Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon were the first two of three Zelda games Nintendo published on the ill-fated Philips CD-i system in the early 90s. They are very bad — so bad Nintendo doesn’t recognise them as series canon — but they’ve still got a certain charm to them, and so this fan effort to rebuild them from the ground up on PC is pretty neat.
[referenced id=”838870″ url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2017/09/zelda-the-wand-of-gamelon-the-kotaku-review/” thumb=”https://www.gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/09/27/rylnlhk6tjeq9jxr5fxh-300×179.png” title=”Zelda: The Wand Of Gamelon: The Kotaku Review” excerpt=”In 1993, Nintendo made the inexplicable decision to licence The Legend of Zelda to Phillips Media, creators of the CD-i. Among the resulting games is Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. It’s known as one of the worst games ever made. Replaying it 24 years later reveals a game with interesting…”]
Rather than remaster them, Dopply has fired up GameMaker and completely remade them, in the process saying he has “definitely [improved] them, in my humble opinion” (with stuff like new controls and a smoother framerate) over the course of four years of part-time development.
The games are of course famous for their cutscenes, which are still there, along with the fact that The Wand Of Gamelon has you playing as Zelda, but these remakes have also done a really good job of making the game’s “early 90s Sierra-point-and-click arse” background art pop.
You can download the games (and read up a little on their creation) here.
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