him a bump up in strength to make the early going slightly easier.

In several of the castles in Zelda II, you run across these things that look like skulls in bubbles, which are called, shockingly, Bubbles.

They're particularly nasty because they bounce around all over the place, and when they hit you they drain your life and your magic. You can hit them, and they stop moving long enough for you to run past.

But what happens if you keep on hitting them. A lot? A whole lot?

They're defeated for 50 experience points! Which at the beginning of the game is a whole lot.

But when your attack is at level one, it takes lots of hits to kill the things. I stopped counting at 200 swings. So you'll have to determine whether the tradeoff is worth it to you.

The second Legend of Zelda game is polarizing in the Zelda fan community because it's way different than the first game, but assuming you did like it, I've got a tip to that'll help you out.

Normally, once you lose all your lives (you get three to start) you get the game over screen and the choice to save the game or to continue. Which is great, until you want to save and quit and there's no easy way to blow through your extra lives to generate the Save screen.

In that case you would press Start to pause the game

Then press Up on the Cross-pad and A on Controller 2. The result?

Taken directly to a Save screen!

Handy!