ZELDA CD-i
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(INFO IS FROM http://legendofzelda.com/) Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. Review Okay, first things first. It's a side-scroller, not a top-view game. Deal with it. If you're still with me, you're not such a Zelda purist that you prefer to see Zelda as the sky-cam view of a poofy round dress and a lock of hair. Good. The Wand of Gamelon is a side-scroller game, also known as a "platform" game. That means we see the character from a side perspective, as she walks along the ground, walls, tree branches, etc. and jumps over obstacles or enemies. She can also climb ladders or ropes to change levels, and can deliberately fall to move down. It's a simple, familiar system, and that's an advantage in this adventure game. The options are kept to a minimum, allowing the player to focus on exploration, fighting, and searching. The game opens with an animated sequence setting up the story: the King, Zelda's father, has travelled to the land of Gamelon to join forces with Duke Onkled against the evil Gannon. A month goes by with no word, so the heroic Link goes after the king... and also disappears. Zelda sets off to find both of them. The animation is charming and gives the game much more character than the text boxes of the Nintendo versions. Appropriate voice acting helps -- the king's regal, Zelda's innocent but determined, and Link is a complete jerk. One effect that doesn't work, however, are some zoom-to-close-ups in the animation. The animation is pasted on top of a static background, so the background doesn't move even when the "camera" does. The effect is a little disorienting. The player then gets a map of the land of Gamelon. He or she can move the "triforce" around to select an area of the country to start in. At first, only three will be available, although good play will open up more of the map for exploration. A good place to start (aside from the handy "help" feature, in which Zelda tells you how to move her around) is "Sakado". The enemies on the street of this town are pretty easy to kill with your sword, and the rubies they yield can be used as money at the local shop. It's the first house in Sakado -- simply stand in front of the door and press button 2. Once inside, you can buy lamp oil, ropes, and bombs, for 5, 10, and 20 rubies each. Hit the shopkeeper with your sword for more info -- hitting friendly characters brings up an animation in which they talk to you, give you information, etc. It's another welcome improvement over the text of the Nintendo versions. As with the other games, you learn more about the story with each person you meet, and it's not as straightforward as you'd initially think (there's a particularly nice twist in the ending!). To use items bought or found in your quest, crouch and hit button 2 for a display of your posessions. Select the item you want to use. Next time you hit button 2, that item will be used -- meaning you'll throw a bomb, hoist a rope, drop the bread, etc. There are two ways to get out of a land in Zelda. You can hit the "triforce" parchment with your sword -- there are two in each land, one where you started and one hidden somewhere within, usually after you've found a major treasure or defeated a major villain. You can also bail out when you die -- Zelda has a series of hearts at the upper left representing her strength (the old "hit points" idea from Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games). She starts with 3 hearts, but can gain more as the game goes on. A minor hit will cost half a heart, while some monsters can wipe them all out in one shot. When all the hearts are gone, you get the option to "continue" from a nearby point in this land... but you only get three chances in any one land before you're sent back to the map of Gamelon. Fighting in Zelda is hampered only by somewhat sluggish response from the controls -- the scrolling and movement can be a little choppy, probably because of the CPU firepower required to move the colorful and detailed backgrounds. Fortunately, discovery of a "power sword" early in the game gives Zelda a decided advantage. Most of the gameplay involves meeting people and finding stuff that'll help you in your quest. For example, one woman wants an Arpagos Egg... find it later in the game, go back and talk to her, and she'll trade you for some object that'll help you open up new areas of the map or fight the nastier bad guys. A nice feature of the Zelda games is its non-linearity. You don't just automatically go from a "level one" to a "level two". Instead, you can go anywhere you like in the available regions, any number of times. Sometimes you'll have to, because you're allowed into regions even if you don't yet have all the tools you'll need to prevail in them. Sometimes you'll even find you're absolutely stuck, at which point you need to backtrack through regions you've already traversed to see if you missed something. Here's a tip that would have saved me two hours of hacking and slaying: Sakado has a back street! The game takes a LONG time to play. Fortunately, there's a save feature which allows up to three players (or three versions of the same quest) to be saved in the CD-i's memory. While the game isn't