It was 1993. Nintendo had a problem, or maybe they had an opportunity—it depends on which historian you ask. They had flirted with Sony to make a CD-ROM add-on for the Super Nintendo, then bailed on the deal. To smooth things over with their other partner, Philips, Nintendo handed over the keys to the kingdom. They allowed Philips to use their most precious characters for the CD-i, a "multimedia" machine that cost about $700. The result? Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon.
It’s a weird game. Honestly, calling it "weird" is being polite. For decades, it’s been the poster child for "so bad it's good," fueled by a billion YouTube Poop memes and those jarring, hand-drawn cinematic cutscenes that look like they were sketched in a fever dream. But if you actually sit down to play it, you realize it isn't just a meme. It's a fascinating, frustrating, and strangely ambitious relic of an era when nobody knew what a "CD-ROM game" was supposed to be.
The Philips CD-i Disaster That Actually Happened
Most people think Nintendo made this. They didn't. This was developed by Animation Magic, a team based in Russia and the United States. They had a tiny budget—roughly $600,000 for two games—and about a year to finish. If you’ve ever wondered why the animation looks like that, there’s your answer. The artists were working with limited tools and a mandate to make things look "next-gen" by using the massive storage capacity of a disc.
The plot is simple enough. King Harkinian goes to Gamelon to help Duke Onkled. He disappears. Link goes after him. He disappears too. Finally, Zelda decides to handle it herself. This was actually a big deal back then. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon was one of the first times Princess Zelda was the protagonist, beating Echoes of Wisdom by over thirty years.
But the gameplay? It’s a mess. The CD-i controller was basically a TV remote with a directional nub. It wasn't built for precise platforming. Zelda moves like she’s walking through knee-deep molasses. You press up to jump, which is a cardinal sin in 2D side-scrollers. You have to stab enemies with a sword that has the range of a toothpick. It's hard. Not "Dark Souls" hard, but "this controller is actively fighting me" hard.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About the Cutscenes
We’ve all seen the clips. Morshu the shopkeeper telling you he can’t give credit. The King wondering what’s for dinner. These scenes have lived a second life on the internet for twenty years. But when you look at them in the context of 1993, they were technically impressive. Full-motion video (FMV) was the future. While the NES was pushing out 8-bit sprites, the CD-i was showing "cartoon" movies.
The problem was the aesthetic. The lead artist, Igor Razboff, and his team used a style that didn't mesh with the established high-fantasy look of the series. The characters were expressive in all the wrong ways. They leaned into the screen, their faces contorted, and the voice acting was... enthusiastic. It feels more like a Saturday morning cartoon produced on a shoestring budget than a legendary adventure. Yet, there is a charm to it. It’s sincere. It’s trying so hard to be "cinematic" before the technology could actually handle it.
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The Mechanical Nightmare of Gamelon
If you ignore the memes, the actual game structure is a bizarre hybrid. You have a map screen where you pick stages. You collect rubies (the game calls them "rubies," not "rupees") to buy items like lamp oil, ropes, and bombs.
Everything costs money. Everything.
You want to see in a dark cave? Better have lamp oil. You want to climb? Better have a rope. If you run out of resources in the middle of a level, you’re basically stuck. You have to grind for money by killing low-level enemies over and over. It’s a repetitive loop that kills the pacing. Most players in the 90s never made it past the first few areas because the friction was just too high.
- The Sword: Your primary weapon. It feels laggy.
- The Wand: The namesake of the game. You use it to "capture" enemies, which is a neat idea that feels half-baked in execution.
- The Shield: It’s automatic. If you stand still, Zelda holds it up. It’s one of the few things that actually works well.
The level design is vertical and confusing. Because the CD-i had slow load times, moving between screens often involves a brief pause where the world just... stops. Imagine playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but every time you move to a new screen, the game has a mini-stroke. That’s the Gamelon experience.
Why We Can't Stop Talking About It
So why does it matter? Is it just because it's bad? Not really. It matters because it represents a "lost" era of Nintendo history. It’s a peek into an alternate reality where Nintendo didn't have total control over their IP.
