The Legend of Zelda CD-i games

In 1989, Nintendo signed a deal with Sony to begin development of a CD-ROM-based system known as the SNES-CD (also known as the "Nintendo Play Station", with separated words) to be an add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System that would allow for FMV and larger games. However, Nintendo broke the agreement and instead signed with Philips to make the add-on, which caused Sony to spin off their add-on into its own console called the PlayStation (with "PlayStation" stylized as one word rather than "Play Station" of the logo on the unreleased Super Famicom & CD-ROM combination unit.). After the poor reception of the Sega Mega-CD, Nintendo scrapped the idea of making an add-on entirely. Contracting out to independent studios, Philips subsequently used the characters to create three games for CD-i, with Nintendo taking no part in their development except to give input on the look of the characters based on the artwork from Nintendo's original two titles and that of their respective instruction booklets. Philips insisted that the development studios utilize all aspects of the CD-i's capabilities including FMV, high-resolution graphics, and CD-quality music. All the CD-i games in The Legend of Zelda series were released after ''Link's Awakening but before Ocarina of Time'', as illustrated in the timeline with the relevant games marked with asterisks. ==Casting==

The majority of actors chosen for the series lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Jeffrey Rath and Bonnie Jean Wilbur were cast as Link and Zelda, while Mark Berry played Ganon. Wilbur's husband Paul Wann played various characters as well. The recording sessions were done in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rath and Wilbur later acknowledged in interviews that they did not see the finished product until years later. ==Video games==

Link: The Faces of Evil Paired with Zelda: Wand of Gamelon in a simultaneous release, Link: The Faces of Evil represents the first of the Zelda games to be released by Philips on the CD-i format. Following the traditional Link-saves-Zelda plotline, Faces of Evil was patterned most closely upon Nintendo's previous side-scroller, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. The game broke new ground in the video game industry by using outsourced Russian animation to create all cutscenes, Modern criticism is almost universal in its harsh negativity toward the game and the animated cutscenes have become particular targets of derision. Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon Reversing the traditional Link-saves-Zelda plotline, Wand of Gamelon stars Zelda as she adventures to rescue Link and her father the king who have not returned from their quest. As with Faces of Evil, the game was patterned most closely upon Nintendo's previous side-scroller, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and again features outsourced Russian animation for all cutscenes. Despite the game's similarly mixed contemporary reception along with Faces of Evil, modern critics have almost unanimously derided and ridiculed the game for its inability to live up to modern expectations with the animated cutscenes again having become a particular target of negative reception. ''Zelda's Adventure'' Released nearly eight months after the first two Zelda CD-i games, ''Zelda's Adventure was created by a different third-party developer, Viridis. The game again follows a nontraditional Zelda-saves-Link plotline, but it uses a different game engine than Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon. Whereas the first two CD-i games were patterned on the side-scrolling Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Zelda's Adventure took the top-down The Legend of Zelda as its model. Zelda's Adventure featured FMV cutscenes, but rather than using drawn animation, the game used live-action scenes. Reception for the game was poor, and whereas some modern critics have given more nuanced reviews of the first two games, modern criticism for Zelda's Adventure'' is unanimously negative. ==References==