Let's just get this out of the way first. My name is Dan Bee and I have an attraction to bad games. Like that person you know who always ends up with the worst person for them in their relationships, well that's me with games. Don’t get me wrong, I love good games too. Here, I will show you what I mean.
If you’re familiar at all with the Legend of Zelda series you probably agree there are some good if not great games in that series. The first one on the NES is a classic that really paves the way for so many games that came after it. Today we have beloved games like Zelda Breath of the Wild which is a modern classic. However looking back to the Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link on the original Nintendo we have what can be considered arguably a classic as well. It gets fuzzy there because some people really didn’t like the direction Nintendo decided to take with the series and the company never revisited that style. This is where the Zelda CDi games come into play.
The Style of the CDi Zelda platformer games were obviously based upon its predecessor, the side scrolling Zelda 2. However the gameplay was nowhere near as good as what came before it. Over the years these games got so much flack for being horrible and it would seem rightfully so.
Flash forward to 2020 and we have a developer named Dopply who decided to take on the task of making these games playable. Using assets from the original game but starting from scratch other than those Dopply finished and released the game after 4 years of work. The results are something to behold.
Everything has been upscaled to HD specs, the sprites are crisp, the framerate is solid, and the controls are tight. Everything the original game was lacking has been added in here. It has transformed a barely playable mess into something playable and even, dare I say, enjoyable.
Many people like to crap on the cutscenes of these games but at the time of release both games got praise for the smooth animation and interesting stylized art. Now is a good time you can really take a little time to understand and appreciate what the originals developers were probably trying to accomplish overall.
So are we talking about a good or a bad game here? Honestly, I see redemption written all over these. Sure they still aren’t great when you compare them to most games in the Zelda lineage but if you love the series and missed out on these this is the perfect opportunity to check them out.
You can watch a quick video overview here.