Get Played - The Legend of Zelda: A Pod to the Cast: Game Slop: Zelda Philips CD-i games with Eva Anderson

Episode Date: May 15, 2023

Eva Anderson joins Heather, Nick and Matt to discuss the Zelda games released for the Philips CD-i, Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure. They talk about the Philips CD-i hardware and library, what these games get wrong about The Legend of Zelda, and more. Donate to the Entertainment Community Fund here: https://entertainmentcommunity.org/ Check out our A Pod to the Cast merch on podswag.com/played, available for a limited time! This month's We Play, You Play: The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd On patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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for the Philips CD-i attachment has fallen apart. We are going to make it still on our own, and as part of the settlement, Nintendo has given us the rights to the Zelda IP, so we can make our own Legend of Zelda games. They can be whatever we want them to be. So let's just blue sky this thing. This is, you know, this is a huge opportunity for us, obviously. This is, you know, what we call in video games, the big show. This is the big time here. We're making, we're using Nintendo IP, so we can't, we cannot mess this up.

All right. So before I begin, I would like to say that as part of my pitching contract and my employment clause that I negotiated this morning, you have to take all of my ideas. It's right here. And I'm looking at the contract. It's written there. Yeah, I'll need to get my reading glasses to review this, but I'll just take this on blind faith for now. Thank you. Hi, my name is Doug Yett. I was hired by Philips this morning.

I expect to be packing my things by 1 p.m. Okay. I've got to say, not a great start. So what do we think of when we think of Zelda? I'll tell you some things I think about. Well, I thought that the steps taken in the second game in the franchise were pretty exciting. I like a side-scrolling adventure for Zelda.

Would you guys say yes? You know what? It's a very popular genre. People love a side-scroller, and I feel like that's completely on the table. Why not? Yeah, I know people didn't love it, but I don't think that's enough of a reason to not do it. I think the Zelda characters could work in a side-scrolling we can build upon this template that's been established absolutely okay great so

instead of you know how mario jumps with a button yes that's confusing to me because why is he jumping with a button when the movement is all on on the little stick right so i want to make it so that in order to jump with zelda links whatever the fuck his name is, that you got to press up on the controller. Because that's the body. The stick is the body, which is why it looked like a little body. I mean, I played some games like that, like Kung Fu on the NES uses up for jump. So, you know, that's been a sad. It's a little clunky, but it's a possibility.

And look, I know that you said that you were expecting to pack your bag so far. Two for two with pretty like, pretty interesting ideas. Thank you very much. Now, I want to demonstrate something here physically. Now, whenever I want to get into my purse, I got to squat. I got to squat down low. Yeah, are you okay? I got to squat.

I got to squat down low because I can't rummage when I'm standing at my full height. So I need to drop my bag onto the ground and just kind of squat over it like I'm using a Chinese toilet. And then I'm going to dig. Your face is beet red. I'm going to dig in my bag. So I want to make sure that when Link digs in his purse, he's got to squat down. He's got to squat down low.

in his purse he's gotta squat down he's gotta squat down low let's just let's let we can at least prototype it the idea of squatting to access your inventory uh the other thing i know about legend of zelda is nobody's talking so i've i've submitted myself doing all the voices on a script and since i've negotiated my contract such a way i would like all of these to be implemented into the game as is. Okay. So you have some audio of you doing the, that's what you're saying? You recorded on a tape some audio of you doing these lines? Tape? Yeah, like a tape deck.

Like the current technology, a tape deck. Okay. It's only the most current technology. All right, sure. Everyone's got a tape deck right now. I brought in a wax cylinder. Wow, how did you even press that? What do you mean, press?

I brought in a wax cylinder. So what I did last night is I poured a bunch of candles in my throat. Jesus Christ. A bunch of candles. You know, I lit them first. You let the wax collect. I let the wax collect. And then I sort of like dry gagged until the whole shape came out.

And then I surrounded that with the latex, like a hot latex, so I could make a whistle. could make a whistle so then I I'm I so I massaged it so that I don't have to be in the room in order for you to hear my voice is what I'm saying uh-huh uh-huh okay can I just ask like kind of a general question okay what the fuck is wrong with you look I'm willing to look past some of Dougette's quirks here yeah because the ideas that were presented here are pretty decent. I just have one stipulation. Yeah. Yeah. You have to animate the whole game by hand?

You're not going to believe it, but I'm one step ahead of you. This is my first job I'm not going to get fired from. This is great. I hope the Phillips is a huge success. Great. Yeah. And just get cranking because this game comes out on Friday, so... We have lemonade and try to cram it back into being

lemons as we discuss the atrocious use of IP that is the Philips CDI Zelda games. This week as a pod to the cast continues on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. That's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host,

Matt Apodaca. Hey, listen, everyone. Hey, listen. Oh, that's a little Mickey Mouse. Ha, ha, hey, listen. It's a little, yeah, it's not right. What is this, Kingdom Hearts? What are you doing?

This is the best thing that's ever happened. We are in the midst of the Legend of Zelda pod to the cast. And if you're listening to this, Tears of the Kingdom has been out since Friday. You may want to hear our thoughts. Unfortunately, we don't have them for you today because we're recording this on the Thursday. So we'll have our thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom next week. And we will also have a full episode about Tears of the Kingdom after we've played it at some length on Monday, May 29th, because it is this month's We Play,

You Play. Also, if you're a responsible gamer, you're probably not listening to this episode until June or like mid-July, because you've been doing nothing but playing Tears of the Kingdom for the last month and a half. And so, we want to welcome you back to the podcast. I hope you had a good time And so we want to welcome you back to the podcast.

Welcome back. I hope you had a good time playing Zelda. Yeah. I'm going to use that as a line in the office. Like, why did the plate numbers dip? Well, yeah, I think it's because the new Zelda game came out. Nobody's listening to the podcast anymore. I think that's what happened. I've heard a lot of people, I don't do this, but there are a lot of people who just like

have a podcast on in the background, turn off game audio, and they're just and that's while they're playing something. I know that I can't do that. I know that for, say, my favorite game, Fortnite, that's part of the visual sound effects option is that if you need to play with low audio or if you're like if you if you have an audio disadvantage, I don't know what the proper language is anymore. Is that is that if you're. What? I think hard of hearing is hard of hearing. OK, great. But that they've incorporated this.

But I know that a lot of people use the visual sound effects in order to play with podcasts going. a lot of people use the visual sound effects in order to play with podcasts going it's like people on our discord will say yeah i was i was listening to the show while playing fortnight the other day and i'm like i can't listen to anything except my own heartbeat yeah when playing that game uh truly i i just like i guess there are probably some games i could see myself doing that with if it's if it's more of like a a mood thing or maybe like just like a builder, you know, or just something where I'm just kind of like where there's not. But once I have some sort of task, I feel like I need the sound design. I need the music to drive me towards it. Like any sort of quest.

I don't know. That's just me, though. People do that. I won't be playing Zelda without the music because as we talked over the last week, the music of Zelda is some of the best music in gaming. And now they have saxophone. So it's even better. They what? Is that true? They have saxophone.

They have saxophone. You famously did not watch the last trailer. I've seen one commercial now. Okay. Which is the sad one. We're going to talk about that. We have to. But first, let me introduce our guest, a writer who's written on some shows, but is now on

strike. Eva Anderson, back on the pod. Hi, Eva. Hey, guys. I'm so happy to be back. Thank you for having me back. Great to have you. It's good to have you.

It's so great. This almost didn't happen. Why? And then the strike happened. Oh. And then it did. I was in production. I was on set.

I was like, I want to do this so bad, but there's no way. And then, you know. Yeah, we're all in the studio together on a day when most of us probably couldn't

thanks to the strike. Yes. Which is ongoing. Thanks to our overlords. Yeah. Sasslaw, For fucking up so bad. We're all here.

Eva, I'm curious because we're talking about Zelda all month long this is the Legend of Zelda pod to the cast are you a Zelda fan? in theory

what? I've never finished a Zelda game except for maybe the original I love Zelda I love like the worlds of Zelda

but I'm bad at Zelda so I always get to a point like for instance I've played a ton of Breath of the Wild but I'm stuck at all three noble beasts right now and i haven't been able to be any of them therefore i'm just like stuck um i'll play the new one i think they're cool and beautiful and i love the the

music and the the guys i love all the guys i love making little snacks i love making snacks yeah um yeah sitting like seeing him sit by the fire while you make like a disgusting little meal. But yeah, Zelda's like, I like, I also like games to be a little on rails, I guess. I've realized about myself, like I'll play a Death Stranding or a Last of Us, like something with a really strong narrative.

