A Very Special Episode

 

The best part about playing through each of these Zelda games is the opportunity to be completely surprised.  That could be finding out a game is better than you remember, or in the next case, having no idea what you were about to discover.  

BS The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets was released for the Super Famicom add-on the Satellaview in 1997.  I talked much more about the Satellaview it in this post.  The game is a sequel to the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  6 years after that game, you play as a child sucked into Hyrule.  A new dark force is present but Link is off in another area.  You must work with Zelda and Agihna, Sahasrahla’s brother to find and decode 8 stone tablets.  

 

Zelda spends the final week working with you.

The game plays out over four one hour episodes.  You had to tune in on a specific night back in 1997 to play them.  You got one shot each week and your progress carries over.  The map is almost identical to Link to the Past and gradually reveals itself each week. 

 

Barely made it in week 3.

Because of the time limit, the game is always frenzied.  You need to beat two dungeons and collect heart pieces each week  If you are on target, you can have time at the end for some optional activities, including finding a mole to reveal hundreds of rupees or playing some optional mini-games.  None of these reveal until 45 minutes past the hour.  However, if you fall behind, like I did in week 3, the game is a stressful, mad dash.  I got the 6th tablet with less than two minutes to spare.  The final week, you can even fail the game if you don't beat the last boss (guess who) in time.

If I had played this game when I started the quest in 2015, it would not have been nearly as cool of an experience.  While the game was initially taking place live, there was an audio drama in the background.   You hear Zelda and Agihna mixed with other characters working to solve the mystery of the tablets.  At times, they consult a fortune teller who summons power ups for you (these can be anything from unlimited bombs to all of a sudden having 20 full health containers).  Once a week someone also comes on begging for you to help rescue them from something.  There was exclusive Zelda music that played during the hour too.  Amazingly, someone recovered VHS recordings of the initial broadcast.  In the past few years, a dedicated team of translators was able to use those to translate and record the audio play and put it back together with the game.  Through an emulator, you can try it yourself.  The process is a bit complicated but worth it.  You can find instructions here.

 

Playing the game as it was originally intended is an experience unlike any other I've had gaming.  I wish Nintendo would find a way to bring this back or do something similar through the Nintendo Switch Online service.  The thought of big, event gaming across the world would be so fun. 

My final score.

The game also gives you a score at the end of each week based on damage received and rupees collected.  By the end of the game I had nearly 10,000!  In the end, the game blew me away as a complete experience.  While parts feel like a re-tread of Link to the Past, the live elements made it so much more.  I played one hour a day and found myself anxiously awaiting the next episode.  I highly recommend you find a way to play this and try it for yourself. 

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. BS Legend of Zelda: Ancient Stone Tablets
4. The Legend of Zelda
5. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
6. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
7. BS Legend of Zelda
8. Link: The Faces of Evil
9. Zelda (Game & Watch)
10. Zelda's Adventure

Zelda's Adventure

There's a point towards the end of the Zelda's Adventure where I was swinging Zelda's wand and killing creatures without actually hitting them that my son turned to me and said, "Dad, why is this game like this?  It doesn't make any sense."  A few minutes later, he watched as I walked right past the boss of the final dungeon without fighting him and claimed the last stone triangle.  This game is broken in so, so many ways.  It was cancelled in the United States and should probably have never seen the light of day anywhere.  But it did and I finished it.

There was a moment just before the second dungeon where I got a disc read error and lost an hour of progress.  I quit for the day and almost quit on my goal to beat all the Zeldas.  The game is that tedious to play.  This game is set up like a traditional top down Legend of Zelda game.  You would think that would make it better, but it doesn't.  All the characters are digitized actors.  From the top down though, they look hideous and barely resemble people.  Every time you move screens, there is a 1-2 second load.  It is tedious, but you can get used to it.

 

That's supposed to be a woman talking to Zelda.

