From Failure to Fan Favorite: The Unlikely Redemption of Zelda’s Adventure
Zelda’s Adventure, released in 1996 for the Philips CD-i, is a fascinating and infamous anomaly in The Legend of Zelda canon. Developed by Viridis Corporation, it was the third and final title resulting from the collapsed partnership between Nintendo and Philips, which granted Philips the license to use several core Nintendo characters on their multimedia console. While its CD-i predecessors, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, were side-scrolling platformers, Zelda’s Adventure uniquely adopted the overhead, top-down perspective found in classics like The Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past.
The Original CD-i Experiment
The game’s plot followed a non-traditional premise for the series: the hero, Link, has been captured by the evil lord Ganon, plunging the kingdom of Tolemac (Camelot spelled backwards) into an Age of Darkness. Princess Zelda, guided by the court astrologer Gaspra and the words of Shurmak, must embark on a quest to collect the seven Celestial Signs scattered across the Seven Shrines of the Underworld to rescue Link and restore peace.
To showcase the CD-i’s full motion video (FMV) capabilities, Zelda’s Adventure is the only Legend of Zelda title to feature live-action cutscenes, starring in-office staff, including receptionist Diane Burns as Zelda in the opening sequence and Mark Andrade (also the composer) as Gaspra. The development was fraught with ambition and technical limitation. Developers aimed for hundreds of screens, basing backgrounds on digitized video and photographs of real scenery near Santa Monica and Hawaii, pushing the console’s limited memory to its breaking point.
A Critical Catastrophe
Upon launch, the game was widely panned by critics and remains regarded as one of the worst video games ever made. The technical limitations of the CD-i—which was not designed as a dedicated gaming console—resulted in long loading times, an excruciatingly slow frame rate, unresponsive controls, and graphical glitches. Reviewers described the visuals as “blurry and digitized” and the acting as unprofessional. The game’s design was also criticized as arbitrary, requiring a frustrating amount of trial-and-error to progress.
Released as the Philips CD-i was being discontinued, the game quickly became a collector’s rarity, valued more as an obscure piece of Zelda history than a playable game.
Redemption on the Game Boy
Nearly three decades after its original flop, Zelda’s Adventure received an unexpected revival. Independent developer John Lei painstakingly recreated the entire game for the Nintendo Game Boy using the development tool, GB Studio. This fan project retained the core storyline and structure, Zelda’s quest to retrieve the seven celestial signs, but completely reimagined the presentation.
The Game Boy demake adopted the beloved aesthetic and gameplay mechanics of Nintendo’s own handheld entries, specifically channeling the visual style of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and incorporating features from Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons.
A significant update, Version 2.0, released in November 2024, further refined the experience, introducing:
- Full-color graphics for the Game Boy Color.
- Enhanced combat and improved hit detection.
- New music and sound effects composed by Beatscribe.
- Refined gameplay that fixed bugs and improved the intuitiveness of picking up items like Rupees and hearts.
This unofficial port has been lauded by the community for successfully transforming a notoriously flawed title into a surprisingly enjoyable and playable experience. By adopting the standards of Nintendo’s own handheld classics, the fan demake demonstrates what Zelda’s Adventure might have been if developed under proper supervision, finally granting Princess Zelda’s long-maligned adventure the playability it always deserved.
Grab the game from John’s Itch.io page.
This really looks cool, especially the GBC version. You will have to be a diehard to play that on a DMG or in GB mode in a Pocket haha. And I have sooooo much on my ‘to play’ list, it’s getting crazy with all the cool releases lately. But it should move up on the list because The Legend Of Zelda is my fav franchise 😉
The list grow longer every day.