
Zelda Games on the Philips CD-i - tosh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-i_games_from_The_Legend_of_Zelda_series
======
tombert
Years and years ago (~2006-2007), after one of my many Wikipedia rabbit-hole
nights, I stumbled upon the CD-i, and consequently the Zelda CD-i games. I
immediately had to find an emulator, and play Faces of Evil, and I couldn't
stop laughing once cut-scenes started playing.

I took my video camera, pointed it at my monitor (my computer was too slow for
desktop capture), and sent the video to my friends, and it became a bit of a
meme that we'd send each other. If I had only had the foresight to upload it
to YouTube, I could have been the person responsible for the "My boy!" memes.

The games suffer from awful controls, but I actually did manage to complete
Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon...there is a _bit_ of fun to be had playing
them, though you'd be better off finding one of the Link to the Past romhacks
at this point if you want some more Zelda action.

~~~
murph-almighty
You don't even need a romhack for Link to the Past now, it's available on the
SNES virtual console for Switch. It's free aside from the cost of the Switch.

~~~
swsieber
My favorite romhack is [https://alttpr.com/en](https://alttpr.com/en) (A Link
to the Past Randomizer). It basically takes your rom and swaps the location of
all items in chests, pendants / crystals, and can even swap enemies, keys in
dungeons (for cross dungeon shenanigans) and entrances.

So I much prefer the romhack to the original now, given my familiarity. Now if
only I could play it on the switch...

Edit: a recent playthrough had me without the bow for much of the game. A
different one had me start without my sword and I got through a dungeon before
finding it. Fun times.

~~~
tim58
A Link to the Past randomizer is easily the most popular randomizer, but there
are now many more randomized games. There are other Zelda games like Ocarina
of Time and Wind Waker, and there are non zelda games like Final Fantasy and
Castlevania Symphony of the Night.

This is becoming a bit of a trend in classic gaming speed runs. Multiple
people will play the same "seed" or arrangement of items/characters and you
can watch them race on Twitch or even at live gaming events. In some games the
top non-hack gamers have crossed over and spend significant effort playing the
randomized version of their favorite game. While there is an element of luck
in this game format, the best players tend to consistently rank high in
tournaments so skill is a large factor.

Of course, the legality of this is highly questionable. Most people that play
A Link To The Past Randomizer do not have a legal copy of the v1.0 Japanese
game the hack operates on. For those that do their license would allow them to
make a rom, but would it allow them to make modifications to that rom and
upload gameplay videos online for profit?

Some game developers have noticed this trend. For example, Cadence of Hyrule
(2019) plays similarly to A Link to the Past Randomizer in that key items are
distributed randomly across the game. They even call a specific item
distribution a "seed" which is terminology borrowed from the randomizer
community.

It's easy to ignore this trend in gaming because it's not very large like loot
boxes or two tier currencies and it doesn't have a marketing budget. It is
however a fun grassroots movement branching out from people's love of classic
games.

~~~
jerf
"They even call a specific item distribution a "seed" which is terminology
borrowed from the randomizer community."

Random number generators have been getting "seeded" for decades now; that
terminology may well predate video games entirely, though I can't prove that
either way with an HN comment's worth of effort. Probably originates from a
"seed crystal" in chemistry, which goes back even farther.

~~~
swsieber
Oh, definitely. But even for randomly generated games that term doesn't
usually get surfaced (with the notable exception of minecraft). So I think it
getting surfaced more often is a sort of a sign of influence from the
randomizer community

------
winkelwagen
I remember playing one of these games. It was super cool that you got to play
as Zelda, but the controls where so unresponsive and awful. That ruined most
of the experience. The graphics where very different then the competitors.
That was also pretty cool. Think we borrowed the player from someone else for
a couple of weeks. Thinks we knew more about the cd I because of my Dutch
roots (philps). Also the console/video player was incredibly expressive at the
time.

------
AdmiralAsshat
While these games have become infamous for the hilariously bad animation
quality, the studio that did them continued to do work for the videogame
industry. They were contracted out to do the animation for the ill-fated
_Warcraft Adventures_ game by Blizzard:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Adventures:_Lord_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warcraft_Adventures:_Lord_of_the_Clans)

Though the game was never released, someone leaked a copy years later, and
playthroughs were subsequently uploaded online:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNFrbpOSTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUNFrbpOSTE)

~~~
CM30
They also worked on IM Meen and its sequel, which retained a lot of the art
style from the Zelda CD-i game animations (and garned some of the same
internet infamy as a result).

~~~
Koshkin
> _sequel_

Chill Manor:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYGgLZL2vUU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYGgLZL2vUU)

------
leonroy
Slightly OT. Whilst the CD-i was a poor seller and far from the best gaming
console of its generation it had the best digital video playback of any
platform on the market thanks to its excellent MPEG-1 decoding add-on.

PCs did have MPEG accelerator cards available but these were niche and
expensive. The Philips CD-i offered this for less and in a convenient VCR type
form factor - pitching itself as a premium Video-CD player with gaming thrown
in.

This was important at the time since full motion video games like The 7th
Guest and Rebel Assault were very popular. Some of these titles debuted on the
CD-i and indeed offered the best experience there, better than even the PC by
quite some margin.

I remember my jaw dropping when I played The 7th Guest on my friend's Philips
CD-i. It was smooth as silk vs the jerky PC version.

Other titles like Space Ace and of course Burn Cycle were also incredibly
impressive. Basically any game with heavy video elements played to the
strengths of the CD-i in a pretty big way.

As gaming graphics started to improve FMV games became less popular and with
DVD on the horizon the CD-i came to a dead end.

------
giancarlostoro
Never heard of the CD-i is there an emulator out there? Also is this the last
time Nintendo made a game for a console they didn't own?

