Linking On 2 Differing Columns

Hi I have two tables I want to link
On table1 the column is nvarchar (length 53) the value might be XXX0123 on the second table the column is varchar (length 80) and the value might be 123.
The important thing for this company is that 'XXX0123' is the same as '123' But it isn't always going to be the last 3 characters because the first table might be 'XXX0012' and the second value would be '12'

I just want to say SELECT column1, column2 from table1, table2 WHERE
(the two are linked)

hope that makes sense.