One fan manages to create a demake of one ofThe Legend of Zeldaseries' critically maligned Philips CD-i entries,Zelda’s Adventure, onto the Game Boy handheld. Fanmade demakes have been a consistently appearing concept within video game communities, where fans wonder what a modern game would look like if it was constrained to the hardware of an older platform. Fans have shown off what games likeBloodborne,Elden Ring, and evenResident Evil 4’s remake would look like retrofitted onto older tech. Sometimes fans will remake a game that was much less successful, like the infamousThe Legend of ZeldaPhilips CD-i games.For those unaware, these were three exclusive games released in the 1990s under a deal between Nintendo and Philips. The first two were side-scrolling platformers in a similar vein toZelda 2on the NES, while the third one,Zelda’s Adventure, was a top-down adventure similar to the first NES game andZelda: A Link to the Past. Without supervision from Nintendo however, they were all criticized for being incredibly mediocre and ugly looking. While Nintendo would rather keep these games condemned by history, there are somefans interested in theZeldaCD-i games, critically maligned as they are. One fan made a demake of the third game to fit on the Game Boy.RELATED:Next Nintendo Switch Online GBA Game May Have LeakedThis was created by John Lay, an Irish indie game developer who released this demake for absolutely free on the itch.io website. Unlike other games in the series, this title sees Princess Zelda saving a captured Link from Ganon. According to Lay, the concept was interesting enough that he thought it’d be fun to play on a portable system. As a result, he chose the Game Boy as the intended platform, with the aesthetics ofLink’s Awakeningand features of theZelda Oracleduology.
This demake is a complete port of the original CD-i game, being developed with GB Studio, a retro game creator that can specifically make Game Boy titles. An accompanying video that Lay posted to Twitter showed comparisons between the two. The work that went into this is impressive, giving the game a retro feel, with little loading in-between rooms. Fans can play thisremake ofZelda’s Adventureeither through a browser or even on the original Game Boy hardware.
This isn’t the first time that a developer took toremaking a game from theZeldaPhilips' CD-i trilogy. One fan remade versions of the previous two entries,Link: The Faces of EvilandZelda: The Wand of Gamelonin 2020, which includes widescreen, subtitles, and revamped gameplay. It’s likely that Nintendo won’t ever acknowledge these games intentionally, but fans are dedicated enough to keep the memory of these games alive.
TheZelda’s Adventuredemake is available for free via itch.io download.
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