So it looks and plays more like a traditional Zelda game, then you might wonder, "Why is it so bad?"  The answer is, it is broken and unfinished.  I've read this game was completed in 1992, but then went through two years of testing and revisions after during which most of the staff was cut.  To get the game to launch, portions were just stripped out.  I believe that.  Characters will refer to locations in the game by three different names.  You will get items that are never used.  You will be told items work in ways they don't.  

The combat is also bad.  Some characters can only be killed with specific items.  The problem is you have 40 items or so and each takes rubies (they call them that in this game) to use.  You would go broke just guessing which to use (seriously, if you are going to play this game: use this guide).  Some of the enemies are broken and are just stuck in the environment.  The bosses have no A.I. and just follow scripted patterns around the floor.  That means on some levels you can stand in a certain spot and not get hit.  Another fun treat is that about half the dungeons just have slippery floors for no reason (it's not ice, just slick) and you can slide into enemies or pits that send you to the beginning of the dungeon.

 

The bartender is wearing a baseball cap while old western music plays.

The cartoon animations in Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon get made fun of, but at least the quality of the voice acting is decent.  They hired professional actors.  For this game, they just got whoever they could find for voices and mo-cap.  I read that Zelda is played by the company receptionist.  The acting is terrible and many characters speak in bizarre riddles.  The costumes are inconsistent and terrible.  You walk into the "Moblin Inn" and meet a bartender wearing a vest and a baseball cap. 

 

The Shrine of Strength is actually a fun idea.

There were a few moments I enjoyed.  The sixth dungeon was the Shrine of Strength.  It's set up like a midieval tournament.  Zelda starts at some vendors, then tries games to earn rubies before challenging the jousting and broadsword champions.  It was a fun idea and the theming remains consistent up until the boss, who is a giant bear for some reason.

 

Zelda fighting Diablo (I mean Ganon).

I mentioned the bosses.  There are three occasions where you can choose to just walk past a mid-boss or dungeon boss.  The final lair for Ganon has a boss rush of all the dungeon bosses.  But, true to this game, they forgot to include one of them.  Also, Ganon in this game is Diablo.  Not sure why.  It doesn't make sense and nothing in this game does.  This is going all the way down at the bottom of the list where it belongs.

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Link: The Faces of Evil
8. Zelda (Game & Watch)
9. Zelda's Adventure

The Other One

Link: The Faces of Evil is similar to its counterpart, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, in many ways.  They share some of the same enemy assets, the art style is similar and there are some shared power-ups.  But where the Zelda game is focused a bit more on puzzle solving, Link's game is much more focused on combat.  The problem is the combat is not these games' strongest point.

 

This pig balloon man is supposed to be the "Face of Evil"

This is pitched more as a "dark" Legend of Zelda game.  Some strange guy on a flying carpet spouts some nonsense and takes Link to Koridai to fight the faces of evil.  The map suggests these bosses will be menacing, but that's not the case.  They are laughably stupid.  There's a strange clown-pig that deflates like a balloon.  There's also an old man inside a suit of armor.  The only creepy one is Glutko, a monster that is eating people alive.  I think there would be a place for a creepy Legend of Zleda game, but this misses the mark.

 

Okay, this guy is actually disturbing

The combat in this game is incredibly cheap.  You can shoot a beam out of your sword as long as you have full health.  That's great because the enemy and Link hit boxes are way too big.  Unfortunately, it seems like most levels start with something programmed to hit you in the first second and negate that beam.  Like the other game, this one starts difficult and gets progressively easier.  

Like Wand of Gamelon, the soundtrack is great. There's one part where this game is better: Link doesn't have to do nearly as much jumping.

 

The game literally ends with a close up of Link saying, "I won!"

In the end, this game is slightly worse than Wand of Gamelon, with much more obnoxious bosses and characters and a bit less of the charm from the Zelda game.  It was still fun at times and not nearly as bad as it's reputation. If you had to play one, I'd choose the Zelda game.

 Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Link: The Faces of Evil
8. Zelda (Game & Watch)

 

I'm So Hungry I Could Eat An Octorok

Next up is the infamous CDi games.  Having now finished the first two, I feel a lot of the opinions of these two games is based solely on a small handful of YouTube videos that people have viewed and repurposed as gospel.  For starters, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil are nowhere near the worst games of all time.  There are actually a lot of parts that are pretty fun.  Given the difficulty emulating these hard-to-find games, I believe most haven't given them a fair try (which is something I'm working on here).

First up for me was Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.  To save resources, it was developed simultaneously with Link: The Faces of Evil and they were released at the same time.  They often get lumped together as the same but are actually quite different.  The Zelda game is a bit more cerebral, focusing on collecting items from people around the world to outsmart bosses.  If you have the right item, most of them go down in a single hit.  Link's game is more combat focused (which I'll describe more in the next post).

Most of this game's notoriety comes from these infamous cutscenes:

Indeed, the animation is a special kind of terrible.  It was farmed out to a Russian-based animation group as the soviet union was falling.  I have two huge complaints.  First, most of the people look hideous.  Every person in every village looks disgusting.  Some of the scenes would also be okay, except the animations had to have every body part of every character moving at all times.  Link can't just talk to the king, his eyes have to be spinning around in his head while his arms twerk around and the camera zooms in and out.  It's so strange.  Half the scenes would be fine if they just stood and talked to each other.

 

Why couldn't they just make Zelda act normal in this scene?

There's a couple elements where I give the cut scenes a pass.  First, the video quality is amazing for the time.  Compared to video compression on contemporaries like the Turbografx CD and Sega CD, the video is crisp and pretty smooth.  I also don't think the developers can be blamed for some of the characterizations and dialogue.  You have to remember this was being developed at the same time as Link to the Past.  That means the most recent work the developers could look at was Zelda II on NES and the Zelda animated cartoon.  Indeed, the characters all talk and act like the cartoon characters (like Link desperately begging for a kiss at all times).  In that regard, the game seems to be succeeding at much of what it set out for.

 

What most of the game actually looks like

 

I mentioned Zelda II, that is the game that plays the closest to Wand of Gamelon.  This game is a side-scroller.  The levels would not be bad if not for the limitations of the console.  For starters, the CDi only has two button inputs.  This game needed many more.  Because of that, up on the control pad is jump.  Thankfully, I've been playing a lot of MSX games in the past year with a similar control style so that wasn't too bad for me but I know is tough for others who have played the game.  Button 1 is your sword and everything else is on button 2.  This leads to confusion when trying to go through doors (button 2), use items (button 2) and open the menu (button 2 while crouching).

The levels look pretty and are hand painted.  But there is no telling at times what is the background and what you can interact with.  Some levels (like the terrible Washubi Swamp level) require precision jumps but you can't tell where a ledge begins and ends.  Sometimes you can also wander around without understanding what is and isn't an entrance to another area.  Exploring the second half of the village of Sakado requires you to enter a certain home, stand on a specific window ledge and press button 2.  Seriously, don't attempt this game without a guide.

Thankfully, the levels, while tough, are short enough you can beat with practice.  The game starts very difficult and gets much easier when you upgrade your sword to shoot projectiles and gain a cloak to make yourself temporarily invincible.  It all comes together in a challenging and fun final battle through Reesong Palace.  I felt accomplished when I beat Ganon and am happy I played this game. 

 

 

I should also mention the music.  While it doesn't sound like much of the series, it is frequently fantastic.  I've had many of the songs stuck in my head since completing the game. 

 

Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon was fun at times, challenging and sometimes humorous.  Yeah the animation was bad and some parts felt cheap, but honestly no more cheap and vague than parts of Zelda II.  This would be the CDi game I would recommend if you can only try one.  Someone even put out a version for the computer recently that fixes many of the problems (and will run on your PC).  Either way, I think these games are worth a try for fans of the Zelda series. 

Here's my updated list: 

1. The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past
2. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
3. The Legend of Zelda
4. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
5. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
6. BS Legend of Zelda
7. Zelda (Game & Watch)