The worst Zelda game gets new life as a fan-made Game Boy Demake

In the 1990s, Philips tried to break into the video game market with its doomed multimedia set-top box standard called CD-i. Many brands and models of CD-i players have been released, but all have been flops and mostly forgotten in 2023. However, Philips acquired the rights to it develop three zelda games for his unpopular machines. They were terrible. Now a fan has taken what might be the worst of these games, a top-down RPG starring Zelda himself, and unofficially ported it to the Game Boy.

You may be wondering how Philips could create something like this zelda Games and on a non-Nintendo platform. Oddly enough, the answer to this concerns Sony. In 1989, Sony and Nintendo signed a deal to develop a CD-based add-on for the SNES. However, Nintendo would later go out of business and work with Philips instead. Sony was embittered and decided to create its own gaming console, a little device you may have heard of called the PlayStation. Meanwhile, Nintendo saw the poor reaction to Genesis’ Sega CD add-on and pulled out of its planned SNES CD hardware entirely. It is believed that in exchange for breaking the deal, Nintendo licensed some intellectual property rights to Philips, allowing the company to make its own zelda games. They weren’t great, and one of the three, Zelda’s adventureShe is considered by many fans to be the worst of the bunch and is often referred to as the worst zelda game ever released.

Even though it’s a bad game with horrible controls and horrible live-action FMV cinematics, it’s still one zelda game, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it has its fans. One of them spent a few years developing a full port of the CD-i flop for Nintendo’s Game Boy. And now it’s outand it’s really cool!

The story behind the new Game Boy zelda

Zelda’s adventure for Game Boy was developed by John lay, who describes himself as a programmer and graphic designer. According to Lay – a big fan of 2D zelda Games – from the three CD-i zelda games games, Zelda’s adventure “Looked interesting.” And after stumbling upon an early version of modern development tool GB Studio, Lay decided to start working on a demake during the Covid-19 lockdown as the idea of ​​a portable version of the unloved game seemed like something he wanted to play. So he started working on a proof of concept that was just the first dungeon and the first part of the overworld, which he estimates is about 20 percent of the entire game.

“After I was done I took a short break and during that time GB Studio released an update that I was dying to try,” said Lay kotaku. “So I… continued the game where I left off and developed about another 40 percent of the overworld and dungeons.”

However, he encountered some limitations of GB Studio, so he had to modify the engine with custom code to make the full demake workable.

“I then used this modified engine to develop a third prototype with the remaining 40 percent of the overworld and final dungeons,” he said. “During this time, GB Studio released a third update with a number of improvements, so I sat down and thought about how I could combine all three prototypes into a single game.”

Lay says this entire process, from start to finish, has taken around 14 months since work on the game began in April 2020.

According to the Itch page for Zelda’s adventureit was designed to aesthetically resemble 1993‘S Link’s Awakeningbut also includes some features of the Game Boy Color duo Oracle of the Times And seasons. Lay calls his creation a full port of the full game, and the music was composed by Beatscribe.

game guide Zelda’s adventure for GameBoy

If you want to play this nice port on a Game Boy emulator, you can download the ROM from Lay’s itch page. However, you can also play it in your browser without having to download anything, or just watch a full walkthrough of the fan game on Lay’s YouTube channel.

Honestly, Lay’s new fan game is probably the best way to experience it Zelda’s adventure, that odd and barely remembered piece of Nintendo ephemera. I mean, unless the upcoming Tears of the Kingdom decides to include some profound references to it, in which case we all need to go back and reassess the CD-i disaster. Although I very much doubt that will happen.

As for Lay, he has no intention of destroying the other two zelda cd i games, Link: The Faces of Evil And Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, on Nintendo’s portable or any other console. But he enjoyed working on the project and wanted to give credit to both its composer, Beatscribe, and the “incredible developers” behind GB Studio.

“Thanks to everyone who supported the project,” Lay said. “I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback so far, it’s really worth it. I hope you enjoy the game!”