The story begins in the early 90's during the Great War between Sega and Nintendo. Sega had been working on an add-on for the Genesis that would play CD's and was about ready to release it. Realizing that CD technology would soon supplant cartridges, Nintendo began to develop their own CD playing addition to the SNES.

Nintendo partnered with Sony to develop a new console that played both SNES carts and CD-based games. The "Super Disc" system was to be Nintendo's answer to the Sega CD. However, there was a dispute between Sony "and Nintendo over licensing and profit sharing. The partnership was ended and Sony would go on to develop their own game console based on the CD game technology they had been working on with Nintendo (perhaps you've heard of it).

Nintendo then turned to the Dutch electronics company Philips to help them with their CD plans. The agreement was that Philips would help make the CD add-on for the SNES, and in return, Nintendo would allow some of their biggest franchises, Mario and Zelda, to appear on the Philips CD-I console. Nintendo would eventually abandon the plans to upgrade the SNES, instead choosing to focus their resources on developing their upcoming 64-bit console. Despite the death of the Super Disc console, Nintendo held up their end of the deal with Philips and allowed 4 Nintendo-licensed games to be released for the CD-I. The first game, Hotel Mario, featured characters from Nintendo's flagship franchise. The other games were the three famous Legend of Zelda titles that have gained so much notoriety.

On October 10, 1993, two Zelda games were released simultaneously for the CD-I. Link: The Faces of Evil, and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon were the first games in the Zelda series ever to appear on a console not made by Nintendo. Both games were action platformers that loosely resembled Link's Awakening, but with no RPG elements. Gameplay was very simple, just jump around and slash things with your sword or blow them up with bombs. The story was delivered by animated cutscenes that are famous for their extremely low quality.

Despite featuring some of their most popular characters, Nintendo had nothing to do with the CD-I titles. The first two games were developed by Animation Magic, which had a budget of only around $600,000 per game (the budget of E.T. for the Atari 2600, considered to be the worst game of all time, was $200,000). With very little money to work with, a lot of corners would have to be cut.

Animation Magic indeed. This is the kind of excellent production quality that a $600,000 budget will get you. Because of budget constraints, the animation work was outsourced to, of all places, Russia. Apparently the frigid wastelands of Siberia were not prime ground for cartooning excellence. It might have been a better idea to just rip scenes from the Zelda cartoon series and place them in the game.

The first two Zelda CD-I games are considered failures seemingly based not on the quality of the games themselves but because of how they measure up to the other games in the series. Gamers expect an expertly developed, polished product from a Zelda title, and instead what they got was a comparatively amatuerish effort. Based on their own merits, these titles are simply average platformers with very below average animation quality.

In 1994, Viridis developed a third Zelda game for the CD-I. Zelda's Adventure was different from the Animation Magic games in almost every way. Viridis dropped the bad animation in favor of another favorite of the mid-90's, FMV.

The gameplay was drastically changed as well. Instead of the platforming action of the first two games, Zelda's Adventure went with a classic top-down view, which looks like a cross between the first Legend of Zelda and a primitive version of Baldur's Gate.

Like the first two titles, the game suffered from a fatally low budget. Live action FMV scenes were shot in a converted office with one wall painted blue for CG backgrounds. Due to lack of space, actors would shoot walking scenes on a treadmill. Despite these awful production methods, Zelda's Adventure was better than the previous two games. However, it was still lacking compared to the official Zelda games. (Zelda's Adventure was only released in Europe, making it much more difficult to find than the other titles, but due to the lack of region lockout on the CD-I, it can be played on American consoles.)

So are the games as bad as everyone says? Probably not, the first two games are pretty typical platformers and the third one is basically a low-rent version of classic Zelda. The laughably bad cutscenes and subpar FMV bring them down and are probably the source of the series' bad reputation. If you're looking for a good game to play, it's not worth the trouble of tracking down a copy. However, if you want some unique items to add to your collection, this series is definitely one to look for.

The CD-I Zelda games didn't sell very well, but that was due in part to the weak sales of the CD-I console itself. Because of their rarity, the games are considered collector's items today. With a little patience, the two Animation Magic games can be found for a reasonable price. Zelda's Adventure is much more difficult to find and will cost upwards of $100 on Ebay.

One major feat that the CD-I did manage to achieve was the first games in the history of the Zelda franchise that starred Princess Zelda as a playable character. Despite being the title character in the series, she has never been playable in any Nintendo-produced Legend of Zelda titles. (C'mon Nintendo, even Tingle has his own game, give Zelda some love and let her star in her own game.) Anyone who wants to be able to play as the princess will have to find themselves a CD-I and get a copy of Wand of Gamelon or Zelda's Adventure.