But Zelda has almost too many choices for me of what I can do next, and it stresses me out. But in theory, I love it. That's interesting, because I also like a little bit more of a linear game I've come to realize. Like, you know,

Sekiro, which I've talked about at length on this podcast, is not like an open-world game. You can go lots of different places, but it's pretty linear in terms of its construction. It almost feels level based. It's certainly not like an Elden Ring. And yeah, The Last of Us, what you mentioned, like, I really like that those games, Resident Evil 4, which we just played.

Yep. I like that. It's just like, yeah, you just it's sequential. I don't know. Like I did the open world formula has kind of gotten a little bit exhausting, but I make an exception for an Elden Ring and a Breath of the Wild because they're just so well executed and the world building is so great. Totally.

The thing that's great about Breath of the Wild, though, and probably Tears of the Kingdom, too, is that you can just kind of not do anything. It is kind of just like a vibe game, too. You're just like, I'm just going to go over here today. I'm just going to pick a direction and just go that way and just see what I see and then have fun doing that and then maybe not advance

the narrative at all or actually accomplish anything. But I saw some cool stuff. I saw some little guys. That's great. That's enough for me. You can make it like a walking simulator

if you don't care about winning at all. Exactly. Yeah, 100%. Or like advancing your stamina meter or whatever and doing any of that stuff.

By the time this episode releases, we will know the answer to this question. But since I've seen this one commercial and I understand that one of the core mechanics is building shit. I'm wondering if I can build a wall the size of the play area and like lock half of the monsters away. area and like lock half of the monsters away. That's so fun. Like, I'm really excited to see what unintended consequences the building feature has. Wait, are you talking about the commercial where the guy has the bad life? Yeah, we should. Let's just play it now.

I just see that. Matt, I just sent you a link to it. There's not enough to, I mean, if you're listening to it, I don't know that you'll know what's happening. So we'll have to describe it. Yeah, we can play it for our reference and then I can talk over it. So this is an Australian ad. We've got a guy on a train. And it's a man on a commuter train or a bus.

Sighs. Sigh one. This kind of plaintive music is playing. He's looking out the window. Clouds. And he just has clinical depression. That's just what we're getting. Like, this guy is very much bummed out by his life.

Psy 2. Gets home. Yeah, Psy's again. Wife comes over. Their marriage is falling apart. Psy 3. Yeah. That's as much physical contact as this married couple engages in. A tap on the shoulder at the end of a day's work.

And now he's playing the game and he's playing it on his TV and he is experiencing joy for the first time since childhood. Is it joy that we're seeing or is this a man who's at the edge? The disassociation. Like he doesn't look happy. He looks also, there's like a tear in his eyes and he's very quietly speaking to himself. Yes. Yeah, he's

building various things. He didn't even change out of his work clothes. No, right, yeah. Somebody on Twitter pointed out that he gets a glass of tap water and sits down without doing anything else. My delicious dinner, my glass of water.

So now he's back on the train. He's playing it in handheld mode. He's having some fun. He's engaged in some combat. But he is, he looks around nervously. Here's a smile. There's a half smile. And he is alone.

Yes. And that is so important. Nobody gives him a half smile. And he is alone. Yes. And that is so important. Nobody gives him a nod like, hey, I'm playing too. And now he looks out the window at what he looked at before. And now he's got a little bit of a smile. Nintendo Switch. Play. Connect.

Play. Connect. That man connects with nobody. Exactly. That's the opposite of what happened in that. So apparently, I read a little bit about this. That man connects with nobody. Exactly. That's the opposite of what happened in that. So apparently, I read a little bit about this. This was from a Kotaku piece on the backstory of this. And apparently, this was based off of an actual story from a gamer in Japan.

I'm trying to find it right now because I added it up earlier. Okay, here we go. I have the text here. It turns out that the ad has a touching real-life inspiration. As discovered by Kotaku Australia, the team that made the commercial based it on a Japanese Amazon review

for Breath of the Wild. Kotaku includes a rough Google translation of the review in which the author bemoans the ceaseless grind of his salaryman existence, resenting the sight of mountains on his way to work. He buys a Switch on impulse, and the freedom of Breath of the Wild reminds him of his youth spent playing Super Mario 64 and Final Fantasy VII.

When the Amazon reviewer sees the mountains again on his commute, he thinks, I can climb it, instead of feeling angry, and he is moved to tears. Oh my god! I saw the idea that he'd be, I thought it would be his childhood climbing mountains. Oh my God. I saw like the idea that he, I thought it would be his childhood climbing mountains. Oh no. Oh no.

Just his memories of playing Super Mario. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He liked playing video games as a kid. And now that's that he realizes that could be an escape from his work life. That's dark. It's very grim.

Every aspect of it is so dark. It's like the ending of like Oldboy. He's just like, has this realization. He's like, fuck! Fuck! Hey, everyone. You know, you want to eat healthy. You want to eat well.

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the Mad World edit? I did. I think we should play the Mad World edit because I did. I think we should play the Mad World edit. That's so funny. Because there's something about the timing of the song, which feels Pink Floyd, Wizard of Oz to me, where the words synchronize to the commercial so perfectly that I want to believe their internal edit was to Mad World and then was reshaped with that like soft piano music. Obviously, we can't. If you're at home, you'll just hear it Mad World,

so we can't play it for you. But I want to talk about it with these folks here. This song was used in a Gears of War ad, too, famously. It could have been Tam. Getting like a there there from your spouse. Yeah. Sorry, your life sucks. Him sitting down for going nowhere. The first footage you see of Tears of the Kingdom is on the word tears. He has no expression and they keep cutting to him.

He drowns on drown. John Maye Sorrows is pretty perfect. Like, the first joke of the commercial is on funny. I think they edited it too. It's so funny. I love this theory. Yeah, because it's kind of funny, kind of sad that he makes this sad raft that falls apart.

I love that the editor brought it to the ad agency. They're like, we're not using that. But I was done. Also, Mad World happens on your combat footage. I think it was edited internally to Mad World. I agree. I think the craftsman who made this fan edit masterpiece may also have massaged the timing a little bit.

But it's really good. Really well done. If that's the case, then fuck my theory. No, I buy it. I think's really good. Well. Really well done. If that's the case, then fuck my theory. No, I buy it. I think it's good. I love it. Anyway, it's going to make my life worth living. I'm very excited for this game.

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to my life no longer being bad. So Eva, today we're going to be talking about the the Philips CD-i Zelda games. But and part of why we wanted to have you on is because we know that you owned a Philips CD-i. Mm-hmm. What was your—can you recap for us your experience with a Philips CD-i, how it came into your home? Yeah. My dad just brought it home one day.

I don't even remember why or how. Yeah. But we had like a handful—we have like 10 games. Mm-hmm. And we knew about it because they're the Philil hartman commercials that would be on that's right central he played all the characters talking about how great it was going to be um and so we had burn cycle which was the cyberpunk game which is actually pretty good it was like a full motion video game um we had a game called mystic midway we had a adult game Voyeur, which my brother was not allowed to play.

We had the Alice in Wonderland game, which was all like claymation models, which was actually for children, but it was actually pretty, in retrospect, kind of cool. And a couple other games, but one game that we did have that we never played, but we just watched the first cutscene of incessantly was Link's Awakening.

I mean, Faces of Evil. Wow. The Faces of Evil. So my brother and I knew about these cut scenes, the ones we could get to, because the game is so impossible to play. So we only got to a few of the cut scenes ever. But it was like an in-joke with my brother and I

about how awful this game was. Philip CDI is the perfect dad comes home with it and you don't know the backstory. Exactly. Like, it's very much like my father was, Philip CDI is the perfect dad comes home with it and you don't know the backstory. Like it's it's it's very much like my father was my father was a Betamax guy. And so he brought home a Betamax and we were like, what is this, a VHS? And he's like, it's Betamax. It's going to be better. And like, of course, it was not better. It was not better.

And it feels like a dad seeing a demo of the Philips CDI in a store, in like a Circuit City or whatever, Sears, any of those old stores. He'd be like, I know what's next. And it's the Philips CDI. I want to say really quick that I pulled up a list of all the CDI games on Wikipedia. Can I just say a couple of them? Please. Hold on. Okay. They have really good names. Okay.

The Affair of the Spaceship Beagle. Great name. Yeah. Cluedo, The Mysteries Continue. Crime Patrol 2, Drug Wars. The Dark Fables of asap do you remember the 60s oh no effacer hangman from the 25th century

uh family games 2 junk food jive flashback the quest for identity flashback was great that one's a great game okay good Games 2, Junk Food Jive. Flashback, The Quest for Identity. Flashback was great. That one's good? Flashback's a great game. Okay, good. Okay. There's a couple that I'm sure are real good games, but they're just funny to just spin through.

There's a Monty Python game called, sorry, Monty Python's Invasion from the Planet Skyron. More Dark Fables from Aesop. That's one where I'm like, how did I never get access to that? Mutant Revenge, Body Slam. Yeah. There's a lot of like little, there seems like there are like a lot of little kid games. Like, yeah. Like Sesame Street games.

