I haven't really played the first two CD-i Zeldas either, but ever since enjoying the Virtual Boy, the Sega 32X and Windows ME, I've come to the conclusion that most negative opinions of technology online are complete bullshit. For the record, I would love to give Wand of Gamelon/Faces of Evil a try, but CD-i decks seem rather expensive, I can't ever seem to find one for a reasonable price. I'd just play them with CD-Rs.

If you think Wand of Gamelon and/or Faces of Evil are bad but haven't played them (or you have without any information on them), then read this article at HG101.

http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/...

Given how many people love Zelda II, maybe there's a chance a few of you will give Wand of Gamelon and/or Faces of Evil a try? I'd love to gather some fresh opinions.

Note: This thread doesn't concern Zelda's Adventure, which is an overhead game like Zelda 1 and A Link to the Past. Zelda's Adventure was also developed by a completely different company than Wand of Gamelon/Faces of Evil.

He seems slow and clunky, but yet moves across the screen at a surprising pace. That's all I remember other than control pad sucked

Yeah I have. They still suck incredibly hard no matter how much they sort of try to emulate the feel of Zelda II.

I never tried Windows ME though, but I did play Virtual Boy and the 32X, and I'll have to vehemently disagree with you there. I find them both to be utter and complete crap pieces of hardware. Not necessarily in what they achieve from a technological standpoint, but their application as game machines is just horrendous.

But, that's what's fun about all of this; different perspectives  

I'm a big fan of hardcoregaming101, great resource for finding out about obscure games. Haven't played any cdi zeldas, don't plan too 

I own both CD-I games. They are unplayable shit.

I'd like to try them for sure, but I would do it through emulation before buying anything.

I've played and beaten Link: Faces of Evil. It wasn't remotely as bad as most sources claim, and I actually enjoyed some of it. The backgrounds are gorgeous. Hard to fully evaluate it since I was using a remote controller instead of a proper gamepad, but it's certainly playable.

I actually want to get a CDI and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon.
Getting to play as Zelda, and a psychopath, bloody thirsty, murderous version of her who also happens to have tracts of land as flat as an ironing board? HELL YES, sign me in for that fun.  

I don't believe you. There's at least one part that requires pure dumb luck to get past and the player will die a hundred times before either giving up or dying another hundred times. It's hose dung. There isn't even anything clever about it: it's just a few enemies moving back and forth on platforms above with random projectiles and you can't hurt them until you get up there with them. Being hit is almost certain death and making it to the top without being hit is just short of impossible.

If you emulated it and used save states or cheats or something to pass it then your evaluation of the game does not count!
 

Did you know if you stand still, the shield works? Says so right in the HG101 article.

Nope, I beat it on real hardware (a LG GDI-700), about a year ago. Took roughly 10 hours, or a bit less.

I don't remember the spot you're describing -- which area is it in? As I recall, for a lot of the game, the trick is understanding the difference between what the platforms and hitboxes appear to be, and what they actually are. There was at least one area toward the end with a really nasty series of jumps -- I remember having to do that a dozen times or so -- and then one boss I looked at a walkthrough for, since I couldn't tell if I was hurting him or not (I was, I just had to be more persistent with the strategy I was using).

It's a very forgiving game for the most part, given that you have infinite continues and there's basically no penalty for dying.

I used to play (I think it was Faces of Evil) on the demo kiosk at Montgomory Ward every time I was at the mall. I really liked it, but of course this was a demo kiosk... and I was like 10.

Yes, but as I recall I could would get hit on my way up before I could land and block and it would cause a cascade of hits.

It was a snow stage, if I recall correctly. It was a room where you start at the bottom and there are multiple layers to get up to the exit on the top. There are projectile-throwing enemies on each level and you have to jump a few times to get all the way up.
I gave up 16 years ago.

^I think I remember having a similar issue, and then realizing I was tackling the areas in the wrong order (and, I'm assuming, needed an item I didn't have yet).

Are there actually emulators for the CD-i? I've never heard of any before, but I've always wanted to try the CD-i Zelda games.