~~~
JimiofEden
There is, but Nintendo didn't make these games. As a consequence, they're
pretty awful.

However, we did get some of my favorite quotes out of it for the past few
decades: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN8-Pdz-
ns8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN8-Pdz-ns8)

My wife and I often say 'I guess I better get going!' and 'How about a kiss,
for luck?' to each other

~~~
rvnx
Then when she leaves the home:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBC-2y6C8xU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBC-2y6C8xU)

Squadala we're off!

~~~
JimiofEden
I mean, they're no end to it. I've played them a minor amount, and couldn't
stand them at all (they're in the 2d side scrolling style but just... janky
for lack of a better word,) but these cutscenes will live forever for us.

"I wonder what's for dinner."

"I just saved you from Ganon!" "You did not!"

"Oh boy! I can't wait to bomb some Dodongos!"

"Great! I'll grab my stuff!"

~~~
tombert
Monster: "You killed me!!!" Zelda: "Good!"

has always been one of my favorite. I used to occasionally take audio samples
from the game and put them as texting and ring tones on my phone, back when
people did such things.

ALSO, look on youtube for the I.M. Meen PC game...the animation is made by the
same studio [0].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.M._Meen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.M._Meen)

------
atjamielittle
I have a strange memory about these games. Whenever I was a kid I was looking
through some boxes and found a bunch of my older video game magazines. I saw
an ad in GamePro for these games and Philips CD-i. I was shocked! How could I
have missed _multiple_ Zelda games being released on a console that used CDs?
Why had I never heard of this? I am pretty sure that this would have been in
1998/1999 or so, but the magazine was much older.

It had a 1-800 number, which I called immediately to see if they were still
selling the games and the system. Someone answered and they were still selling
them, but I seem to remember the price being pretty high despite the age of
the games and the system. Soon after I must have searched on the internet and
discovered that it was mainly a system for edutainment games and lost
interest.

Now I have to go look to see if there are any GamePro scans in the Internet
Archive that have that ad.

------
tosh
Not all of the Nintendo titles were bad though: I loved Hotel Mario.

It also had cringeworthy cut-scenes though :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKCqxAWXmo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxKCqxAWXmo)

edit (unrelated): Steel Machine was a decent shooter. I recently found some
background info about the game and how it was like to develop for the CD-i at
the time.

[http://www.cdinteractive.co.uk/forums/cdinteractive/viewtopi...](http://www.cdinteractive.co.uk/forums/cdinteractive/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3031&p=15222&hilit=steel+machine)

------
filmgirlcw
Oh man, I wanted the CD-i so badly because they had this infomercial and
showed watching movies on CD, which was very exciting to a 10 or 11 year old
me.

Very grateful my mom ignored me and and my protestations that we get one
because if we had adopted this thing, I know the battle to get a DVD player in
1998 would have been way harder (even then, I had to get it as a DVD-ROM on
the computer I got for Christmas and had to buy the stand-alone player myself
in 1999 once I turned 16 and had a job).

Also, these games are complete trash. But this partnership was historically
very interesting.

------
danielhlockard
One of my buddies at Zeldathon
([https://zeldathon.net](https://zeldathon.net)) holds the World Record in
Zelda's Adventure Any%... It's so crazy to see them play it, on a real
console, and fast.
[https://www.speedrun.com/Zeldas_Adventure#Any](https://www.speedrun.com/Zeldas_Adventure#Any)
1:12:56 for that game is crazy fast.

------
matty22
We still own a CD-i and Faces of Evil. I never could beat it just due to how
awful the controls were. There were a few other games we had for the CD-i that
were legitimately enjoyable. The Wacky World of Miniature Golf and Mystic
Midway: Rest in Pieces were both fun games.

Every once in a while when I'm visiting home, we'll break it out for a round
of mini golf!

~~~
jamestomasino
To this day I still do the sound effect of the skeletons that floating up the
screen as my go-to "spooky noise". What a fun game. Burn:Cycle was my #1,
followed closely by Escape from Cyber City. The CD-i did have some really fun
stuff.

Zelda... nope.

------
ropiwqefjnpoa
In one fell swoop, Nintendo brought to pass both the PlayStation and the Zelda
CD-i games. They would never live it down.

------
Vaslo
Sort of random and not everyone's style of humor but here is someone who used
the poorly acted CD-i sound bites to troll people in the Ventrilo App:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1lpB1JHjIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1lpB1JHjIs)

------
Tepix
I'm surprised that Nintendo has not yet re-released The Legend of Zelda (Zelda
1 from 1986) with updated graphics. It seems as if all the re-releases for the
various platforms including Nintendo Switch are just emulators for the NES
version.

~~~
claudeganon
If the Link’s Awakening remake does well, I could see it happening

~~~
dylanz
Which was just released today and is currently being downloaded at my house.

