| Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure |
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Boxart for Zelda: Wand of Gamelon. Not pictured: Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda's Adventure. |
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| Developer(s) | Animation Magic (Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon) Viridis (Zelda's Adventure) |
| Publisher(s) | Philips Media |
| Series | The Legend of Zelda |
| Platform(s) | CD-i |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Media/distribution | 1 CD-ROM |
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 as part of The Legend of Zelda video game series. The Faces of Evil and The Wand of Gamelon were developed by Animation Magic and were both released on October 10, 1993 and Zelda's Adventure was developed by Viridis and released on June 5, 1994.
As part of the negotiations related to Nintendo's decision not to have Philips create a CD add-on to the Super Nintendo, Philips secured the rights to use five Nintendo characters in their games for the CD-i. The games were given little funding or time for completion, and Nintendo provided only cursory input.
The games were poorly received by video game critics at release, due to the barely functional controls, and the games have gained notoriety more recently as their full motion video cutscenes have become widely available through video-sharing websites like YouTube. The Philips CD-i did not sell well and Nintendo rarely acknowledges the games' existence.
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Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are played using the side-scrolling view introduced in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, while Zelda's Adventure has a top-down view reminiscent of the original The Legend of Zelda.[1][3] All the CD-i Zelda games begin with animated FMVs to illustrate the capabilities of the CD-ROM format, save Zelda’s Adventure, which begins with live action video.[3]
The player controls Link, who must find and defeat "the evil forces of Ganon", rescue Princess Zelda and become the hero of Koridai. When the player begins this quest, three areas are initially available, accessible through Gwonam's map. The player can access the areas on the map by moving the on-screen cursor over one of the areas and pressing a certain button.[4]
Gwonam, who aids the player in the quest, tells Link there is no time to pack; his sword would be enough.[5] As such, the player is only equipped with a sword and shield at the beginning of the game.[4] The sword is used to attack enemies, fire deadly Power Blasts and communicate with friendly villagers.[4] Meanwhile, the shield can deflect attacks thrown at the player.[4] The shield is automatically lifted when the player is standing still or crouching.[4] Other helpful tools, such as lamp oil (for lighting a lamp), rope (for climbing) and bombs (which can destroy some obstacles) are available for a price at Morshu's shop in Koridai.[4][6] The rubies (known as "rupees" in other Zelda titles) that Morshu takes as currency can be obtained by defeating enemies.[4][4] To pick up these gems, the player must strike them with the sword before they disappear.[4] Rubies differ from rupees in that green rupees are worth 1, blue rupees are worth 5 and red rupees are worth 20 - while red rubies are worth 1, green are worth 5 and blue are worth 10.[7]
Link's health is measured in "Life Hearts". The number of Life Hearts the player currently has is shown on the upper-left corner of the screen when Link is walking around the island. Although the player begins the game with only three hearts, there are ways to earn more. Each time Link is injured, he will lose at least one-half of a heart.[4] The first two times Link runs out of Life Hearts, the player will be given the option of continuing from near the point where Link's last heart was lost. When Link loses his hearts for a third time, he will be returned to the map, and the player will have to start the level from the beginning. Returning to the map replenishes Link's Life Hearts and lives, and he will retain any items and rubies he picked up.[4]
The player controls Princess Zelda, who must find and defeat Ganon and rescue both King Harkinian and Link to become the heroine of Gamelon. When the player begins this quest, three areas are initially available, accessible through Impa's map. The player can access the areas on the map by moving the on-screen cursor over one of the areas and pressing a button.[8]
