Zelda's Adventure (CD-i) Playthrough
344A playthrough of Philips' 1995 action-adventure game for the Philips CD-i, Zelda's Adventure.
Zelda's Adventure was the fourth and final Nintendo-licensed game, and it's probably the least known, least meme-worthy of the bunch. It wasn't made by the people that developed Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil, nor does it feature any of those nightmare fuel cutscenes that put Animation Magic on the map.
The story takes place in the land of Tolemac. Ganon has rudely stolen the kingdom's seven celestial signs and kidnapped Link. Gaspar, Tolemac's resident new age crackpot, reaches out to Princess Zelda of Hyrule for help, and so the adventure begins! Wee!
Instead of being a 2D action-platformer like the first two CD-i Zeldas, Zelda's Adventure mimics the top-down style of Nintendo's traditional 2D Zelda games. There is a large overworld and seven shrines to explore, and there are tons of items and spells to grab along the way.
To show off the "power" of the CD-i hardware, the graphics are made up entirely of digitized photos and all of the in-game dialog is voiced. It's kinda neat for a few minutes.
Let me be upfront, though: it's not a game that I'd recommend playing. It's an expensive disc for a fairly exotic bit of hardware, and the quality of the game doesn't justify the investment in the slightest.
It really wants to be a "real" Zelda game, but Zelda's Adventure is a travesty. The controls are slow and awkward, the collision detection epically fails on a regular basis, and the constant loading kills the pacing. Every single time Zelda hits the edge of a screen, everything freezes and the sound cuts for a few moments as the new data is read from the disc. The menu screen also takes an eternity to load, and since there's only one action button, you'll have to access it regularly to swap weapons and items. It's frustratingly slow and cumbersome, and the problems put a huge dent in any fun that might've otherwise been had.
The presentation doesn't do much to convince you that the sacrifices made to playability were worthwhile, either. The background images are pretty but lifeless, and the muddy sprites don't mesh well with the world. There's not much music overall, and the ambient nature noise gets quickly gets annoying when it restarts every time you enter a new screen. Even worse are the animal sounds that the enemies make. They're weird - I didn't expect a spider to squawk like a bird - and they're way too loud and they overpower everything else.
But now, with Zelda's Adventure under my belt, I can finally say that I've beaten all four of the Nintendo CD-i games. I doubt I'll be coming back to them anytime soon. They're much more fun to watch than they are to play.
And with that, I hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday. Try not to freeze to death! Merry Christmas!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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