Tim and Bear at the Hospital. That seems like a kid's game or it's something very weird. And then there's all the games. Tim and Bear was like a thing. It was like a British TV show or something. Yeah, maybe from other countries. Who shot Johnny Rock? All right.

So anyway, and then there's like a handful of ones that were never released. And one of those was called Urban Murder Files Episode 2, New Jersey. I think it's important for our listeners, you know, a lot of whom may have been born after the was even in existence to know a little bit of context and history here, which is that Nintendo originally as a connoisseur of the Stranger game consoles, this was always something I think I've got this lore down, but if anybody knows any differently, then

feel free to correct me. But when Nintendo was exploring a CD attachment for the Super Nintendo, they partnered with Sony. And they made, and there are, demo prototype Sony PlayStation Super Famicoms in existence. And they are like one of the Golden Goose, Holy Grail type machines to own, right?

But Nintendo backs out of this partnership and they end up creating their CD add-on with Philips. Sony then goes on to make the PlayStation, which was going to be the name of the attachment, into the PlayStation. So in terms of like fuck-ups, like creating the Joker if you're Batman, like that's what Nintendo does when they say, yeah, Sony, this isn't for us.

And Sony's like, I guess we'll just make the PlayStation, right? Like a top five, top three, what if moment in gaming history. Yeah. If Nintendo and Sony had just merged. Yes, yeah. Because also, like as a Sony person, as a Sony fan, like the idea of Nintendo Sony Walkman, Nintendo Sony PlayStation Vita, like all of the things that could have happened if that partnership hadn't dissolved.

But instead, Nintendo partners with Philips to make the CD attachment. And when they see how poorly the Sega CD is selling, they're like, this is a fucking mistake. Let's not do this. And they back out of their deal with Philips. But Philips is like, we've dedicated all of this time and resources to creating this add-on with you. We need to get something out of their deal with Philips. But Philips is like, we've dedicated all of this time and resources to creating this add-on with you.

We need to get something out of the deal. So Nintendo allowed them access to the characters of Link and Mario even. They said six characters overall. Yeah, yeah. Not games, characters.

Characters. And you can go off and develop your own standalone games for your Philips. Because Philips did the same thing. They're like, well, I guess we'll just use this tech to make our own video game console. And they made the CDI. Philips is a Dutch company.

A little bit of trivia. I was the voice of Philips in Europe for a short while. I love that. But yeah, they make the Ci and they make these third-party Zelda and Mario games, some of which we've covered here on the show before, Mario Hotel. Hotel Mario. It's fucking terrible.

But yeah, the CD-i is also infamously hard to emulate. So we can't, you can't just like load up in what, Emu Store? Yeah, Emu Deck like load up in what emu store. Yeah, Emudeck. There it is, Emudeck.

Like any of that shit doesn't have the Philips CDI. And also because there's not like as niche as the 32X was. Like do you have the, can somebody pull up the sales record for the CDI and compare it to even the 32X because I bet the 32X outsold the CDI. Yeah, a complete definitely a complete flop. I was, and it was also super expensive was part of it. This was like a

$700 console. I have one more game title. Explorer 1 Peter Gabriel's Secret World. I'm glad you went back to that because when you mentioned the Monty Python one, I was like, how many Monty Python games are there? Would you be surprised to learn there are seven? There were a bunch because I had at least one of them. But you said Spaceship Titanic, maybe?

No, I had one for the PC. That was, what the fuck was it? It was an early CD-ROM game. Starship Titanic. Yeah. That was a-ROM game. Starship Titanic. Yeah. That was a Terry Gilliam game. I also want, before we dive into the actual Zelda CD-i experience, to shout out one Philips CD-i game soundtrack, which has become a little bit legendary in the Vaporwave community, which is Philips CD-i Tetris. Oh.

It has an extraordinary soundtrack. And I hope we can play just a little bit of it here on the show before we dabble in anything else. Very Phoenix Wright interrogating a witness right here. It's really, really smooth, like vapor waves. Yeah. Oh, yeah. One of my favorite playlists on YouTube for a while was something called like Corporate Dreams.

Oh, yeah. And it sounds like corporate dreams. It also sounds like Joel Oesterhaas erotica. Can you play one other track from this? Yeah, of course. Billy Baldwin is taking a shower alone. Could also do... This is awesome. Your seven-day forecast.

Partly cloudy. Rain in the afternoon. Like the old Weather Channel. Oh, yeah. Oh, it. That was awesome. This is good. Yeah, really great stuff. Good stuff.

Real quick, the Monty Python game I had was Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time. I played that. That was a good game. Yeah, it was one of those things where it was kind of like barely a game. It was like the early days of CD-ROMs when they just like, here's just a bunch of mini games that are tossed in. But this bit of context, Mac User Magazine named Complete Waste of Time one of 1996's top 50 CD-ROMs. Top 50? That list is too long.

And Carta number one. Yeah. That's like such a good joke of a video game title. Wadding Python's Complete Waste. Like that's the only one of these that I'm reading that's like worth a damn as far as it being funny. Yeah. Well, look, we got to get in we got to talk more philip cdi we got to

top uh talk the philip cdi zelda games specifically but we should first ask before we get into that what are you playing thanks link you know short but sweet short but sweet and i also i gotta say i gotta give us a little credit, a little gas. We booked Link during Zelda month. This is huge. That's going to have him in time. It's pretty nice. It's pretty nice that we got him.

And he's busy right now. He's got a new game to promote. Or has to save the world in his reality. I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. No sweat. He's dismissive of that. He does it all the time. Or has to save the world in his reality. I'm not exactly sure what's going on here. No sweat. Dismissive of that. He does it all the time.

Yeah. Thanks, Link. Well, Eva, let's start with you. What have you been playing lately? Well, since the last time I was on here on your podcast for Hotel Mario. Yes. I got a Steam Deck. Wow.

And it changed my entire life. I got to play all these games that are like PC because I only have a Mac and I think my gaming interest aligns very closely with yours, Nick. So I just kind of like go off whatever you say you're playing on the podcast. Whatever boring book non-game.

Yes. A lot of reading. Like literally when I was- Minimal interactivity. Close to the last with Zane Carney, I was like Minimal interactivity. Well, so the last, with Zane Carney, I was like, there's a DLC for Case of the Golden Idol? Like I ran and like downloaded it. I did that.

I did the Beyond the Sea. I'm sorry. I'm blanking on it. It's like the puzzle game where you're like a woman looking for her husband in the ocean. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, it's got a weird name.

It's something called beyond the sea, um, into the sea or something like that. But, um, uh, I'm playing citizen sleeper right now. Hell yeah.

And I love it. It's, I thought it would be much more of like a, like a coffee talk kind of novel, but it's, it's really interactive and the music is so cool. And I just love it. It's a really,

it's also just like a like one of those you really like i thematically it's just such a grim like and the the end stages of late capitalism like the idea of like i'm actually going to sell my physical body to a corporation i'm going to put my soul inside of a machine so that i can because that's the only way i can sustain myself like and and then just like having to muddle through trying to you know scrape together a living uh within those constraints yeah i did i i really like it a lot i really like the writing a lot um i didn't get around to playing that one also has dlc which i never got around to playing i'm not quite sure i didn't why I didn't do that. Yeah, and I just beat Pentament, which was a little too much reading for me.

That was one I bounced off of. You told me you'd beaten Pentament. I was impressed by that. But I was like, I beat Pentament. That's how I felt. I'm free. No, really. I was like, okay, manage, delete.

You want to delete. Yes. Smash. No, that was a beautiful game and I'm really glad it exists. That's it. That's rad. Heather, what have you been playing? event where you can get lightsabers from one of three different factions. You can get Darth Maul to teach you some force powers. You can get Obi-Wan to teach you some force powers, or you can get Anakin to teach you some force powers, and you get a lightsaber from each of them. Changes up the gameplay in the game. As I said last week, very few things that are as hype as flying in on attack on Titan gear to wield a lightsaber against uh fucking iron man um it's great uh i've also dabbled a little bit in um in and also by the time this comes out we will have had another uh fortnight get played private event so if you're

interested in doing those private events you can get on our discord and, uh, and join the fortnight channel. And, uh, we have these, uh, private server events where it's only get played people fighting against

other get played people. It's a really robust, fun loving community. Uh, and we had a good time this last Saturday, even though that's in the future from when we're recording, I just know what's going to happen. Uh, I've been playing, um future from when we're recording. I just know it's going to happen. I've been playing Star Wars Jedi Survivor. I have not been hooked on it as much as Apodaca has, but I'm also enjoying the game. I just don't like it's very hard for me to

go through a place where it's like move a wall so that you can crawl on it. Like that's my least favorite kind of puzzle. I just want to kill dudes. And I know there's a lot of killing dudes. I also like exploring. Like I love exploring and I love killing dudes. But move wall to jump on it is just, you've designed the level. Just put the wall there.