At the beginning of the game, the player is only equipped with a sword and shield. The sword is used to attack enemies, fire deadly Power Blasts and communicate with friendly villagers, whereas the shield can deflect projectile attacks thrown at the player. The shield is automatically lifted when the player is standing still or crouching. Other helpful tools, such as lamp oil (for lighting a lamp), rope (for climbing) and bombs (which can destroy some obstacles) are available for a price at the General Shop in Sakado.[8][9] The rubies that the Merchant takes as currency can be obtained by defeating enemies. Red rubies are worth 1, green rubies are worth 5 and blue rubies are worth 10. To pick up these gems, the player must strike them with the sword before they disappear, unlike most conventional Zelda games where rupees could be collected by simply walking over them.[8]
Zelda's health is measured in "Life Hearts". The number of Life Hearts the player currently has is shown on the upper-left corner of the screen when Zelda is walking around the island. Although the player begins the game with only three hearts, there are ways to earn more. Each time Zelda is injured, she will lose at least one-half of a heart.[8] The first two times Zelda runs out of Life Hearts, the player will be given the option of continuing from near the point where Zelda's last heart was lost. When Zelda loses her hearts for a third time, she will be returned to the map, and the player will have to start the level from the beginning. Returning to the map replenishes Zelda's Life Hearts and lives, and she will retain any items and rubies she picked up.[8]
Unlike the previous two CD-i Zelda games, which take the side-scrolling view from Zelda II, Zelda's Adventure is played with the same top-down view found in The Legend of Zelda.[10] Playing as Princess Zelda, the aim is to fight through the Seven Shrines of the Underworld to collect the celestial signs, and bring the land of Tolemac to an Age of Lightness.[10][11]
Unlike the other two games, Zelda's Adventure was created by Viridis, an entirely different company, with a change in style and gameplay.[10][11] Gameplay is very much like the original The Legend of Zelda and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, with an overworld that allows access to individual dungeons.[11][12] The FMV sequences which explain the plot are live action instead of animated.[12]
Link, the protagonist of the series, lounges in Hyrule Castle and complains to King Harkinian that he is bored now that the kingdom of Hyrule is at peace, to which the king responds that peace is "what all true warriors strive for".[13][14] A wizard named Gwonam visits the King and Link on a magic carpet and tells them that Ganon has taken over the far-off island of Koridai,[15] further explaining that, according to a prophecy, only Link can stop him.[16] Link is transported to Koridai and shown by the wizard the fabled island with giant stone statues known as the Faces of Evil, which he must conquer.[3][17][18] During Link's time in Koridai, Princess Zelda is kidnapped by Ganon and is kept in his lair.[14][19]
Later in his journey, Link is sent to Fortress Centrum to retrieve the Treasure of Death for an Ice Queen.[20] At the fortress, Link finds what appears to be a sleeping Zelda. Upon awakening her, however, Zelda transforms into Goronu, a shapeshifting necromancer who works for Ganon. After defeating Goronu, Link retrieves the Crystal of Reflection, which allows his shield to reflect curses.[21] Link then proceeds to defeat Ganon's minions, which include the revived Goronu, the anthropomorphic pig Harlequin, the armored pyrokinetic Militron, the three-eyed wolfgirl Lupay, and the gluttonous cyclops Glutko, from which the Book of Koridai is retrieved. A translator named Ipo, who can read the Book of Koridai, reveals that the Book itself is enough to defeat Ganon.[22]
After trekking through Ganon's Lair,[23] Link finally reaches Ganon, who attempts to recruit Link with the promise of great power and the threat of murder,[24] but Link turns down his offer by imprisoning him in the Book of Koridai.[25] Link awakens Zelda and tells her that he had just defeated Ganon, to which she is skeptical.[26] Gwonam appears and congratulates Link on imprisoning Ganon. He shows Link a recovering Koridai and declares him the island's hero, whereupon Link declares himself to be the victor. However, Zelda refuses to kiss him as a reward.[27]
King Harkinian announces his plan to aid Duke Onkled of Gamelon when the latter falls under attack by Ganon,[28][29] and orders Zelda to send Link for backup in case that he does not return from his mission within a month.[30] He then wonders what's for dinner, which Link gets excited about.[31] A month passes without word from the King,[32] so Zelda sends Link to find him.[28][33]
When he too goes missing,[28] Zelda ventures off to Gamelon (accompanied by an elderly Impa) to find both Link and the King.[28][34] During Zelda's time in Gamelon, Impa discovers that King Harkinian has been captured, and that Link has engaged in a battle, of which the outcome is unclear.[35] As she adventures across the island, Zelda meets many friendly characters and also defeats the villains Gibdo and Iron Knuckle. She also meets a woman named Lady Alma, who is being held prisoner by Wizzrobe, who in this game is portrayed as an individual character.
