As unlikely as it may seem, the Zelda saga was not confined to Nintendo consoles. In 1991, Philips announced a partnership with Big N with the aim of releasing a CD-Rom player to plug into the Super Nintendo console. This project will not succeed in the end, but will allow Philips to exploit the juicy Zelda license and release three titles for its CD-I system: Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon And Link: the Faces of Evil were released simultaneously in October 1993 while Zelda’s Adventure (the only installment in the saga in which Princess Zelda is the central playable character) was released in June 1994. Unanimously recognized as the worst episodes of the series, the heaviness of their gameplay is matched only by the blandness of the adventure and the unhealthy and overplayed side of the cutscenes made possible by the use of CD-Rom media, a major innovation for the time. And yet, these three games had (and still have!) their small success on the Internet where the files and videos on these not so forgotten opuses are legion, as are the gifs showing the strange and jerky animations of the famous cutscenes.
Some developers are riding on this popularity; this is the case of Limited Run Games which proudly proclaims, in the language of Shakespeare: “Spiritual successor to two gruesome heroic-fantasy adventure games, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is an all-new interactive animated adventure”. It’s hard not to see in this duo of horror Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon And Link: the Faces of Evil. Indeed, the similarities are numerous, starting with the small animation of the trailer which inevitably recalls that of the Philips CD-I player. We also find these famous cutscenes with their particular style, still just as jerky, with pixelated outlines and improbable camera movements. To support the tribute a little more, Jeffrey Rath and Bonniejean Wilbur, in charge of the voices in 1993, resume service here.
Headed by Seth Fulkerson (better known as Dopply on the Internet), already responsible for a remake of the first two Zelda games on CD-I, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore Still wants to be a little more inspired and more nervous than its two predecessors, even if the style of play (pure and hard 2D platformer seen from the side) remains the same.
We don’t know exactly when it will be released yet. Arzette: The Jewel of Faramorebut the trailer promises that it should arrive sometime in 2023 on PC, Xbox, PS4, PS5 and Switch.