Zelda's Adventure

Zelda's Adventure is the third and strangest game to carry the Zelda name, released exclusively for the Philips CD-i. Unlike the two platformers, it returns to the top-down view that made the original The Legend of Zelda famous, and it's set in the land of Tolemac, which Ganon has conquered. In it, Zelda sets out to find the kidnapped Link, collects spells and tools, opens temples scattered across a sprawling map, and fights monsters on individual screens. Progression is classically adventure-style: each temple requires a specific ability acquired elsewhere, so the world opens up gradually and the map becomes the main tool for orientation.

The technical execution is completely different from its sister games. The environments were made by digitizing hand-built sets and models, the characters were captured from live-action footage, and the story sequences form a live-action film with costumed actors. The result feels dark, dreamlike, and at times outright eerie, aided by muted music and hissing ambient sound. Its major weakness, though, is speed: you wait for loading between screens, combat feels stiff, and the sword attack has an unpleasantly short reach, so many encounters get solved more by dodging than by fighting.

The game came out at a time when interest in the CD-i had already faded, and it remained the least known entry of the whole trio. Reviewers criticized above all its slowness and imprecise gameplay, though they praised its atmosphere and its attempt at its own visual language. Today Zelda's Adventure is interesting exactly because it looks so different from anything else in the franchise: it's a strange blend of fairy tale, live-action film, and classic action-adventure from the eighties. For collectors it's a rare piece; for curious players, a trip into a world that could only have emerged during the brief period of fascination with multimedia CDs. It's also worth noting how generous a map the developers managed to fit onto the disc: every temple has its own theme and its own monsters, and between them lies a sprawling landscape you can cross in many directions and where you can genuinely get lost even with notes in hand.