After defeating Wizzrobe and rescuing Lady Alma, she gives her a canteen that she claims Link gave her in exchange for a kiss. Later on Zelda reaches Duke Onkled's palace, Domodai Palace, where it is revealed that Duke Onkled has betrayed the King and is working for Ganon.[36] She storms the palace, kills Ganon's minion Hectan, and saves a Spaniard named Fari, who works for the King who was being held prisoner by him. He reveals the secret entrance to Onkled's chamber, and when they confront him he is blackmailed into revealing the entrance to Reesong Palace, where Ganon has taken residence.[37]
Before traveling there, Zelda goes to the Shrine of Gamelon to obtain the Wand needed to defeat Ganon by defeating the head-switching chimera Omfak, and also visits Nokani Forest to obtain the magic lantern that clears the darkness around Ganon. At Reesong Palace, Zelda fights Ganon and incapacitates him with the Wand, and rescues her father. Back at Hyrule Castle, Duke Onkled is turned over to the king, begging for mercy. He is arrested and sentenced to community service, having to "scrub all the floors in Hyrule" before the king will talk to him about mercy.[38] However, it is still unknown what has happened to Link, until Lady Alma makes a derogatory comment about him, prompting Zelda to throw her mirror against the wall, smashing it. This causes Link to magically materialize, seemingly having been trapped in the mirror (why he was in there is never explained). The game ends with everyone laughing at Link's general obliviousness.
Ganon has kidnapped Link and stolen the seven celestial signs, creating an "Age of Darkness" in the kingdom of Tolemac.[39] Princess Zelda learns from the court astrologer Gaspra (played by actor Mark Andrade) that she must collect the signs to defeat Ganon and save Link.
In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the "Nintendo PlayStation" or the SNES CD to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games.[18][40] However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation.[3][18][41] Witnessing the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely.[18][40] As part of dissolving the agreement with Philips, Nintendo gave them the license to use five of their characters, including Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganon, for games on Philips's console called the CD-i, after the partnership's dissolution.[2][40]
Contracting out to independent studios, Philips subsequently used the characters to create three games for the "CD-i", with Nintendo taking no part in their development except to give input on the look of the characters[14][40] based on Nintendo's original two titles and their respective instruction booklets.[42] Philips insisted that the development studios utilize all aspects of the CD-i's capabilities including FMV,[28] high-resolution graphics, and CD-quality music.[42] As the system had not been designed as a dedicated video game console, there were several technical limitations, such as laggy controls (especially for the standard infrared controller),[28] and numerous problems in streaming-audio, memory, disc access, and graphics.[42]
Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil were the first Nintendo-licensed games released on the Philips CD-i.[1] The two games were given the relatively low budgets of approximately $600,000 each and together were given a little over a year to create.[28][42] It was decided by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based development team Animation Magic, led by Dale DeSharon, that the two games would be developed in tandem and would share the same graphics engine to more efficiently use the budget.[43] The animated cutscenes were created by a team of four animators from Russia (led by Igor Razboff) who were flown to the United States for the project.[42] These games marked the first time that Russian outsourcing had been utilized by an American company - a move that was only possible due to the somewhat thawed political climate after the fall of the Berlin Wall.[42] The rest of the development team included three programmers (all previous employees of Spinnaker Software), one musician (Tony Trippi), and freelance-writer Jonathan Merritt who created the scripts and designs.[42] Under DeSharone's direction, game development progressed similarly to that of his earlier-directed title, Below the Root, a game which Retro Gamer's John Szczepaniak has suggested may have served as a forerunner of sorts.[44] Background designs were created by local Cambridge artists, and voice-acting was entirely produced by local actors from the AFTRA union.[42] The voice of Princess Zelda was provided by Bonnie Jean Wilbur and the voice of Link by Jeffrey Rath, while additional voices were provided by Jeffrey Nelson, Mark Berry, Natalie Brown, Karen Grace, Josie McElroy, Marguerite Scott and Paul Wann.[45]