I don't, why do I have to redesign the level? That's bullshit. So yeah, playing a little of that, playing a little Fortnite. And I think that's all she wrote. Same old, same old with me.

How about you, Apodaca? Okay, because I was going to say, I have something I'd like to share about, about Jedi Survivor. One, I have all the stances and once you get

the Kylo Ren cross, you'll never be the same again. I know it because it's such a heavy swing and you can just like, it fucks people up so bad. It's great. It's really good. But there's a character

in Star Wars Jedi Survivor that I'm going to throw up on the screen because not a day goes by where I don't think of this character since meeting him. His name is Turgle. What's up, Turgle? And if you think he has a funny voice, you're right. He does. He's such a little frog guy. He's a little freak. This game has a lot of good little freaks in it.

frog guy he's a little freak this game has a lot of good little freaks in it um and i think i think because of like of baby yoda or of grogu and of babu freak from the uh from rise of skywalker the people making star wars have realized we don't really give a shit about the broader stuff we like little freaks we love little guys. And they gave us a really good one here. He's a fucking coward. He's a little wimp. A little weasley dork. And I love him.

I love him so much. You meet him early on and then there's little things that there's other side missions that come into play where he factors in. You can find like

data disks where he's like, no, don't. Stop. He's just like crying for his life all the time he's really really great um i i don't know i'm i'm loving the game and i'm just like there is stuff like that where i'll be like looking around like god where the fuck am i supposed to go it says i'm supposed to go that way but it doesn't make any sense and i'm just like missing that there's a crack in the wall. I was like, oh, you know.

If there was like a hole in the wall for me to walk through, I would have gone that way, but I got to notice this crack. Or like, oh, I can't go that way. I can't make this jump. Oh, it's because to my right, I'm missing that I can climb on this wall. There's just stuff like that. They make it pretty obvious, but even it's not obvious enough for me sometimes. So sometimes I'll be playing in an area for like 20 minutes like,

God, what the fuck am I supposed to do? And then I just find it and feel stupid. But otherwise, I'm really loving it. I'm really committed to the Kylo Ren stance. It's good. You gotta, it's crazy stuff. And I like customizing Cal. I didn't think I would like customizing cow

i've seen a lot of funny uh like tiktoks of people making him look like a dirt bag and it's it's pretty like giving him like a thin mustache and like a mullet and like it kind of rocks that he looks like a piece of shit um but it's also like they made such a big deal about him being um canon like he has to look this way. He has to be this white guy we selected because he's canon to the story. So, like, you can't just make him look however you want, and now you can sort of make him look like whatever white guy

you want. And that's like a little, like, okay, like, who cares then? Like, you could have just given him an option to have a skin color or something. Or an alien or something. It doesn't actually matter, I guess. But they've been using the guy a lot in promos and stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if he made the jump

to live action at some point. I wish that there was a Star Wars game where the lights, because one of my least, as a connoisseur of violence, I'm a little frustrated when you swing that lightsaber in Star Wars Jedi Survivor and you cut down a stormtrooper and it leaves like a glowing scar across their armor. And I'm like, no, that dude should be in pieces. And I wish that there was a Star Wars game that allowed the lightsaber the horrifying effectiveness that it should like when Obi-Wan hits Darth Maul in Phantom Menace he cuts him in half sure and you decimate so like you you're taking out like you know horse frog looking monsters and you're taking out storm troopers and all of them are just like got these like glowing slashes on them and I'm like no they you know, horse frog looking monsters and you're taking out stormtroopers.

And all of them are just like got these like glowing slashes on them. And I'm like, no, they should be like like in a film cube or Resident Evil. When you see somebody get sliced by lasers and they fall apart in little chunks. Yeah. But, you know, the lightsaber not to get into fake physics or whatever or fake science, it's cauterizing that wound right away. So nothing's gooing out. No goo. Unless you're just like barely cutting the guy. She just wants pieces.

She doesn't need goo. You can get a piece. I'll get you a piece. I don't need blood. I don't want blood with a lightsaber, but I do want bodies to fall apart, ragdoll physics in separate pieces. And if I manage a combo on the head one way, arm the other way, torso the other way. I think that has to be that will have to be an indie game that does not have the license and just sort of like or a mod. I think that's where that's going to have because there's no way I could see, you know,

Disney actually authorizing that. But what I would say is. They're the assholes who created the weapon. Lucasfilm. Like, I didn't invent the weapon. I'm look, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not disagreeing.

I didn't invent the weapon. I'm not saying you invented the weapon. I know you're a connoisseur of violence. I didn't think you invented the weapon. Like, I'm not going to be like, hey, here's that. We've invented the guillotine. And when we use it in this video game, it just bumps you in the head. I think someone did invent the guillotine

and I think that was his name. Oh. I think there was like a guy named like Guillaume or something like that. Ron Guillotine. So what you were talking about, even within the Star Wars like canon, like the three trilogies,

there is the theatrical canon. It's like they vary that a lot. Like in A New Hope, he slices an arm off in the cantina. Hell yeah. And there's a pool of blood it's in. And you know, you talk about Phantom Menace,

like yeah, he slices Darth Maul in half. There is a little blood spray that you see at the bottom of the frame. It's subtle, but it's there. But in Return of the Jedi, when he's on Jabba's barge, that thing's a fucking baseball bat. He's just swinging it around.

He's hitting guys. He's hitting Gamma Ray and guards. It's a wiffle ball bat, practically. They're just kind of falling over. No one is being dismembered. So they're kind of all over the place in terms of how PG they want to make it, given the context. I agree with you.

I think it should be an extremely violent implement. She didn't invent the weapon. I didn't invent it. Wow. I didn't purchase it from Lucasfilm and then make more movies with it. Well, maybe you should have. Yeah. You ever think of that?

Yeah. Why didn't you do that? I'll just join anybody's side who says something. If you lightsaber a porg, it does explode. Oof. No one's ever done it before, but I just had a dream about it. Then it's true. It's like Freddy rules.

Yeah. Can you imagine how, I mean, we're so lucky that Elon Musk bought Twitter and not Star Wars. Jesus Christ. Or The Onion. Yeah. All the things he was thinking about buying. Yeah. Aw, Elon. Star Wars. What a little idiot. I'm going to go real quick because first off, I never updated everyone that I did. We recorded the Resident Evil 4 episode a couple weeks ago.

Oh, yes. I finished Resident Evil 4, like, that next weekend, like, immediately. Congratulations. I thought it was tremendous. You know, it is a thing. Whatever. There's a minor spoiler, but it's fucking—the game's so fucking old that I think it's fine. It's not a minor spoiler. It's an endgame spoiler fucking old that i think it's fine it's not a minor spoiler it's an end game spoiler whatever i think it's fine um are you okay i had

the same experience that when i re-watched face off of like oh yeah there's a fucking boat chase at the end yeah this is the fucking end of this thing is a boat chase that's completely unrelated to everything else how do we end up in a boat chase whatever and it's like i will say of of the stuff in the game yeah it's like that's like the least fun part it really is the same thing with face off it's like this is the least fun set piece of the movie and this is the end you're like i just took down this big thing and now i'm on a fucking boat this sucks uh still it's a it's a great game 10 out of 10 masterpiece um i i've been but the other thing i've been messing around with because you

know i mentioned back a little bit way back ways back in the podcast that I was looking for like kind of a game that's just sort of chill vibes just to like sort of come like as I come down at the end of the day. And I came back to Picross, which was a game I used to play back on the Nintendo DS. And then it's just completely fallen out of my brain. But I was like, oh, yeah, they get a bunch of Picrosses on the Switch and it plays great on the Switch. Picross S I'm playing, but I guess they get a bunch of Picrosses on the Switch, and it plays great on the Switch. Picross S I'm playing, but I guess they're up to, like, Picross S9 now. They've got so many, they've released so many versions. And, yeah, if you're not familiar with it, it's basically, like, it's, you know, it's akin to a crossword or akin to, like, a Sudoku.

It's just like a grid-based puzzle, except that you are using numbers to construct an image. So it'll be like, oh, here's a row and there's one. We see a one here. That means that one dot goes in that row. Here's this next row says eight. So there's eight dots that go in this row. And like however many squares there are, you fill them in. And eventually that puts together an image for you, a little giraffe or whatever the fuck it is.

Uh, but it's, uh, it's very calming. It's very soothing. And it's, uh, it's just like a thing that you could play for you to play one puzzle and, uh, or play a bunch of puzzles. So it's, it's working great for me. Have you heard of murder by numbers? That's like a pit cross murder investigation game. My friend, Brian Brown, who listens to the pod, he suggested it to me.

