Answering a CD-i question from another forum

[celerystalker]

So, being stuck home sick, I've spent a little time poking around on my phone while I couldn't sleep, and saw that Guntz asked about the CD-i Zeldas on NintendoAge, wondering about their quality viewed from the perspective of a Zelda II fan. Well, Zelda II is my favorite Zelda, and as luck would have it:



I sure have played through them. I'm rather a fan.

I've gone on about it before, but they really take me back, having been developed when there were only the two NES game prior to their release, and there was a lot more wiggle room for how Zelda was presented. These games remind me of the Valiant published Nintendo Comics System Zelda comics I had as a kid, as well as the Zelda cartoon that aired on Fridays as part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show in their view of the Zelda universe.

Structurally, Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are very different from Zelda II. There is no overworld to roam, no experience points, and no magic spells. Instead, you select locations on a static world map, at which point you enter that area to explore. You get three lives with which to explore the area, but you can leave at any time by returning to the entrance. If you leave on your own, you'll keep any items you found in the area. If you lose all three lives, you get kicked back out to the map as if you'd never gone in, retaining items you'd found beforehand, but losing any consumable items you used like ropes, bombs, or oil.

Unlike Zelda II, shops return in these games, and they are your source for consumable items. You still get rupees from killing enemies, and this is where you use them. There are a lot of NPCs with which to interact, and these interactions are where the infamous animation happens. The quality of the animation, writing, and acting are pretty bad with only a few exceptions (I don't think that Zelda's voice actress is all that bad), but these are not FMV games by any stretch, and they don't wreck the game.

The platforming does use the up arrow to jump instead of a button press, but really it's not so bad as people want to make ir out to be. Folks are often confused due to the hand-painted backgrounds as to what they can and can't walk on, and I think that's where a lot of the complaining comes from. Anyone with half a brain can figure out what is a platform and what isn't with a little experience, and more often than not, if a path seems impossibly difficult, there's likely an easier upper or lower route to use if you brought your ropes along.

Faces of Evil is the longer of the two, and has more different things to use, like farming snowballs and fireballs to kill ice and fire monsters. Link's bombs also destroy rocks with way less hits than Zelda's for some reason. Bosses in both are generally easy and quick, but that's not a huge departure from the original game. The environments are all hand painted, and look like the background for a cartoon. They are colorful and interesting, and are accompanied by unique music. Yes, the absence of any of the classic themes is disappointing, but the music present is at least suitable to what is happening on screen and is well-composed.

If you stumble across a reasonable CD-i system, try them. They are quality video games and really brought me personally back to the age of Nintendo Cereal System. Yes, the king is creepy and Link sounds like an overly-enthusiastic idiot child, but if you can accept the three life challenge per area (again, losing has very little penalty save starting that area over) mentality and can just enjoy exploring these unique outlying parts of Hyrule, they are really great to play.

[Emperor Megas]

[celerystalker]

Where'd you find my high school year book photo?

[Steve W]

I've got two of those Zelda titles, I don't remember much about playing either. One I did give a fair shake at playing, but I found it difficult to separate foreground and background objects to the point I couldn't tell what platforms I could walk or jump on. I made it to some kind of castle setting but I couldn't progress any further. Or I was so bored I stopped playing. Either one.

Is it sad that the Zelda game that I've put the most time into was on the CD-i? I played Ocarina of Time for about two minutes maximum when I bought an N64 in a thrift and that was one of the two games that came with it (some random Madden game being the other). Other than those two experiences, I've never played a Zelda game. Never had the slightest amount of interest. I lost interest in all things Nintendo after reading about all the horrible things they were doing, like price gouging the US customers under the guise of fake chip shortages, bullying US chains into not carrying Atari or Sega consoles, that kind of thing. I let my NES collect dust and bought pretty much every other game console that came out that wasn't Nintendo's.

If you're suggesting for him to pick up a CD-i console, you should warn him about the wide variety of units available. I believe that the CD-i 220 is the most common machine (I have one) and they tend to have problems ejecting a disc. Try for a different model than that one.

[celerystalker]

I wouldn't suggest picking up a CD-i just to play them, but rather if he stumbled across a cheap CD-i sometime, they're some of the more playable games. For me, a lot of fun comes from the nostalgia for pre-N64 Zelda stuff, but I do legitimately like them.