The backgrounds for Zelda's Adventure were created from videos of scenery near Santa Monica Boulevard in West L.A., footage of Hawaii taken from a helicopter, and the developers' vacation photos.[46] This decision was responsible for much of the games' RAM usage, causing backgrounds to scroll slowly and causing extreme frustration to the game's developers. The CD-i's technical abilities were so limited that the use of one or two kilobytes of system RAM caused arguments amongst the developers.[46] The composer for Zelda's Adventure also played the part of Gaspra in the games' cut scenes.[46] The houses and interiors built for the cut scenes were built as scale models.[46] Developers have stated they were not influenced by the first two CD-i Zelda games.[46] Zelda's Adventure spent two years in testing, longer than it took to develop the game.[46] Much more music was composed for the game than was used.[46] Developers had difficulty making sure all the areas of the game had proper background masking.[46]
All three Zelda CD-i titles have garnered a largely negative reception among critics, particularly The Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon. The magazine Electronic Gaming Monthly considered all three games to be among the worst ever,[47] likewise, GameTrailers rated Zelda: Wand of Gamelon as the fifth worst game of all time,[48] while GamesRadar named The Faces of Evil first on their list of "The Top 7... Franchise Embarrassments".[49] IGN referred to the games' cutscenes as "infamous" and "cheesy"; other reviewers called them "bizarre" and "an absolute joke".[1][40][50] The graphics of Zelda's Adventure were called "blurry and digitized".[1] Wired magazine said that the graphics were some of the worst ever encountered, and that the animation on the first two Zelda games was extremely simple and stilted and that the graphics had several glitches.[3] Another flaw was that the game could not produce both sound effects and music at the same time.[1] The voice acting was criticized as misdirected, amateurish, jarring, and laughable; Zelda's Adventure's acting was also criticized as unprofessional.[1][14][51]
Despite the largely negative reception that the games have received, there have been a few positive reviews as well. Both Danny Cowan of 1UP.com and John Szczepaniak praised Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon as among the best games on the CD-i. Szczepaniak in particular suggested that several of the gaming magazines that had rated and reviewed Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil had engaged in hate campaigns having never even played the game.[42] Cowan's and Szczepaniak's praises drew from the games' detailed, well-drawn in-game backgrounds and "pretty decent" gameplay,[1][28][43] although both criticized the controls.[1][43] While the audio was thought to be "average", and not up to the usual Zelda quality by some reviewers,[28] this has been contested by others who have described it as diverse and high-quality with an adventurous upbeat tempo blending electric guitar, panpipes, marimbas, and other unusual instruments.[42] In a periodical for Retro Gamer magazine, Szczepaniak identified the natural comparison of the games by reviewers to the quality of games in the rest of the Zelda series as an improper comparison to make and suggested that when reviewed in their own right the games were actually excellent.[52] Contrary to what were described as "lies perpetuated about [Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon]," Retro Gamer described these games as "astoundingly good" and rated them together as number ten in its "Perfect Ten Games" for CD-i. While acknowledging that the games lacked canonicity, the games were praised for exhilarating pacing and superb gameplay design and music. The game's background art was also described as ranging from Gigeresque[42] to Monet-esque.[53]
These praises, however, were not extended to Zelda's Adventure which has been described as demonstrating arbitrary and illogical design, sloppy visuals, nearly-nonexistent music, excruciatingly high difficulty, and cumbersome loading and controlling. Gameplay for Zelda's Adventure has also been portrayed as a trial and error effort to guess which items can be used to defeat which enemy.[54] In discussing the popular online conception that Zelda's Adventure is superior to Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil, Retro Gamer pointed to the top-down perspective as fomenting misinformation regarding the game's similarities to the original Zelda when in fact the game is not worth playing.[54] Cowan agreed with the criticisms of Zelda's Adventure, describing it as "unplayable" due to the jerky frame rate, unresponsive controls and long load times.[1] Scott Sharkey, also of 1UP.com, described the box art of Zelda's Adventure as one of the fifteen worst ever made.[55]
All three games have become collector's items due to their rarity, Zelda's Adventure in particular, which is regularly sold for over $100, due to being released as the Philips CD-i product line was gradually discontinued.[1][56] Nintendo rarely acknowledges the CD-i games, and claimed in 2003 that if a player owned a Game Boy Player and the GameCube compilation The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition, that player could play every Zelda game in existence up to that point on the GameCube,[57] which is not true since these three games were not included.
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