gory (bad guys generally just go "poof" and disappear), there are some moments here and there where the animation is thankfully blunt about the violence. One animated evil character, when hit, says "you've killed me!" as he dissolves. Cut to Zelda, who replies "good!". In general, the game is a strong mix of arcade hack & slay with just enough searching, second-guessing, experimenting and communicating to keep it interesting. For all the CD-i owners, this Zelda is a keeper. Link: Faces of Evil. Review Link: Faces of Evil is one of the two Zelda games that were released simultaneously as one of the first games for CDi. It is not just a rough copy of earlier Nintendo titles. Everything that you can find in both this and the Nintendo games are the main characters Link and Zelda. The story goes as following: Link is bored a lot. He complains to the king, Zelda's father. He says that a land of rest and peace is good for the people. Fortunately for Link, this peace won't last for long. Ganon is being irritating again, he's so brute that he captures Zelda. Now Link has to use his turbo carpet to recapture Zelda and crush Ganon. Then he will become hero of the Koridai! When I start the game, a map appears. I choose Goronu. The rumours say there should be the shop of Morshu here. There are a lot of Daira's here (creeps), so that I can collect a lot of rupies. After about 200 rupies I go shopping. There are a lot of different enemies in this game, and most of the time there's only one way to kill them. An example: in the tower where Hamsha is being captured walk some Abominams around. You can only kill them with the firestones. But you can only get firestones when you kill the Fire Dairas in the Crater Grove. But unfortunately you can only kill THEM when you've got enough snowballs, which you get when you kill the moblin spearmen. Complicated? I don't think so! This is Zelda, this is fun! It's all a lot easier when you've got the powersword. Anutu has one, but does he want to give it to you? And... where is he? Maybe in Crater Cove? You must try to get as much triforces as you can, so that you can see more of the world. On that way you dissolve the mysterious capture of princess Zelda. Also 3rd in the series is Zeldas Adventure. Which I do not own. Zelda's Adventure. Review Almost everyone knows Zelda now, so I think she doesn't need an introduction. It is kind of special that the last two new Zelda games were released for CD-i. And so is this one: Zelda's Adventure. Almost two years after the release of The Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil, a new Zelda adventure came out. The new things: You see this game from above, like in the Nintendo games, not like the other two CDi games, plus the graphics. They're really photorealistic now. In this CDi game real people appear. Zelda's being played by a real girl. In my imagination Zelda looked completely different, so at the first I was a bit dissapointed. Luckily enough, after the intro Zelda just becomes a bunch of pixels again. She's a normal twodimensional bitmap that happily runs over your screen. Zelda's Adventure immediatley looks different then the other CD-i games.Those looked more like platform games. This one shows itself from above, out of some kind of helicopter view, in a small angle. The walking through the land of Tolemac (hahaha, Camelot turned upside down!) has also became a lot more dangerous, because Zelda can get attacked from all sides, by blue desert monsters, red killer-birds, grey boomerang-throwers and other colorfull bad guys. The backgrounds in this game are really wonderfull. In other Zelda games they're drawn with the computer, but in Zelda's Adventure they look just real. Unfortunately the backgrounds are each time just one screen, like in The Legend of Zelda. When you walk out of the screen, the CDi has to load the new screen, which sometimes takes amazing long. The adventure starts at Gaspra, the noble stars-scientist of the palace. This evening he has got to do something better than looking through a big telescope. Ganon, the evil master of the underworld, didn't only steal the seven heavensigns, but also captured Link! So Gaspra has to help Shurmak helping princess Zelda to save Link and the world of a dark future. The goal is obvious: Find the seven heavensigns and beat Ganon. That offcourse sounds simple, as it allways does in adventure- and role-playing games. More interesting is if there's something cool before you've reached the end! Okay, Zelda baby, let's rock! Goal number one is to find the magical rod, to be able to smash those enemies. This adventurous quest is ended when you walk one screen to the right, where it lies waiting for you. Now the real fun starts. You're gonna need the rod, so keep it with you carefully. You make it yourself a lot easier by getting the boomerang. There are also a lot of things you can buy. But watch out! Don't spend to much. Zelda's Adventure is just another chapter in the wonderfull series. It goes with mythic, trolls and wizardry. The beautifull backgrounds are ruined a little by the silly characters and slow CDi processor. The digitized voices are hard to understand. Three memories to store games are a big plus!
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