I wouldn't recommend seeking out a CD-i to most folks in general, though. I've found a nice group of games I enjoy, but I have a pretty high tolerance for absurdity. Games like Inca, Secret Mission, Mega Maze, the Apprentice, 7th Guest, Kether... they're fun in their weird ways, but probably not system sellers. I like my CD-i just for being so different for when I get in a weird mood. Plus, it's fun to trick a friend into trying Zombie Dinos from Planet Zeltoid.

I think the CD-i is best suited to people with long-standing curiosity toward those less popular consoles and who like to play experimental games, whether they're cripplingly flawed or not.

Edit: oh, and yeah, I have a 220, and they have a bunch of design problems. Most people I've talked to seem to like the LG model, though I haven't had the chance to play on one.

[Gameguy]

If The Apprentice isn't a system seller, then none exist on the CDi. That's pretty much the best game on the system, and just about the only reason I'm hoping to come across the system at some point.

[celerystalker]

If The Apprentice isn't a system seller, then none exist on the CDi. That's pretty much the best game on the system, and just about the only reason I'm hoping to come across the system at some point.

I don't completely disagree with that statement. I'm not completely sure that there is a real system seller or killer app for the CD-i that would have any kind of true mass appeal. I like my CD-i. I play my CD-i. However, I can totally understand why people criticize it or dislike it. In my opinion, buying a CD-i should be a very calculated purchase, as it isn't deep on awesome stuff to discover in the same way that a Game Boy or even a 3DO is. If you think you might like those Zeldas, though, you probably will. If you think you'll likely hate them, well, they're easy to poke holes in as well.

Even the Apprentice, which has pretty tight control and strong presentation, is pretty unforgiving, and its vertically-scrolling stages are a turn off to many. I guess what I'm getting at is that it's a system for people with a wide range of tolerance.

[Tanooki]

I had the magnavox version of the 220 including that dv card for those games and other videos. I honestly have to say I'm kind of tired of people just doing the cool thing of shitting all over the system. Let's get one thing clear people in general fail to want to address and will find any way to dodge when it's thrown out there -- it's not a gaming console, it's a multimedia box. If anything it's a forefront internet lacking version of the shit being shoveled now by far more competent people to keep it alive. Take online out of the equation and throw that up against the PS2 generation forward. Movies, music, games, and some educational junk for various ages. The problem is, they didn't focus more on games like the stuff in the 21st century has, had no internet to crutch it along either, and it was in a period of transition of cart to disc, pre-dvd no less, attempting to do something new.

Place games to the side for the moment. What was the thing? Well for starters, it has 100s of movies in VCD format, one that got tanked by the DVD, just like HDDVD got whacked by the blu-ray format (or beta vs vhs.) Second to that, it had a strong educational package which was meant for the little kids through the teens...The Manhole, learning tools, even a full on encyclopedia with a lot of pictures, animations, sound and movie clips of important moments. And yeah finally games. The thing was primarily and evenly made for doing audio and video, didn't leave much in the hardware to do much else. So due to that what you got with it were a good many games that were only there to play to the strengths of the thing, and in that era it was alive and even doing its best, it excelled better than the others. Find a better version of those arcade games of Dragon's Lair 1 and 2 or Space Ace at that point -- PC versions blew, the console games were licensed shat that didn't even try to be a copy. Then you had some other older computer and arcade conversions that were pretty solid like Little Divil, some bland though (like Tetris), but others were perhaps the best release (like Lords of the Rising Sun.) And finally there were quite a few games that did what it could within the confines and strengths like all the rail shooters like Chaos Control and Burn Cycle which were fantastic, and there were other sadist Dragon's Lair likes such as Escape from Cyber City. Some unique stuff popped up like Kether and The Apprentice, but also even a final fight (mutation nation neo geo more so) clone called Mutant Rampage Body Slam which was a blast. The thing had little memory to store data, it streamed much, that's where things would lack, or you'd get loads all over. In the end the shitty licensing deal where Nintendo let some C-team twits do their best with their 2 best franchises seems to get all the internet blowjob rage over crapping on the system because supposedly Mario and Zelda violate their nostalgia corn holes. I'm not going to lie and say I owned them all, but I did have Hotel Mario and Link Faces of Evil. While both had rubber monster awful/funny terrible cartoon bits to tie the story/stages together the backbone games while a bit stiff were still solid. Had they NOT been licensed games and branded as sub-par (duh) to Nintendo's efforts you could have done far worse. Hotel mario was a very solid and pretty smootnly playing mix of Elevator Action and Super Mario World and it worked. Link Faces of Evil had some odd weapon choices but it was basically a sequel off of what people knew from then (so few games) of Zelda 2 -- though took the zelda 1 angle of no hints so you had to just run around a lot to figure it out or die doing so. I finished both, don't regret owning them, do regret still not owning them just for some random self abusing fun now and again but the prices suck. Sure they're not A games, very few were on there, but it had a solid line of B and C grade stuff that wasn't miserable. I know I don't post much anymore on here due to the vacationing dictator, but it needed to be said.

