More than 200 animators and artists have spent 18 months recreating the cutscenes from Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and the result is charming and hilarious.
For the uninitiated, the CD-i Zelda games came into existence after a deal was made between Nintendo and Philips to produce a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo. The deal fell through, but Nintendo gave Philips a license to use five of its characters in games on Philips’ own console, the CD-i (short for Compact Disc Interactive). As a result, three Zelda games were released for the CD-i: Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda’s Adventure.
The games were made with limited involvement from Nintendo, a very tight budget, and a short amount of time, and were heavily criticized after release. The first two games featured full-motion video cutscenes that can only be described as “so bad they’re funny” with poor animation, a laughable script, and bad voice acting.
Enter The Zelda CD-i Reanimated Collab. Over 200 animators and artists joined forced to reimagine the cutscenes in numerous animation styles which include hand-drawn, claymation, and CGI. You’ll probably need to watch the video a few times or pause it to fully appreciate the attention to detail that has gone into it, and there are plenty of Easter eggs for eagle-eyed viewers (or should I say Arpagos-eyed viewers?).
It’s clear that each animator has put a lot of love into the scenes they worked on. Some chose to faithfully recreate or add polish to the original scenes, while others went out of their way to exaggerate the bizarre. Others reimagined characters in different styles from other Zelda games. Some scenes look incredibly professional, while others are deliberately goofy. It’s glorious and incredibly fun. Stick around for the great remix that plays during the credits, too.
I’ll post a few screenshots here, but I highly recommend watching the video to fully appreciate the project.
