Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (CD-i) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthough of Philips' 1993 action-adventure game for the Philips CD-i, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.

This CD-i exclusive, released on the same day as its companion game Link: The Faces of Evil, is one of the four games for the system that were officially licensed by Nintendo. The pair was later followed up by Hotel Mario (1994) and Zelda's Adventure (1995).

You might be asking yourself how these games exist at all, let alone in an official capacity. Nintendo has always been fiercely protective of their IPs, so what happened here?

It's all to do with a contract that once existed between Nintendo and Philips. After being jerks to Sony and breaking a deal with them to produce the SNES CD-ROM add-on, Nintendo jumped into bed with a new agreement with Philips to build the drives. No CD drives came of the deal, but the terms of their agreement gave Philips a window of time in which they could create their own games based on Nintendo's material. There's a lot to that story. If you're interested, you should research it a bit. It makes for an interesting read.

So, here's Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and the mother of so many memes.

It's essentially a platformer with a few light adventure elements, but it doesn't feel like any of Nintendo's games, that's for sure. It seems to have gone for a style similar to The Adventure of Link, but as I'm sure you can see from the video, the controls and hit detection are all over the place, and it's often difficult to tell what surfaces you can walk on. It's fairly frustrating to play.

But what gave the game so much notoriety is also what makes Zelda: Wand of Gamelon worth a try: the game is a fascinating mix of horror and lunacy that likes to masquerade itself as a kids' cartoon. I really don't know how to put into words what a beautiful trainwreck it all is.

Those cutscenes will follow you to your grave, I promise. So gross, but so awesome!

And if you can't get enough of that art, make sure you check out Mutant Body Rampage. It's a CD-i beat em up with cutscenes done by the same people that animated this one: https://youtu.be/bF1MYsAT8NI

You have to give credit where it's due, though. Considering the crippling hardware limitations of the CD-i when used as a gaming platform, the gameplay is fairly reasonable, the (non-cinema) graphics look nice, and the soundtrack's not bad at all.

So yeah, The Wand of Gamelon seems to really be trying to go Hannibal Lechter on Zelda. Poor Zelda. I've never hated and loved a game so much at the same time.

But hey, at least you get some good music to defile your eyes to.

And yes, before you ask, I do intend to do the others at some point. :)
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!

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