Zelda's Adventure CD-i
Everyone is aware of Zelda. This game has become a household name it’s become so famous that even people who have never played a video game in their whole lives have heard of Zelda. They may not know anything about it but they heard of it. It’s also highly likely that people who have heard of Zelda know that it’s a Nintendo game, not a Sony, Sega or Xbox game. However not everyone knows that the Zelda franchise has appeared on the Philips CD-i in the mid 1990’s. Most people haven’t even heard of the CD-i as it wasn’t always advertised as a gaming system. It was advertised as a multimedia system and despite being considered a failure as far as games go, the CD Interactive was actually a very widespread system that was used all over the world for many different reasons.
It found most of it’s success in the professional or business world, being used in kiosks, workplaces, government departments and even schools. It did also get it’s share of games but the problem was the vast majority of them weren’t very good as it wasn’t designed for games really. After Nintendo’s deal with Sony to make a CD based console together failed Nintendo approached Philips to make a similar deal. This never materialized but as a result of their negotiations they acquired the rights to be able to publish games using Nintendo’s most profitable franchises – Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda. The CD-i ended up getting one Mario game and three Zelda games. Two of the Zelda games actually had Princess Zelda as the player’s character and one of these games was called Zelda’s Adventure.
This game was considered the best of the “unholy triforce” of Zelda games on the CD-i. It was also the rarest and consequently the most expensive and it has only gone up in price over the years. The game was most similar to traditional Zelda games sharing the top down perspective. It used digitized graphics of photographed environments which gave it bit of a unique look but it wasn’t particularly attractive.
From CD-i to Game Boy DMG to Game Boy Color
Fast forward 28 years later after Viridis released Zelda’s Adventure for the CD-i to the year 2024. Indie developer John Lay ported the game to the Game Boy DMG. The game was available through Github, indie homebrew forums and it even found it’s way to RetroArch’s Game Boy core content downloader. This was a great port of the game as the style of game is far more suited to the Game Boy platform then it is to the CD-i. Though one aspect that couldn’t be ported was the live action FMV cutscenes of the CD-i version, so these were done away with entirely. This new DMG port of the game breathed some new life into an old CD-i classic and done the game justice in it’s execution as it’s quite playable and even enjoyable.
However John Lay wasn’t content to stop there, as good as his achievement was he thought he can go one better and make a port for the Game Boy Color. In November 2025, the current month as of the writing of this article, the new version for the Game Boy Color called Zelda’s Adventure DX was released. The game features full GB Color graphics meaning it had custom colorization not just palette swaps. Every scene was enhanced to match the GBC style of Oracle of Ages, Oracle of Seasons and Links Awakening DX. It has higher environmental visibility – better contrast, clearer characters and more polished tilesets. It has GBC specific enhancements inspired by the Oracle games: smoother transitions, color-based puzzle cues, upgrade UI, more expressive sprites and improved maps. The whole game was rebuilt from the ground up, not a simple re-color but John Lay rebuilt the entire DMG de-make for the GBC adding: new features, higher fidelity, better controls, tighter camera and more overall polish. The overall result is a brand new version of Zelda’s Adventure that’s a completely different game than the Game Boy DMG port.
Relevant Links
- John Lay’s Zelda’s Adventure Itch.Io page [https://john-lay.itch.io/zeldas-adventure] Download Zelda’s Adventure DX (most important link)
- Zelda’s Adventure DX game review YouTube video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkdrh2xS-xM] From the YouTube channel: Video Game Esoterica
