The Legend of Zelda series of CD-i games

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Link: The Faces of Evil , Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure are three action-adventure games produced by Philips for the CD-i . They are part of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda video game series .

Due to negotiations between Nintendo and Philips, these titles are only available for the CD-i, as Nintendo did not allow Philips to produce a CD add-on for the Super NES . During these negotiations, Philips secured the rights to use Nintendo characters in CD-i games produced by outside game developers . The Faces of Evil and The Wand of Gamelon were developed by Animation Magic and were both released on October 10, 1993 in North America. Zelda's Adventure was developed by Viridis and was released on June 5, 1994. Little development time and financial resources were invested in these games and they received little support from Nintendo.

The Philips CD-i did not sell very well and the games for it also had very low sales figures, in relative terms. Originally, the Zelda titles received a lot of positive feedback, but since the mid-2000s they have been rated rather negatively by critics. One of the reasons that many players now the gloomy scenes saw as this the first time on platforms like YouTube were available. This led to the cutscenes being perceived as being of very poor quality. Even the older visual effects of the early 1990s no longer did justice to the graphic effects of the 2000s. But since it was the first experience with these games for many fans, the CD-i-Zelda titles made the reputation of the worst games in the Zelda universe. This was mainly justified because they had pretty poor animation rendering and controls. In the eyes of some hardcore gamers (according to Edge magazine ) this game was seen as "synonymous with blasphemy".

Like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on the NES , Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon were developed as side-scrollers . Zelda's Adventure had a bird's-eye view, just like it was in the original game The Legend of Zelda . All CD-i-Zelda games begin with an animated FMV , which is intended to show the possibilities of the CD-ROM format, such as in Zelda's Adventure, which begins with a live-action movie.

history

In 1989, Nintendo signed a contract with Sony to develop a CD-ROM based system. The result was the SNES CD (also known as "Nintendo Play-Station"), which was supposed to be an add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and hired Philips to produce the add-on. This led Sony to produce its own spin-off version of the game for its own console, the PlayStation (spelled with “PlayStation” as one word, due to copyright issues with the “Play-Station” brand as it is owned by Nintendo). Because the Sega Mega-CD was not really well received by the market, the idea of ​​making the add-on was finally discarded. When the agreement with Philips was terminated, Nintendo gave them the rights to five characters, the most important of which are Link, Princess Zelda , and Ganon, which they were allowed to use on the Philips console, the CD-i , after the partnership ended .

Then Philips distributed the implementation to independent studios, which used the characters for the creation of three games. Nintendo was not informed about the production of the games, they were only informed about the appearance of the characters, this is based on the artwork of Nintendo's two original titles and their corresponding design guidelines. However, Philips insisted that the development studios use all the possibilities of the CD-IS, e.g. B. FMV , high resolution graphics and CD quality music. However, the system was not designed to be a video game console, as there were some technical limitations, such as delay control (especially for the standard infrared controller), and many other problems in the area of ​​audio streaming, memory access, graphics and access to the reading medium.

The first two games were presented at CES in 1993 and surprised the audience with their amount of animation. All the CD-i games in The Legend of Zelda series were released after Link's Awakening , but before Ocarina of Time.

Video games

Link: The Faces of Evil

Zelda: Wand of Gamelon was released at the same time as Link: The Faces of Evil , which is the first part of the Zelda game series for CD-i. It followed the classic storyline of the games in which Link rescues Zelda. Faces of Evil was modeled after Nintendo's previous side-scroller Zelda II: The Adventure of Link . It was developed with a special novelty in the computer game industry, namely in that all cutscenes were created in Russian animation style and the game was still very well received. Today's criticism is unanimously negative against the game and the cutscenes were repeatedly mentioned as a target for derisive remarks.

Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

In the wall of Gamelon it comes to the Zelda Link and her father must save the king, as the two have not returned from their adventure. As in Faces of Evil , the game was created using the side-scroller concept known from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link , and the cutscenes were also produced externally with Russian animations . Despite the extremely positive reviews at the time, as in Faces of Evil , the game is often ridiculed by today's critics because of its inability to incorporate the animated cutscenes for the modern standards of the time, and thus again earned ridicule and derision.

Zelda's Adventure

It was released about 8 months after the first two Zelda CD-i games. Zelda's Adventure was created by another studio, Viridis. This game also followed by nonconventional Zelda save link storyline, and it is based on a different game engine as Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon . Whereas in the first two CD-i games the side-scrolling principle was used as in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link , Zelda's Adventure , in Zelda's Adventure the top-down version as in The Legend of Zelda decided. Zelda's Adventure showed some FMV cutscenes, but instead of using drawn animation, live action scenes were used. The feedback on the game was pretty bad, but in contrast to the two older games, where there were still different ratings, Zelda's Adventure is all negative.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Danny Cowan: CDi: The Ugly Duckling. 1UP.com , April 25, 2006, archived from the original on October 12, 2012 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  2. ^ A b Mark Wilson: This Day in Gaming, June 5th. Kotaku , June 5, 2007; archived from the original June 8, 2008 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  3. ↑ a b ECTS 93: CDi Philips - Link: The Faces of Evil. In: joystick. No. 38, pp. 43-44. May 1993.
  4. ↑ a b ECTS 93: CDi Philips - Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. In: joystick. No. 38, p. 43 May 1993.
  5. ^ Development Hell. In: Edge. No. 120, p. 81 February 2003.
  6. ↑ a b c Chris Kohler: Game | Life The Video, # 7: Nintendo and CD-i. Wired magazine, March 24, 2008, archived from the original on April 1, 2009 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  7. ↑ a b c Zelda Elements Staff: Overview: CDi Series. Zelda Elements, January 1, 2008, archived from the original on March 6, 2008 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  8. ↑ a b c d GameTrailers Staff: The Legend of Zelda Retrospective Zelda Retrospective Part 3. (No longer available online.) GameTrailers , October 22, 2006, formerly in the original ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.gametrailers.com
  9. ↑ GameSpy Staff: Nintendo: From Hero to Zero. GameSpy , January 1, 2008, archived from the original on April 4, 2008 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  10. ↑ Zelda Elements Staff: Overview: Link: The Faces of Evil. Zelda Elements, January 1, 2008, archived from the original on March 14, 2009 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  11. ↑ a b c d e The Making of… Zelda: 'Wand of Gamelon' & 'Link: Faces of Evil'. In: Retro Gamer. No. 27, pp. 52-57. August 2006.
  12. ↑ a b Zelda Elements Staff: Overview: Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Zelda Elements, January 1, 2008, archived from the original on February 20, 2008 ; Retrieved April 7, 2008 .
  13. ^ Iara Rodrigues (Ed.): Game Plus: Multimídia - Zelda Ataca CDI. In: GamePower. No. 16, p. 45 October 1993.
  14. ↑ CD TESTS: Link The Faces of Evil. In: joystick. No. 44, p. 192 December 1993.