What's up, Brian? Thanks for listening. Murder by Numbers? Yeah. I think it's pit cross as like Phoenix Wright. I'm looking this up right now. Okay. Here we go.

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This is a game slop of the Philips CDI Zelda games. Heather gave all the context for how the Philips CDI and these particular games came about. And so the games that we're going to be discussing are Link the faces of evil and zelda the wand of gamelan they pulled a a guns and roses use your illusion here and released both games simultaneously on the same day what a miscalculation oh my god october 10th 1993 in case you'd ever notice, like, a single difference. Like, you just forget what the king looks like if there was, like, a year apart. Yeah. Hey, you know how you just stepped in dog shit?

What if your other shoe also had dog shit on it? The developer was Animation Magic, who I'm sure was rushed and constrained. And then the other game is Zelda's Adventure, which was developed by a different studio called Viridis, and that was released on June 5th of 1994. So the Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon are probably, I mean, I think all three of these games are most known for their really pretty wretched, in hindsight, but at the time, technically impressive cut scenes.

And the first two, Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, had these animated scenes that were made by a Russian animation studio, whereas Zelda's Adventure had live action FMV. according to the history of it, it was because of the opening of Russia that one of the friends of the developer was like, I can go over there really quick to St. Petersburg and just get an animation company going, and they'll do all the animation for cheap, and they'll do it real quick. And so that's why we ended up with this. I mean, it certainly looks cheap and quick. It's one of those things where it kind of looks like

it was animated in MS Paint. It's like really it's it's really clunky. incredible animated films in Soviet Russia that have almost been lost. Like Miyazaki talks a lot about being heavily influenced by one that was, I think called the Ice Queen or something like that, which until recently was impossible to find. And now I think you can find it on YouTube because that's crazy. But it seems like a good plan on the surface to be like, oh, we can just go in and start an animation studio

and they'll be able to make it. And instead, what they animate is it's not just that it looks like it's MS Paint. It's that the characters also move to and from the camera constantly. Right. Like as they speak, they kind of close in on you and then they pull away and they close in. It's unsettling. Uh-huh. It's not just weird.

Yeah. But before we get into this, Matt, can we play the Philip CDI startup sound? Oh, yeah. Because this thing is another little gem. Before I play this, can I just say, in Soviet Russia, film animates you. Matt. What? What?

what oh yeah honestly kind of good it's fucking great i love it lose the kind of you have no idea of what game you're about like how bad the game you're about to play it's when you hear that you're like oh this is gonna be great yeah and then there's another one in here it looks like there's there's like three different versions and i don't know if it was based off of bios updates or what but yeah there are the i think i think we get the sense from that okay do you guys want me to do that in the voice that i used for uh phillips uh in europe yeah please can you can you play it again and i'll and i'll i'll do you i'll do what I would have done.

Phillips Interactive Media. Wow. Would have been just like that. And that's on our show for free. That sounds very like calming and soothing. I'm sure if you're just like a, you know, a Dutch consumer, but me knowing the subtext of you being a connoisseur of violence. Really menacing. Did you, was that when you were living in Amsterdam that you got that gig? They contacted me and I was the voice of some Phillips flat screen TV.

So like all the commercials would add or end with my like little vocal tag. Yeah, that was that voice. I was that voice! Eating like a mayonnaise hot dog. Yeah, separately. May a mayonnaise hot dog. Yeah, separately mayonnaise and hot dog. I looked up the sales figures for the Phillips CDI and in comparison to the 32 X. And in October 1994, Phillips claimed an installed base of one million units. However, in 1996, the Wall Street Journal reported that the total U.S. sales two years later had only been 400,000 units.

And in the Netherlands, only 60,000 CDI players were sold. Compare that to the install base of the 32X, which garbage sales catastrophe for Sega, sold almost twice as much as the Philips CD-i. That's rough. And also an add-on for an existing console with its own install base. So it's a little bit less disastrous than we're trying to launch a new platform. launch a new platform yeah the the the i guess we should talk about how these games play a little bit which is the first two were were both like kind of 2d side scroller adventures kind of based off of the way adventures of link plays um and then zelda's adventure is a uh it is a top down like you know zelda one slash zelda link to the past which i guess was out by now although maybe

the developers hadn't played it um the the thing that will say, like I haven't played any of these games, but having watched footage of them, the thing from Zelda's Adventure is, you know, when you like you're going a top down Zelda and you get to the end of the edge of this particular map screen and there's that very soothing sort of like pan moving to the new area. Here, there is a notable hitch every time you do that because it has to load the next, like the CD has to spin up and load the next area. So you get to the end and it's like you're waiting for it to pan over, but it just like stalls for a second and then judders. So this thing that's extremely pleasing when you're playing it, you know, the mainline versions of it,'s just like this it becomes this this uh this this interruption of your game flow i'm also pretty sure that uh given how loud the 90s cd systems were that when you would pass from one area to another like one screen to another you would hear

i also read that zelda's adventure part of the problem was that it couldn't play music and sound effects at the same time oh wow that's wild because i watched some of it and it's just like zelda walking around to just like backgrounds but just like like crickets or whatever like or wind yeah i don't know, I don't know what the capabilities were of the Philips CD-i technically. I mean, I do know a lot of the early CD games used like Redbook audio, which was basically just like the music

would just be a track on the CD. And you could take that CD-ROM game and put it into a CD player. And if you just skipped a track to and beyond, it was just the music tracks for the game. So you just have kind of the soundtrack built into it. But I don't know if that may very well have affected how I was able to play sound effects.

While we're talking about it, Matt, can we maybe play, we can work backwards. Can we play a little bit of the Zelda's Adventure cut scenes? The live action one, the budget was so low that they had to have all the actors were people in the studio yes no that that felt like a common thing going back to the like 90s because i just remember this from 90s pc cd-rom game of like clearly this was just one of the developers and they put a halloween costume on them um and uh but like it's and that its, there are times when that has its charms, but like, it does not work in this context.

Oh my God. So the thing I like, no more viewing tonight is the box within this, because like the, the, this resolution of the videos was so low like that. I like aesthetically that they have to have smaller box within the TV frame. This looks a lot like the footage from return to Zork.

Sure. Yeah. There were a lot. Yeah. from Return to Zork. Sure. Yeah, 100%. Or even Myst, honestly. We're seeing a live-action man hold up a scroll which only has three sentences in it and it's taking him this long

to read those three sentences. And he's not reading it. He's just talking about what's on it and he has kind of like a mop on his head. We've got a shot of a crystal. He's waving his hand over it.

Yeah. And then here's Zelda and this is like a shot of a crystal. He's waving his hand over it. Yeah. And then here's Zelda. And this is like a series of still images that are strung together in a montage. I think that was because they had to use all this voiceover. And so they had to break it into stills in order to fill out the length of time that it took for the voiceover. Right. Production-wise, they didn't, like,

have the voiceover when they shot this. So they have, like, three seconds of footage and they needed to cover 15 seconds of speaking. That makes sense. There's got to be

another way to do that. Yeah. I mean, sure. It looks like a church made this. Yes. So, like, the Christian kids

could have Zelda 2. Yeah. It's so, like, but this is. Yes. So the Christian kids could have Zelda too. Yeah. It's so like, but this is the thing. Congratulations, Zelda. You have prevailed. Hurry now. You must travel to a place and festival. Rumor tells it is found in a great forest to the north.

So somebody's old or if there's like, if he's wearing makeup. I think he's got makeup and I think he's got a, he clearly has a wig and a fake beard on. So the thing is like so many of these are basically just bookending quests. They're either like,

here's, you finish this, now go do this and so on. But it's the kind of thing of like they, they had so much, they had so little,

you know, disc space that they had to be very careful about like keeping the run time of all of these, these videos so short. But they, they're not cinematically interesting. keeping the runtime of all of these videos so short. But

they're not cinematically interesting. They're almost all like... Because there is a thing of it's just like, okay, we've got 15 seconds of video we got to do here. Let's maybe shoot something cool and dynamic. But instead it's just like one locked off shot of just a dude in a wizard robe talking to camera.

He's also framed almost dead center of the frame. He's not shot correctly where he's like, you know, it's not a close up. It's not a wide. It's shot like you put a cell phone on a table and we're like, that's good enough without lining up your shot and then just went and stood in front of your cell phone. Like it's. Yeah.

Bonkers. It's like week one of the pandemic when like the news anchor had to do their own setup from home and they like didn't know how to put it where to put a camera it really like it really looks like that that i don't know it does it look shitty enough where it becomes charming again i don't think so no no this is the one where i i was watching the other ones and then i just, I'll watch the third one. And I was like, oh, God. And also, if you watch the gameplay, it's awful. It looks so clumsy and jittery and weird.

