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The trilogy of Zelda titles on the CDi have been a topic of interest and curiosity for many Zelda fans, mostly due to their bad reputation on the franchise from one of the worst decisions Nintendo has ever made in their career in terms of business decision, with the partnership with Phillips and their CDi console leading to the creation of one of their biggest competitors, Sony and their PlayStation console.

The first 2 side-scrolling CD-i titles, Link: Faces of Evil, Zelda: Wand of Gamelon, got full fan remasters just a couple of years ago back in 2020, with the remasters fixing a lot of the issues that many people throughout the years complaint about the original games, alongside a lot of other great quality of life features that make the games a worthwhile experience. However, that still left the original, and the odd one of the bunch, Zelda's Adventure out of the picture, since that title had a whole different play-style compared to the other 2, with this one being a top-down styled game, in the same vein as the classic 2D Zelda experience, albeit, with a lot of flaws and cons, which the the CDi releases are well known for.

Homebrew developer, John Lay, has worked on a complete recreation of Zelda's Adventure for quite some time, but this isn't a remaster like the other 2 titles, instead, Lay opted to recreate the game from the groundup on the Game Boy.

Background​

In the 1990s Nintendo made a deal with Philips to develop 3 Zelda titles. The first 2 were side scrolling platformers, similar to Zelda II, and the third was a traditional top-down action adventure game.


Zelda’s Adventure looked interesting and I thought it would be fun to play on a portable system. I chose the Game Boy because of the existing Zelda games on the system.


The game sticks to the aesthetics of Link’s Awakening, but also incorporates some features from Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons.


This is a complete port of the CDi original and was developed in GB Studio, with a few modifications. Thanks to Beatscribe for composing the music. I hope you enjoy playing the game as much as enjoyed making it.

In order to create the game, John Lay worked with GB Studio, and created the gameplay and aesthetics to be similar to those found in Link's Awakening, with some additional inspiration from the Oracle titles as well. With this, Lay has successfully recreated Zelda's Adventure 1:1 into the Game Boy, keeping the overall layout, structure and story found in the original, with the charming graphical and gameplay style of Link's Awakening.

Your Quest​

It is the Age of Darkness.

The evil Ganon has captured the young hero Link. Only Princess Zelda can rescue him. Her journey will be difficult, filled with many challenges and mysteries. Armed only with the advice of the wise court astronomer Gaspra, and the guidance of Shurmak, Zelda must set out on her journey deep into the uncharted southeastern region of Hyrule, known as Tolemac.

Before she begins, Gaspra warns her that the only way to save Link is to collect the seven Celestial Signs that Ganon has stolen, and that she must overcome one final obstacle: Ganon himself. Once she succeeds, she gains the knowledge and strength to rescue Link and brings the magical land of Hyrule into the Age of Lightness.

​

 

[Lumstar]

It's a poorly made neologism. "De-" is a prefix that'd denotes reversal, to "demake" something would be to undo it, to take it apart, and there is already a word for that: 'unmake'. The game is made again, therefore "re-", remade. Etymology has structure for a reason. Whoever came up with this word doesn't understand how English works or how videogames are remade or ported.

Demake usually implies a game is in some way unauthorized. Many games were brought over from hardware that's orders of magnitude more powerful, requiring them to be (in the computing sense of the word) more like remakes.

Heh almost every fighting game on the system would be called a "demake" if made today.

 

[nWo]

I love this kind of work. Gotta play it as soon as possible.

 

[HinaNaru Cutie]

It would have been nice if it had the graphics for Gameboy advance, not the Gameboy one...sorry to state but not into the Gameboy graphics at all that much, but it's nice to see it been remastered..

 

[pustal]

Do you want to come up with a better term? Remakes are usually made for newer consoles, not older ones. We needed a term to differentiate between the two, and demake has a good sound to it. The word made sense to me the first time I heard it, so I could hardly call it poorly made.

No we don't, why would we? If you say the game was remade from the CDi to the GameBoy, what confusion is there to make? And what need would there to stated technical specificities in he name? If there is need, add an adjective.

 

[DarkCoffe64]

You know craptendo's ain't gonna go after this, 'cus they'd rather pretend to forget those CDI games exist at all than acknowledge them, heh. I'd love to see someone taking the CDI cast and making like a new game with them, make Morshu the main chars, going out to save, uh... Lonk and Zalde from the evil forces of Gonan, lol.
This looks pretty dope, I'mma check it out.

 

[Poirot7]

this is how zelda is supposed to be, and with the leaked TOTK, it looks like christmas.big thanks to John Lay

 

[Metoroid0]

i hate when people make up words. demake is not a word, this is a remake, game has been RE made, no matter if it looks older or worst than original. jesus... demake...ptf...

 

[JuanMena]

It sucks

 

[AmandaRose]

i hate when people make up words.

Do you hate every word in the world?

All words have been made up by people at some point lol

 

[sarkwalvein]

Do you hate every word in the world?

All words have been made up by people at some point lol

Well, new words are created and old words slowly change their meaning every day, languages are living organisms.

E.g. deer, cognate of the German Tier and originally also meaning just "animal" now means that particular animal with weird horns. It happens all the time.

 

[AmandaRose]

Well, new words are created and old words slowly change their meaning every day, languages are living organisms.

E.g. deer, cognate of the German Tier and originally also meaning just "animal" now means that particular animal with weird horns. It happens all the time.

Thats kinda the point I was trying to make in the reply to the person that said they hate made up words. All words were made up all words will eventually get replaced with more made up words.

 

[Necron]

Why the heck are you guys discussing words here? lol make a separate thread for that.

On topic, it's nice seeing these kinds of projects. I'll add it to my play list of GB games to play (which kinda keeps increasing haha). Also, there seem to be some bugs still, so I'll wait a bit until I get to it and in the meantime donate some $$$ so the developer feels compeled to fix those.

 

[AmandaRose]

Why the heck are you guys discussing words here? lol make a separate thread for that.

On topic, it's nice seeing these kinds of projects. I'll add it to my play list of GB games to play (which kinda keeps increasing haha). Also, there seem to be some bugs still, so I'll wait a bit until I get to it and in the meantime donate some $$$ so the developer feels compeled to fix those.

It is an awesome project but in my experience of playing it doesn't have some bugs it has a shit load of bugs. Every few minutes I get a guru meditation error and have to reload lol.

Being one of the few people on here who actually owned a CDI with the 3 Zelda games and Hotel Mario I have really enjoyed revisiting the Faces of Evil and Wand Of Gamelon ports on PC and can't wait for all the bugs in Zelda's adventure to be ironed out.

Now we just need Hotel Mario to be ported. Unlike the 3 zelda games Hotel Mario was actually rather good.

 

[HarveyHouston]

IMHO, it's a great attempt, but it doesn't really capture the essence of the original. It feels too much like Link's Awakening to me, which is fine, but I expected more originality.

 

[EPgrouch]

looks good.

 

[Shape]

Holy S#&*

 

[IRUZZ]

Seems like an upgrade to me

 

[ChiefReginod]

Game Boy Studio sure has come a long way.

 

[depaul]

Seeing that CDI Zelda, reminded me of very old times when players 'mocked' games made in the west. Quality games only came from Japan

 

[Clydefrosch]

ok, i guess it was naive to expect this to play at all like links awakening did.
its already different from the original, so it wouldn't have hurt to make movement more 8 direction-y