[Guntz]

I'm not surprised that it took a Digital Press post to get a decent reply to my original question.

Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil sound relatively decent, like other rarely positive reviews. Yes, I'm serious that I'd be willing to give them a try, assuming I ever find a cheap CD-i. Going by the HG101 article, it sounds like they had a lot of love and effort put into them. Considering only two other Zeldas had been released at the time of their development, I'd say both games are very impressive, even with their flaws.

[tpugmire]

I have a 450 and a bunch of games. It's actually not all that bad of a system. My biggest issue is the lack of a decent controller. Even their best options still suck. If there was a cheaper, responsive controller, I think a lot of things about the games could be forgiven.

[SparTonberry]

Considering only two other Zeldas had been released at the time of their development, I'd say both games are very impressive, even with their flaws.

Four Zeldas. I believe the CDi games were released in 1993, after Link's Awakening was the most recent canon Zelda released.

[celerystalker]

Four Zeldas. I believe the CDi games were released in 1993, after Link's Awakening was the most recent canon Zelda released.

It's true that those other two existed, but not long enough to have fully influenced the development of the CD-i games, I wouldn't think. Either way, though, it was definitely a less fleshed-out universe.

[Guntz]

I quote from the HG101 article:

When considering the gameplay of LZ, you need to realise that development began in early 1991, with only two previous Zelda games having been released on the NES. Link to the Past on the SNES was only released in the November of 1991 in Japan (hitting the U.S. roughly 6 months later in 1992), and prior to release would only have been viewable deep within Nintendo's R&D lab in Kyoto. This means that, due to not much source material to work from and little if any information about Link to the Past available, LZ collectively was developed to be the third game(s) in the series. By the time the team would have had access to Link to the Past, development of LZ would have already progressed a fair amount. Though Mr. DeSharone did explain that the entire team had been fans of the first two Zelda titles.

[BlastProcessing402]

Well for starters, it has 100s of movies in VCD format, one that got tanked by the DVD, just like HDDVD got whacked by the blu-ray format (or beta vs vhs.)

VCD didn't compete with DVD directly like bluray and HDDVD or VHS and beta. It was a precursor format that competed with VHS (and I suppose laserdisc), In some markets, mostly Asia, it was really successful despite being a big flop in the west.

The only competing format I can think of that DVD "tanked" was the original DIVX (not the codec) which had nothing to do with CDi so I won't go into it further.

[Steve W]

Some of the FMV games looked pretty nice for the CD-i (I was never one to dismiss FMV games outright, I always liked them if they didn't have Dragon's Lair-style gameplay) but I never found the MPEG video board that was needed to play some of the better ones, and it was a rarity to find any CD-i consoles in the wild anyway. I only ever found one other CD-i machine in a thrift store, but it's CD eject tray motor was totally dead. I've had better luck finding CD-i controllers in the wild.

[Tanooki]

The DV card makes the system worth having, and without you have some serious problems in doing a lot of what it was capable of doing. That extra bit had quite a good little upgrade going for it -- http://cdii.blogspot.com/2009/05/dig...cartridge.html CDi is 16bit, this was a 32bit RISC chip upgrade with MPEG capabilities and an added 1MB of RAM for games to use if it chose to which helped things out quite a bit in both capability and cut down on load times reploading stages plus it cleaned up a bitch of a flaw on CDI -- it could now run both music + sfx at the same time (stock CDI wouldn't.)

I wouldn't recommend the CDi to anyone without it. I had it originally without, then added it when it came on the market and it really did make a difference as it made it a moderately decent game player where before it was like trying to run games off a dvd player (like Dragon's Lair which was done) in todays world which trades off a lot of load time and one form of audio over another being basic, and using a stupid thumb remote (which CDI had until you stepped up to a gravis 4 button pad with stick as a choice rebranded by philips which I had too.)