Yeah, the other games have some defenders among Twitch streamers who have subjected themselves to these games or YouTube creators who've played these games. Who would ever do something like that? What a dumb idea for a show. Those first two games have some defenders. This one basically has no one saying it's worth playing. To go back to that cut scene for a second,

it's like they also only did one take and nobody gave him the note, like maybe emphasize some of the words. He's like, he's like, oh, congratulations zelda you came back from this now you have to go on another cause go for it you can do it with use the power of the crystal and that's it to be fair that's what our podcast sounds like i think i think no one i think it's just a thing of they they had this development team there's like a and they as part and as part of their direction from the publisher, they were like, from Philips, they were like,

and we want live action cut scenes to take advantage of the CD technology. And everyone looked around and was like, I don't know. Okay, we'll figure it out. My cousin has a camera, you know. Let me do it. Oh, no. It's just so interesting because, like, obviously, like, at this point, how many Zelda games are out? There's, like, three?

Like, three of the Nintendo ones? Yeah, let's see. There would have been Zelda 1, Zelda 1 and 2, Link's Awakening, and then maybe, I forget when Link to the Past came out. So there's, like, four, but, like, there's, like, enough there to, like, define, like, the style. Obviously, the second one is a departure from the first one in that it's like a side-scrolling game, right? It's so crazy to me how they could even have an example to go off of and be like, we're just going to fuck this up so bad. We're even going to do the side-scrolling one, but worse.

It does remind me, it has heavy Star Wars Holiday Special vibes. Brady Bunch variety hour vibes. Things are like, you know what this is, and they're like, no, we don't. And you're like, but you do.

And they're like, it'll be fine. This will be disowned. It's such an odd miscalculation. Obviously something Nintendo would never do now. I mean, even just with this Mario movie, they were so hands-on and protective of what it actually was.

So it's just interesting that, I guess, not even in its infancy, it had been a company for 50 years probably by that point, but it's odd that they were like, this is what you're going to do. Yes, this was before companies, and Nintendo in particular would be hyper protective of their IP.

And the idea of them, it's such a wild thing to think about happening today, the context that Heather gave us, of them just being like, Philips being like, well, we need to get something out of this. Like, okay, make your own Mario game. Make your own Zelda's game. Zelda games. Go nuts. Like, we don't care. It'd be funny to learn

that they were like well they're gonna fuck this up just let them do it it's not gonna be good it's not gonna be better than ours yeah nobody's gonna play this

we don't have to worry I found a I found a quote from this is from Destructoid I'll just read this passage the Legend of Zelda speaking of Nintendo's take on this

the Legend of Zelda is regarded as one of the best franchises in gaming but there are some black sheep in the family specifically the Philips CD-i titles are held as embarrassing black eyes on the franchise as they are ridiculously terrible. In fact, some people find it easier to disassociate Zelda from the CD-i installments altogether.

One such person is Legend of Zelda director Eiji Aonuma. Speaking with MTV Multiplayer, Aonuma did his best to distance nintendo and zelda from the these titles he remarked that nintendo doesn't consider the cdi projects to be part of the zelda canon and that quote they don't really fit in which coming i feel like from a like a coming from a from someone in japan i feel like that's the equivalent of like you know james elroy saying that like you, the adaptation of my novel is like complete shit. Yeah. They don't really fit in. It feels like so, so harsh. Oh, wait, I have a quote too, and this is from the guy that made these games.

Did you find this interview? No. Dale DeCheron, he was the developer. And this is at the end of this interview he did with Nintendo Life about the games. I can understand that people were disappointed. I guess they made comments about animation, but also in terms of gameplay and design. Given the amount of time we had and what we were creating in terms of company infrastructure, I thought we did a good job. You know, we weren't Nintendo. And Nintendo makes fantastic games,

which are exceptionally well-tuned in terms of gameplay. They have amazing game designers. I would imagine that anything was going to fall short of that in terms of the amount of time and energy Nintendo puts into gameplay. At the same time, Philips was expecting graphics and production values in terms of music, visual, and animation. So there's a lot of push there. And you put effort into that. It doesn't go elsewhere. I felt like, given the circumstances, developing two at once on a platform that was pretty limited, we did a good job. It could have been better, of course.

It wasn't Nintendo. That was his final quote on. That my heart breaks for him, but I understand it because that's like every developer who's made a bad game. You know, I've worked on some bad games and it's always like the expectations are so high. Our budget is so constrained.

Our timeline is so tight that there's only so much we can do. And so they probably lean on this. Like, what is the front facing stuff? What is the stuff that people are going to pay attention to? And that was the bells and whistles. Yeah, the cut scenes. Let's watch some of the animated. Give me a shot. Just put me in the dead center of the frame. It's so funny in that quote that he was like, yeah, I guess people didn't like the animation. He also said that the gameplay was bad,

that it looked ugly, that it sounded like shit, and it played bad. I think we did a good job. Can we, Matt, can we play some from one of these games? Yeah. This is from The Faces of Evil. Here we go. Gee, it sure is boring around here. My boy, this piece is what all true warriors strive for.

I just wonder what Ganon's up to. This looks like if someone tried to make heavy metal in Mario Paint. How can we help? This looks like if someone tried to make heavy metal in Mario. It is written. Only link can defeat. Great. I'll grab my stuff. There is no time. Your sword is enough.

How about a kiss for luck? You've got to be kidding. It's funny. Cause like also the way they've written Link as a character has no connection to anything that's established canon. No, they invented this. Like, he's horny and he's also very hungry. That's another thing.

He just has a big appetite. It's also like the Mario and Luigi from Hotel Mario. It's like... Oh, I love this guy. This is one of the merchants, this guy. Boil, rope, bombs. You want it?

It's yours, my friend, as long as you have enough rubies. Do you see what I mean about them just coming in and away from the camera constantly? Yeah, 100%. It's so horrible. It's like, stop looking at me. And the camera isn't moving.

They're just like, they're just approaching it and interacting with it like they're, you know, Ernest talking to Vern. It's also like the thing, the way the merchant talks, it's the same as in Hotel Mario, where it's like all these games assume you don't know how a game works.

You've never played a game. He's letting you know you can buy things, but you need money. Can we talk about that real quick? And that brings me back to Zelda's Adventure, because I watched a lot of the gameplay of this. And the person doing the playthrough had the tutorial. And the tutorial is the most granular tutorial I've ever seen. It's like the idea of like, like, I guess, I guess they probably were like assuming, okay, someone bought this as a piece of consumer electronics and has never played a video game

before. So it'll be like, like move your cursor over to the play game button and press button one to begin your game. Now you can select either new game or go back. If you select new game, then you can enter your name. If you select go back, you'll return to the previous scene. Like every single thing is broken down. But also the game has like in order to interact with characters, you have to swing your sword at them, which is such a bizarre. Like so unintuitive. Like every time you're about to go into a cut scene, the last thing you see on the gameplay

screen is Link trying to murder that person. Yes. You also have to squat to open your inventory, which looks really stupid. Yeah. You have to squat to open inventory. And the CDI controller was notoriously difficult to use. Like it was not that clicky, responsive Nintendo patented D-pad stuff. It was like a little bit loose. Yeah. What was even because there was a remote, right? But then

there also were controllers. I think so. Yeah, I think so. And I think, yes, they were infrared. I was reading. I didn't remember that, but I guess they were or something. But they were, yeah, they didn't respond very well. I think there's a reason we never could get very far in that game. But yeah, you have to squat. And in the tutorial, which I watched last night, he goes, and then you can even duck walk. And then he like walks around. And he's like, you can buy things from merchants. And then you watch that clip of the merchant in the tutorial who explains it's yours. Bombs. And then you just see that like the second cut scene you see. And then at the end of the tutorial says, help me now. Let's go find Zelda because Zelda gets kidnapped like halfway through the game. But she's just in that first scene in the palace. Yeah.

but she's just in that first scene in the palace yeah and i also read the i read the there is the um the manual like the game manual online and in the manual it says you need to you need to save like zelda it's like that's not how the game starts it's it's like they were like, okay, we have to make Zelda, a Zelda game from memory. And we barely remember. We like heard about it one time. Maybe. Yeah. It's like this,

the play, Mr. Burns. Do you guys know about that play? It's about people after the apocalypse who have just been describing the, um, the sideshow, Bob, uh,

Cape fear, Mr. Burns up like a episode to each other around a fire, and it eventually becomes like a religion. This is my favorite scene in the movie Rain of Fire. Also touches on a post-apocalyptic reenactment of our modern pop culture, and they do Star Wars as a play with a kid who has a white bucket on his head and

another kid who has a black bucket on his head. Rain of Fire is so good. It's so fucking good. Nobody appreciates that. It's like super ripped Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey. I'm listening. Pre-McConnaissance, just being awesome. Cool dragons.

