Three decades ago, a pair of infamous Legend of Zelda spin-offs hit an obscure platform known as the Phillips CD-i, and while Nintendo would prefer that you forget they ever existed, they've inspired one indie developer to create a brand-new game in their style.
Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon were released on the same day in 1993, developed by a company called Animation Magic and officially licensed by Nintendo. They were widely panned at the time of their release, and in the years since their surrealistic cutscenes (which featured full animation and voice acting) have become infamous memes.
Yet those games were nothing if not ambitious, offering open-ended 2D exploration with hand-drawn background art, and their unfulfilled ambition has served to inspire Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, an indie platformer due to launch on February 13. This spiritual successor has it all - the 2D action, the hand-drawn backgrounds, and the absurd animation - but it aims to expand on that with core action that's, you know, actually fun to play.
A recent interview with Nintendo Life suggests that developer Seth 'Dopply' Fulkerson has the right idea with this project. "I never set out to make a 'bad' game when I was working on Arzette," Fulkerson said. "I knew I could get those genuine bits of potential from those original games and sort of make them into something that’s much better." He added that "I didn’t make this game as a joke, I made this a sincere attempt to make a good game with those aesthetics."
Fulkerson clearly has a lot of genuine affection for those original CD-i games. Years ago, he built remakes of them for PC in an effort to teach himself game development, and while he's now moved well beyond fangames, it's clear that they're still serving as an inspiration to him. I'm as guilty of clowning on CD-i Zelda as anyone, but I'm glad someone is trying to fulfill the potential of those games 30 years later.
You've already played enough indies inspired by the best Zelda games - it's time for a change of pace.
