Cd-i Zelda Games: Concept Artwork and Interview
Posted on May 02 2010 by Mases Hagopian
I saw this over at Zelda Chronicles and it really just made me shake my head. Believe it or not, the unofficial Zelda titles that were released for the Phillips Cd-I console actually had some concept artwork and you can view some of the images below. Additionally, there has been an interview with Dale DeSharone, creator of the first two Zelda Cd-i titles. Below is a tidbit of the interview that summarizes the lasting effect of the Cd-i games and is more or less a justification as to why the quality of the games were not up to par with that of the Nintendo Zelda titles.
Yeah, we had been aware of criticism following the release of the games. I can understand that people were disappointed, I think probably in terms of… I guess they made comments about animation, but also in terms of gameplay and design. Given the amount of time we had, and what we were creating at the time in terms of company infrastructure, I thought we did a good job. You know, we weren’t Nintendo. And Nintendo makes fantastic games, which are exceptionally well tuned in terms of gameplay. And they have amazing game designers. So, I would imagine that anything was going to fall short of that, in terms of the amount of time and energy that Nintendo puts into gameplay. Given the amount of time we had, and the fact that we were developing two at once, on a platform that was pretty limited, although the Nintendo machine at that time was also pretty limited and they did a great job with it… At the same time Philips was expecting, and I think we were all expecting, more graphics, more production values in terms of music, visuals, animation… So there was a lot of push there. You put effort into that, and it doesn’t go elsewhere. I felt that, given the circumstances, we did a good job. It could have been better, of course it wasn’t Nintendo.
You can check out the full interview along with several other pieces of information and screenshots over at Hardcore Gaming 101. Click read more to see some of the concept artwork that was included in the game.
You can see these images along with a couple of sentences of description along with them over at Harcore Gaming 101.
So what do you think of the Cd-i titles. Have any of you out there played them before? Did this interview change your view of them? I’ve never been able to get my hands on them myself, but someday I would really like to do just that. We always hear how much of a disaster all three of these games were, but every once in awhile we get a viewpoint that says they aren’t that bad. In the interview with the creator, I think he does a good job at justifying his case. They were on a tight schedule, a tight budget, and priorities were set towards audio capabilities along with the animation. He acknowledges that they aren’t as skillful as the Nintendo team so it wouldn’t be fair to compare them to Zelda titles developed by Nintendo. I suppose it is just a matter of opinion with the overwhelming majority of fans who think that the games are just a complete abomination. Let us know what you think by posting in the comments below.