Yeah. I love it. It's fucking great. So in Link the Face of Evil, you play Link in Zelda, the Wand of Gamelon. You actually control Zelda. And the same thing with Zelda's Adventure. Those are, I guess, the only two Zelda games where Zelda is the player character. I mean, it's a thing Nintendo has never actually done.

Good. Look what happens when finally they let her do it. Yeah. Keep her out of it. Yeah, no thanks it's also like this this is the thing of of it's the weird thing of when you're when you're doing something that's completely invented like fantasy or sci-fi i feel like so much of it is just something just looking or sounding cool and it's little things like for like they've changed rupees to rubies which like i like i

don't know why rubies is so much less cool as a currency than rupees but it just is because it's real like it's like it's just like they're a real thing so it's like oh they're not gonna understand what a rupee is but a rupee is a real thing too yeah did you guys read the interviews with the voices no both the both the zelda and link interviewed recently oh wow that's awesome to talk about the experience and zelda said that she like improvised most of it which is crazy yeah once i found the voice i was only given direction regarding reaction to the situation like i'd like both of them well so jeffrey rath who was link more openly is like i had a script but i basically recorded everything very very quickly and i only did two takes of everything and i didn't know what zelda was

i only need one take because there's a scene in at the top top of Wand of Gamelan where he's like, I'm so hungry I could eat an Octorok. Yeah. He's like, they let me ask what that was. But that was it. But yeah, and she said it was mostly improv, that she did a lot of just making stuff up. And her husband was Gwonam, who I think is the woman who played Zelda. Her husband, I think, was the wizard who's Zelda her husband I think was the wizard who's like only Link can defeat Ganon

so that's kind of fun so yeah just some weird theater actors that got like caught in it what a weird time and when just the idea like the novelty of having voiceover or video or a fully

animated sequence like that was considered to be enough like it didn't have to be good it just had to be in there i want to i want to say though to like to extend the idea of this ip not being extremely well protected right there are things in our world which we wouldn't necessarily think oh in 50 years this is going to be such a pillar of pop culture that we need to safeguard it now. Like, sure. Like if there was a Flappy Bird sequel that was like fucking astonishing, then we might

be like, holy shit, Flappy Bird. And then like 20 years later, 30 years later, there'd be a full CGI DreamWorks Flappy Bird movie. But right now, the Flappy Bird person might be like, yeah, you can develop again. Like, it's fine. Like, I understand. Crazy Frog. We're all doing our best. Yeah, Crazy Frog.

What if one day Crazy Frog is, like, very, very important to us? What if? That's all I got. Which one was Crazy Frog? He's like, he's a ringtone. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, he's the one that's a ringtone.

Yeah, ringtone as opposed to the guy, the frog on the unicycle. That was a different thing. No, that's a different thing. Yeah, it's a different guy. That's Dat Boy. Dat Boy. Okay, here's what I remember about Dat Boy. What I remember about Dat Boy is that they, Dat Boy kind of a... Who's the NPC from the new Star Wars Jedi game?

Turgle? He's very Turgle-esque. He's kind of got a Turgle body proportion. He's giving Turgle. Put Turgle in the Dat Boy meme. That feels like a fun use of it. Dat Boy's a meme yeah he was just here here come dat boy and it was the frog on the unicycle but the one i remember is that there was there were some libertarians at the time uh who were on who were like so doing social media for the campaign of gary johnson uh the libertarian candidate in like 20 when the fuck which election was that 2012 2016

that was yeah 2016 and they they made a meme that was here? 2012, 2016? That was, yeah, 2016. And they made a meme that was, here come dat Gary and it was Gary Johnson on the unicycle. Oh no. I was like,

that's a perfect meme. And he didn't win? He didn't win, no. Oh man. Are you sure that wasn't Brad and Nick? And yeah,

he, his response to here come that boy is, Oh shit. What up? Oh shit. What up? That's of course. Oh shit.

What up? Yeah. It's really funny. I like it. I didn't know about it and I love it. Great meme. Yeah. But that's not crazy frog.

I mean, so that was a 2015 meme, which means that Elon, Elon will be tweeting about it in two more years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'll catch up. But I get what you're saying, Heather. It's just like this IP at the time was, it was also like a very different time for games.

Like, games are still viewed as, like, toys. Yeah. Like, these are things for kids, so. It's like a Viewmaster IP. Sure. Like, you'd be like, I don't know, sure. You want to make something based, you want to make your own Viewmaster shit? Go ahead.

Viewmaster is like a 1950s product for children that allowed you to view still images in 3D. Stereoscopic photography. There it is. Oh, I had one of these. Yeah, they're cool. Oh, I had one of these. Yeah, they're cool. I stayed at an Airbnb once that had a huge collection of Viewmasters.

That's cool. And I was like, what a thing to get into. And they were all like, you know, it's not just 3D photography. It's also time traveling because it's like 1950s 3D photography. So it was like, here is me and the family at Disneyland. And there's like no crowd. And all of the mascot characters are terrifying. Like they're like made of like real hair. It's really, really great.

I stayed at an Airbnb in Vancouver that had a bookshelf that was just like a wall of Sonic the Hedgehog manga. Did they know I was coming? What happened? That's like Fight Club and you find out later it's your apartment. I stayed at Airbnb once

and there was a freaking barbarian in the basement. Oh, no. Oh, that's a thing. Yeah. That's a whole thing. I got barbarian. Yeah, boy. Okay. Well, in the basement. Oh, no. Oh, that's a thing. Yeah. That's a whole thing. I got barbarian. Boy.

Okay. Well, you're still with us, so. Well, yeah, I got out. It was me. I don't know. I mean, I guess that we should have tried to track down. I was pricing on CDIs on eBay, and I was like, I don't know about buying one of these.

I played it, guys. Yeah. You don't jump high enough to get anywhere. You've watched the gameplay, right? Yeah. It's hard to play. It looks taxing to watch. Yeah.

And as a person who loves these old niche systems, like, it is not on my list of gets. Like, I do not want a cdi yeah yeah and like how could you even like you couldn't you probably can't even plug it into anything like to your tv there's no way it'd be it'd be futile no you can plug it into a sony pvm if you have you know like a retro retro crt and an rgb converter what do you what's I can. Yeah. I don't have that. Oh, man. So I guess this would be the point in an old version of the show where we would review the game as a certain number of points out of a certain number of points. And I do think that for the, you know, for the feeling of of it we should we should touch on what we would

rank this game and I do think that for the first two animated games I would give them a one I would give them a one because I'd be like you tried but for this the live-action CGI one or the live-action footage one I'd be like this is zero. You can bring your friends over and show them the animated one. They're like, oh, this is awesome. You can't show that other game to anyone. If your parents bought you that too

and they spent like $80 on it and they walked in and you were playing it, they would burst into tears. Where did that money go? They'd probably also shout, where did you get this pornography i was thinking about that because my dad was very very cheap when i was a kid very thrifty very responsible with money um is how i think of as an adult and he would like like he he enabled my video game habit the the very expensive habit of playing video games but with restrictions

of like like could play pc games because we already had a computer and I got one system at a time. So, like, you know, I had a Super Nintendo and I really wanted a TurboGrafx-16. He's like, no, you got the Super Nintendo. You don't get another system. And I remember playing this game. I played one of the Philip CDI Zelda games, one of the 2D ones at a at Fedco, which is a now defunct big box store, a club store. And I was playing one on a kiosk and I remember like really wanting it.

Cause I was like, Oh, it's a Zelda game. And it's like a side scroller and it's on CD and it's a new system or whatever. And how, with how expensive this is and how cheap my dad was, if he bought this for me and I played it for like 20 minutes and was like,

this sucks. He would have been so mad and justifiably so. Not to derail the show. Yeah. I got a text from our pal Zig that I have to read right now. Okay, great. All right. Just met David Hader on the picket line.

Holy shit. More like Solidarity Snake. Wow. Wow. Is he the actor? He's the voice of Solid Snake. Yeah, that's huge. that's so cool yeah the fucking he's also a writer accomplished screenwriter yeah also is he does does zig just bounce a tweet

drafts off of you what's the dynamic you know what he does i'll see you in my group chat and then i'll see it on twitter and i'll be like he tested it with us that's amazing yeah he's not the only one who does that you texted us the full draft of your Don Draper tweet I did do this yesterday which is also one of the best and most classic tweets

I've ever seen wow thank you excellent work excellent work thank you thank you I missed this tweet it's about the fucking commercial we saw

and it's just Don Draper pitching it yeah because I was like it's so bleak and it's like such like a like you could just like

hear him sing I'll read the tweet. Life is nothing but disappointments. When you're a kid, you can't wait to grow up, only to learn that adult life is nothing but pain. You work hard. You have nice things. You have no one to share it with. You've neglected your personal life.