In the early 2000s, sites like Zelda Elements and The Hyrule Fantasy started documenting these games. They were treated like urban legends. "Did you hear there’s a Zelda game where she fights a giant head called Ganon that looks like a Muppet?" Eventually, the emulator CD-i Free and later MAME made it possible for people to play it without spending hundreds of dollars on eBay for a rotting Philips console.
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The memes saved it. Without the "Mah boi" jokes and the Morshu remixes, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon would have been forgotten like Hotel Mario or Link: The Faces of Evil. Instead, it became a cultural touchstone for the first generation of the social internet. It’s the ultimate "kusoge"—a Japanese term for a "crap game" that is somehow endearing despite its flaws.
Real Expert Insights: The Preservation Angle
Game historians like those at The Video Game History Foundation emphasize that even "bad" games are worth preserving. The source code for the CD-i Zelda games is mostly lost to time. What we have are the physical discs. These discs are prone to "disc rot," where the reflective layer oxidizes and becomes unreadable.
Finding a working copy of Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon is getting harder and more expensive. Ten years ago, you could find it for $50. Today? Expect to pay triple that, or more if the jewel case isn't cracked. Collectors want it precisely because it’s a black sheep. It’s the game Nintendo wants you to forget, which makes the gaming community want to remember it even more.
A Different Perspective: Was it Actually Better Than We Think?
There is a small, vocal minority of CD-i defenders. They point out that the music is actually pretty good. It’s redbook audio—basically CD quality. The synth tracks are moody and atmospheric, far beyond what the SNES was capable of in terms of raw fidelity.
The background art is often hand-painted and beautiful. If you strip away the clunky sprites and the terrifying FMV faces, the environments have a dark, fairytale vibe that feels more "Brother's Grimm" than "Disney." It’s a tone that wouldn't reappear in the series until Majora's Mask or Twilight Princess.
Also, Zelda is a proactive hero here. She doesn't wait to be rescued. She talks to NPCs, manages her inventory, and slays monsters. For a game released in 1993, that was a progressive take on the character, even if the execution was bogged down by hardware that was never meant for gaming.
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Navigating the Legacy
If you’re looking to experience Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon today, you have two real choices. You can hunt down a CD-i 220 or 450 and a physical disc, which will cost you a fortune and probably break within a month. Or, you can look into the fan-made PC remakes.
In 2020, a developer named Dopply rebuilt both The Wand of Gamelon and The Faces of Evil from scratch for Linux and Windows. He didn't just port them; he fixed them. He added widescreen support, improved the frame rate, and—most importantly—allowed for traditional controller mapping.
When you play the "Fixed" version, the game’s core identity remains, but the frustration evaporates. You realize there was a decent 2D action game buried under the technical limitations of the Philips hardware. It’s still weird, and the cutscenes are still nightmare fuel, but it’s playable.
What You Should Do Next
If you are a fan of the Zelda series, you owe it to yourself to at least watch a full playthrough. It provides a context for the series that you won't get anywhere else. It shows what happens when a franchise loses its "Nintendo Polish" and falls into the hands of developers who are doing their best with zero resources.
- Watch the original cutscenes: Look for "uncompressed" versions on YouTube to see the art as it was intended.
- Check out the fan remakes: If you can find the Dopply versions (they were taken down but exist in the corners of the internet), they are the definitive way to play.
- Research the "Nintendo-Sony-Philips" triangle: Understanding the corporate drama of the early 90s makes the existence of this game make a lot more sense.
Don't just dismiss it as a joke. It’s a piece of history that proves how much the "feel" of a game depends on the hardware it’s built for. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon isn't a "real" Zelda game to many, but it is a real part of gaming's messy, experimental, and hilarious evolution.
Go find a video of the ending. Watch Zelda trap Ganon in the wand. It’s abrupt, it’s strange, and it’s perfectly emblematic of a time when the rules of video games were being written on the fly.
Next Steps for the Curious Collector
If you're serious about exploring this era, start by looking into the Philips CD-i homebrew scene. There are still people writing code for this dead console. After that, compare the map layout of Gamelon to Zelda II on the NES. You'll see a lot of "borrowed" DNA that makes the game feel like a spiritual, albeit distorted, successor. Finally, look up the voice actors. Many of them were local talent in the Massachusetts area where Animation Magic was based, and their stories about the recording sessions are some of the only surviving first-hand accounts of the game's development.