
While the Philips CD-i titles Zelda: Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon are relatively well-known, the third outing on the system – 1996's Zelda's Adventure – is less famous, and some would argue that's for a good reason – it's pretty terrible.
However, that hasn't stopped John Lay from giving the title a new lease of life as a fully-fledged (but obviously unofficial) Game Boy port. "Zelda’s Adventure looked interesting and I thought it would be fun to play on a portable system," he says. "I chose the Game Boy because of the existing Zelda games on the system."
Lay has ported the CD-i title to Nintendo's monochrome portable using GB Studio "with a few modifications." The game adopts the visual style of Link’s Awakening and also "incorporates some features from Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons."
The three Zelda titles on the CD-i happened thanks to Nintendo eventually getting cold feet on the idea of creating a CD drive for the SNES. The deal it signed with Philips (which was inked after Nintendo infamously jilted Sony, which was developing the SNES PlayStation) was dissolved, but not before an agreement was reached where Philips could use select Nintendo IP to create CD-i titles.
Zelda's Adventure – one of the final CD-i releases – was developed by Viridis Corporation, with no input from Nintendo. Zelda was portrayed by office receptionist Diane Burns in the game's opening cutscenes, while many of the buildings and interior scenes were constructed as models by Jason Bakutis, who had previously worked on Hollywood movies such as Critters 3 and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare. "We had, at the time, the biggest budget ever for a video game," Bakutis said in a 2012 interview. "At one point, the owners told me they were talking to this band Echo and the Bunnymen about doing the soundtrack. I heard of them, but never heard them."
You can download Lay's Game Boy port and play it either via emulation or on original Game Boy hardware using a flash cart.
[source john-lay.itch.io]
Comments 14
Gee, it sure is boring around here.
Such an awesome demake. Turning a bad game good never felt so awesome.
Definitely going to check this out on the Everdrive.
Who knew downgrading the graphics could actually help to make a game even better?
I'm just waiting for a colourised update to this.
Anything would be an improvement. By the looks of it, this surely is.
That old art direction was so uninviting, what a change
When your de-make is better than the original that really does say a lot about the original. I can only imagine how good it would be using A Link to the Past as the base game that gets rom hacked.
Am I the only one who found the awkward stop-motion, puppet / claymation graphics, plus bad voice acting, of the original to be weirdly charming?
I keep hoping it gets remastered for Windows like Gamelon and Faces of Evil were. It's emulatable, but not without a lot of fuss.
Finally the Zelda CDi game that needed the most not just a remaster (like Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon did) but a recreation got it, kudos to John Lay for making it, I'll absolutely play it when I can (even more so since it's for the Game Boy as I'm a sucker for the GB/C Zeldas aesthetic)!
@Sketcz While I wouldn't personally be interested in playing it as you can tell from my previous comment it would be nice if this game also got a remaster for those like you interested in it!
@JohnnyMind Sadly the GB ver crashed twice, deleting my save both times.
I'm not sure why you need to push a button to pick up hearts.
A remaster with QOL improvements would be nice. Faster screen transitions. Better controls and collision.
@Sketcz Unfortunate to hear you had such issues with the GB version, hope they'll eventually be fixed (even better if by the time I play it myself)!
Yeah, fingers crossed for a remaster to have a much better way to play the original just like Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon.
I wonder if this will run on the Analogue Pocket.
I had a go on this and while it's a nice idea, the execution is horribly lacking. The hit detection is spotty, there's no immediate sense of contact when you do hit and the reach of the wand is disorientating (when wielded it appears about half a body length ahead of Zelda, unattached to her) making combat pretty much impossible. Having to press a button to pick up hearts and rupees is bizarre and it kept crashing for me.
Maybe that level of jank is authentic to the original, but seems a bit pointless to replicate it. It'd been nice if any of the outlets covering this demake had played it first to see if it was worth reporting about, frankly. Because at the moment it's just "guy makes broken version of bad game".
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