The Zelda CD-I (Faces of Evil, Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure) Cut Scenes

I have had the honor of playing most of the Legend of Zelda games over the course of my life. The series has constantly amazed me, and even the worst official installments at least have some things going for them. Then there are the non-canonical entries to the games: the dreaded CD-I releases from the 1990s. These games have been considered the worst Zelda games in existence, and one reason for that is the laughably bad cut scenes that can be found throughout each title. As was the case with Hotel Mario, these cut scenes have become famous for appearing in so many YouTube parody videos, and seeing as how they are so bad, it is easy to see why they are simple to poke fun at.

The first two Zelda CD-I games, Link: Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, were released in 1993. In the former, Link is taken to the island of Koridai by Gwonam, an old man riding a magic carpet. It is there that he must take on numerous monstrous minions before he can rid the island of the evil wizard Ganon. In the latter title, Zelda's father, King Harkinian, goes missing while trying to save Gamelon from Ganon. When Link likewise disappears in an attempt to save the king, Zelda decides to take action and head to Gamelon herself in order to rescue everyone. In 1994, Zelda's Adventure was released. In that game, Zelda was once again given the task of defeating Ganon, who had captured Link and had seized the land of Tolemac (Camelot spelled backwards).

In the first two games, the cut scenes were hand drawn, as CGI was new and difficult to do at the time. Both games had introduction sequences lasting about a minute each, ending segments lasting a mere thirty seconds, and smaller cut scenes in between. Alas, the two games share many of the same problems that plagued the cut scenes of Hotel Mario. For one thing, Link looks a bit funky, particularly during close ups of his face. Something about the way that he rolls his eyes at the start of Faces of Evil seems a bit odd to me. Also, his hair seems a bit too lengthy. Zelda is a bit more ill-served, with close-ups of her face being so off-putting. Some other characters seen throughout look just plain ugly: never before nor since has Ganon looked so hideous, especially towards the end of Faces of Evil, when he tells Link to join him or die.

The animation itself is quite poor, with bad effects seen throughout. For example, Lupay the Wolf's death scene consists of her literally being erased from existence. I kid you not: it seems that you are watching an invisible eraser at work. The way that a bird appears in Gwonam's hand seems clumsy, as does Ganon being sealed inside a book. Some of the animation is even recycled in both games, such as when you save some fairies and they fly over you in the exact same way in each game. Perhaps original YouTube animations would have far more believable effects compared to this.

The game also has some sad attempts at humor. Defeat the evil knight Militron, and his suit collapses to reveal a poorly-drawn old man who seems embarrassed and humiliated. Complete the Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda and the King laugh at Link's being confused over everything that had happened. Zelda's refusal of giving Link a kiss is nowhere near as entertaining as it was in the Zelda animated series that ran as part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show. These rather lame moments are complemented with some of the most infamous dialog ever written.

Ah yes, the dialog. Thanks to YouTube, the game's quotes have become Internet memes on account of their being incredibly cheesy. They are so lame that they end up being quite hilarious. Some of the more infamous quotes are as follows:

"Squadala! We're off!"
"Lamp oil, rope, bombs? You want it? It's your, my friend, as long as you have enough rubies."
"I'm so hungry, I could eat an Octorok!"
"After you've scrubbed all the floors in Hyrule, then we can talk about mercy."

This is just a small sampling of such terrible dialog. It is little wonder that they are used so often in Internet videos: their absurdity tends to tickle people's funny bones.

As if the quotes themselves were not bad enough, the voice acting is likely to make people cringe. Link does not sound heroic at all, and Zelda sounds like a valley girl at times. A young boy in Wand of Gamelon has a cringing voice to go with his ugly appearance, Lupay and Gibdo sound like they have lung cancer, and a fisherman sounds just plain annoying. Some of the voice acting from characters such as the king and Ganon fares slightly better, with the former sounding like the authority figure that he is, and the latter sounding somewhat menacing. As a whole, however, the voice acting is laughable, and is often seen as a possible reason as to why Nintendo has yet to add voice acting to any official Zelda games.

You also get the sense that the games exist in a different time line from the normal series altogether due to some inconsistencies with the official titles. "Rubies" should be "rupees," Hyrule does not have a king in most Zelda games, and somehow, the name of the hero who will save the land is already known, as opposed to being a title like the Hero of Time. Granted, the series only had four official games at this point, the most recent at the time being Link's Awakening, but some of these oddities are unforgivable. Nintendo apparently did not offer much input in the creation of these games, and it shows: Phillips' Zelda time line is in a league of its own, and a bad one at that. When Capcom developed a few hand held Zelda games, they were much more faithful to the series, perhaps due to a greater amount of supervision from Nintendo.

The cut scenes in Zelda's Adventure are live action rather than animated. Whether this was due to criticism for the animated movies of its predecessors, I cannot say. What I can say is that the quality became even worse than before, if that is even humanly possible. The acting is so terrible, a young child could perform better than all the actors. In the opening movie, you see several still frames of a necklace being placed on Zelda...talk about cutting costs. Add some unconvincing scenery, and you have something that is not so bad it is good, but something so bad it is just plain bad. Perhaps it is little wonder why this game's cut scenes are not parodied nearly as much as the previous games: they are more cringing than humorous to watch. They should never have seen the light of day.

It was a mistake for someone other than Nintendo to try and create Zelda games, especially since they have resulted in some of the most laughably bad cut scenes in existence. Hardly anyone would remember them if they had not shown up on YouTube and subsequently became Internet fads. To this day, parody videos featuring the cut scenes are being added constantly, and there is no end in sight as long as people continue to enjoy them. Still, Phillips should be ashamed for even letting the cut scenes, and the games that they were in, see the light of day. Even the animated series was more faithful to the classic games than the CD-I games were. Zelda games have since been put back on track, and titles of far better quality have been released. Hopefully, we will never see a travesty like the CD-I cut scenes plague a Zelda game ever again.