I thought the issue with 32x was more along the lines of it didn't represent a particularly big leap in games, compared to the hype, and it was ridiculously expensive when it debuted.

I had a friend who owned one (along with a Sega CD), and I just remember the games being kind of "meh", especially once I weighted that against the prices I'd seen advertised.
(and thought about how many SNES games I could get for the price!)
 

That was my impression as well. I remember seeing it for sale for around $200, so you'd need to spend $370 to play 1 game if you didn't have a Genesis, and about $500 to play a CDX game if you had none of the previous consoles.

The 32x is a fine piece of hardware, just Sega never did anything special with it. It's also pretty difficult to utilize the palettes and graphic enhancements compared to the Genesis and Sega CD, so it's not surprising that there weren't that many new/pushing the hardware to the limits games.

As for Windows ME - that was pure garbage. That OS blue screened more often than anything else I had ever experienced and ended up switching to Windows 2000 at the time.

Yea, the 32x was a pretty good leap in technology, but the games didn't use it for anything more than color. Or trying 3D stuff it wasn't really ready to do. Heck, look how many games used the genesis for some graphic elements, because they already knew how to program on it. Most of them were genesis games with better colors.  Then you have Metal Head in there just to hint that it could do something more. 

With After Burner, Space Harrier, Shadow Squadren, and Star Wars Arcade, they really had the on-rails shooters covered.  Then with Metal Head\T-Mek being kinda close, you didn't have that great of a varity of games. If there was an RPG for it, I'd hate to see what it sold for now adays. 
 

Seriously! lol

I think there were a few games that utilized the new graphic method, but most of them relied on the tile based VDP. Don't get me wrong, some of the games (like Mortal Kombat 2) were better on the 32x, but not by a whole lot. Hell, some aspects of MK2 are still better on the SNES (like the acid pool background). I think the other issue with the 32x is that it came out so late in the Genesis's life cycle that people were already planning on snagging the Saturn or N64, or even the PS1. Would you rather spend $200 on an expansion for your current console, or $300 for a brand new, more powerful system, knowing that Sega was about to drop support on the Genesis family?

Hmm, and RPG for the 32x....
 

Don't speak such blasphemy. I don't want a 32x and the lack of RPGS means I can safely pretend the system doesn't exist. ;D

Also the CDI games really do suck. The animation is hilariously campy in that so bad it's entertaining way but the gameplay does not deserve defenders. Enemies spawn on screen next to your sprite. That shits unplayable and just bad programing. The overworld map is pretty, and the games were pretty colorful. Otherwise garbage.

I wanted to like Zeldas adventure but it's plagued by tiny screens and horrendous loading time. Like if the original Zelda had you wait 15 seconds everytime you moved to a new map section.

I have been using Windows ME this year on a couple different Pentium 4 and Pentium M based systems (with good drivers!) and it has been fantastic to use, nothing like its reputation at all. Like the Virtual Boy and 32X, it's wrongfully accused. I'd love to give the CD-i a chance.

I think the most complaints came before any service packs, so if you're running the latest SP, you're probably going to have a good experience, especially if you're not doing any development. I'd still never use ME even with the latest SP's just for the simple fact it doesn't have file or folder security, so I'd use Windows 2000 in place of ME (though, I'd never go back that far).

Plus, ME is so easily hackable, there's no point in running it these days (unless it was required by a specific piece of software, but then I'd just run it offline).

Windows ME never had a service pack. I have tried stock OEM Windows ME and it works great, the unofficial service pack someone at MSFN made (which contains all individual updates from Microsoft) works good too.

Windows ME (and 9x overall) is so outdated, who is going to write a virus for it or try to hack it? I use Windows 98SE and ME all the time even today.

I want to play them but the battery of my CD-i died (i own more models but this one was the only one left with a working battery). Happily I beat Hotel Mario just in time (fun game). Doesn't even boot up now, other models do though.

Now I have to see if I can fix it or find someone that is able to. It's a big flaw of the system.

Uh-oh. I haven't turned on my CD-i in at least 15 years. What happens when the battery dies?!