But who's always been there? Nintendo. Fucking flawless. Oh, it's so good. Flawless victory. But I didn't write that. It actually came to me in a fugue state. What?

Just because I don't want to. I'm not a scab. I didn't write it. Wait, is eating scabbing? No. No. Okay, great. You didn't do it for a struck company?

No. Is Sirius struck? No. Twitter struck? No. Jesus Christ, it better not be. I'll tear his face down right now. Oh, yes, we have to grade it.

I also forgot to bring up that YouTube video I texted you about. Oh, we should do that right now. Speaking of the way that Link has been characterized in media, Matt, I sent you that link. Because also, I was thinking when Heather was, I'm sorry, when Link visited us earlier, that he doesn't talk anymore. And maybe there's like a reason. And it's this game and maybe this video yeah they they took some big liberties with link's personality uh back in the day oh this is from uh uh this show has been featured on our podcast before this is captain

and the game master no i think this was a separate legend of sel is? Oh my god, never mind. I think so. Holy shit! Hey! Excuse me, princess. Excuse me, princess. Well, excuse me, princess. Also, just Steve Martin's bit. I was gonna say, like, yeah, I mean, he was like the most famous man on Earth for a while.

Excuse me! Excuse me, princess. Excuse me, princess. Excuse me, princess! Excuse me, princess! Well, excuse me, princess! This video is like a third over. It's so long. And I think it was only a one season show.

Yeah. She's saying it like three times an episode. Excuse me, princess. He's saying it like three times an episode. Excuse me, princess. Well, excuse me again, princess. Oh, he's singing through it again. Excuse me, princess. Excuse me, princess. He's back at it.

Just get moving. She can't take it anymore. Excuse me, princess. This is, I think we get the idea. Yeah, yeah. This is like... This is a mostly mute character. So I think by default,

this is his most famous catchphrase. It's so funny. Like, they took away Mario and Link's voices just immediately. Like, they don't talk. No, yeah. They say almost nothing. They just grunt and whimper.

Yeah. I would hope that if Link does speak again, he says it. That would be a fun little Easter egg. They gotta have to say it. Depending on the context. I really wonder what they're going to do because I kind of hope they just like,

if they do adapt Legend of Zelda, and I'm pretty sure they're going to at some point because it's you know, it's their their their biggest IP. I hope they as much as I like illumination. I hope the illumination doesn't go near it and I hope they give it to like Mappa or something. Yeah, give it to like a give it to like an anime studio and just like let them go nuts and just live in the beauty of it. Yeah, and make it because the tone is completely different. I agree. of it yeah and make it because the tone is completely different i agree i i would watch a fully silent like silent protagonist adventure film featuring link in like a full like a full

studio ghibli style like epic yeah it would be incredible yeah give it to like ufo i think it's table ufo table ufo table give Give it to the Demon Slayer studio. Yep. It would be fucking sick. Yep. Anyway, any other thoughts on this? I guess, I mean, I give all these games heroes. I mean, it's extremely funny that they exist.

I wish I'd actually played them. I do kind of want to play them at some point, and maybe I'll go back to trying to get a Philips CD-i emulator working as I did when we covered Hotel Mario. But I just didn't have the energy we all downloaded so much dangerous yeah to our computers trying to play hotel mario i was like what am i doing so like yeah no like what i'll give these a zero two just because i don't there's nothing there there's not i guess i could give the animated ones like yeah like heather single

one because at least those are like funny. Like they're like kind of funny. They at least have something happening. Yeah. Like there's visual information happening on the screen. No, that's a good point. Yeah. But the live action one is.

The live action one looks like they're making it up in front of you right now. They're like, you can really see like them packaging that CD and be like, what have we done? Mad world play. There's also an aesthetic in the live action one that has now been co-opted

by TikTok people to only convey horror. Yes. Like when you see that like granulated, like choppy, low frame animation, live action stuff, it almost exclusively means something bad is about to happen. trail at cron door and it didn't have full motion video but it had like digitized images uh that it used for like the character models and for the uh the the the you know the portraits and so it was like the cost the wardrobe was like on a similar level like it like it was kind of shitty it was

kind of budget but it all it all was kind of charming um you know i could like i felt like it was fake as a kid but like you know i was like oh it kind of has it's it's this kind of charming. I felt like it was fake as a kid, but Young Greg was like, oh, it kind of has this sort of charming look to it, and these games have absolutely none of that. I'm not quite sure what the distinction is. Maybe it's because it's connected to a better-known IP. I don't know.

Maybe it was me. No, you did great. You did so good. You did amazing. All right, should we do a segment? Let's do a segment. It's time for a little VO Theater. Wow.

I've prepared a scene from The Legend of Zelda, The Wand of Gamelon. It's actually the first scene in the cut scenes there. The thing about pulling text from these, there's not a lot to any of it. Thank you. So it's going to seem a little short, maybe. We got some paper scripts here.

How do you want to cast this out? Nick, why don't you read for the king? Heather, why don't you read Zelda? Or no, Heather, why don't you read Link? Or no, Heather, why don't you read Link, actually? And Eva, why don't you read Zelda and I'll be Impa?

Okay. Alright, great. So this is King Regal. I'm thinking chest voice. Alright, here we go. Zelda. Duke Onkled

is under attack by the evil forces of Ganon. I'm going to Gamelon to aid him. But father, what if something happens to you? I'll take the Triforce of Courage to protect me. If you don't hear from me in a month, send Link.

Impa! Don't worry, Zelda. The Triforce of Wisdom promises the king will return safely. Enough! My ship sails in the morning. I wonder what's for dinner. Oh boy, I'm so hungry I could eat an octorok. One month later.

One month later. A whole month gone and still no word. I'm certain he's all right. Yeah, that old Ganon's no match for the king. Link, go to Gamelan and find my father. Great! I can't wait to bomb some Dodongos. Later still. Wake up, Impa. We're going to Gamelan.

All right, dear. I'll get the Triforce of Wisdom. And that's the scene. Great. That's how this game opened. So much tension. It wasn't until I tried to do Link's voice using my Link's voice, but with words, that I realized that is Ash Ketchum. Oh, sure.

Oh, yeah. Hey, it's me, Ash Ketchum. It's like the same register. But that's how you find voices. You know, you use one voice to get into the next one sometimes. That's just how it works. And, you know, as an accomplished voice actor, I can say that with authority.

Let me just play the real clip. Yeah, let's hear how it was supposed to go. Zelda, Duke Onkled is under attack by the evil forces of Ganon. I'm going to Gamelan to aid him. But Father, what if something happens to you? I'll take the Triforce of Courage to protect me. If you don't hear from me in a month, send Link. Impa, don't worry, Zelda.

The Triforce of Wisdom promises the king will safely return. Enough. My ship sails in the morning. That Triforce of Wisdom thing kinda looks cool. Yeah. The perspective shifting as the Triforce is spinning. So yeah, this has some redeeming value. A whole month gone, and still

no word. I'm certain he's alright. Yeah, that old Ganon's no match for the king. Go to Gammon and find my father. Great! He's all right. Yeah. That old Ganon's no match for the king. Go to Gammon and find my father. Great. I can't wait to bomb some Dodongo. God, he's so stupid.

And it's just like bad storytelling. Why are you telling the part where he goes missing for a month? Yeah. I'll get the Triforce of Wisdom. Like start here. Yeah, you could start after the point he's been missing. If you happen to be a listener who hasn't seen footage of this game, just watch that scene. Yeah. Everybody can't stop moving.

Yeah. Even if you're, like, just declaring something, your hand is, like, touching your head while your other hand like cradles your stomach and your eyes roll independently of one another. Yeah. It's like watching bath salts. Animation is so time consuming, like like even today with, you know, all the the the the the the new technology like that's the technological advancements in computer animation that can assist traditional animation, it's so, so time-consuming and tedious. It's like the longest workflow of anything.

which must have been laborious to animate in 1992 or 1993 whenever they were doing this. This all could have been like scrolling text just explaining that the king had disappeared and that a month has gone by since he left to get the Triforce of Courage and we could save so much human labor. The emperor speaks. Yeah.

Or is it Palpatine? What did they actually say? Palpatine speaks? The dead Yeah. Oh, yeah. Or is it Palpatine? What did they actually say? Palpatine speaks? A voice. The dead speak. Oh, the dead speak. You're saying, you're thinking of somehow

Palpatine survives. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. The dead speak. Man, it sucks that we all know that we just all knew that. Oh, man. Yeah, you're right.

It could have been scrolling text and then you could have cut to a much better animated thing where it's like Zelda's like, where's the king? And Link's like, you want me to go find him? And Zelda's like, I guess you can. Should I go with you? And he's like, no, you stay here and stay safe. But yeah, it's madness. And also they animated a boat.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. Which doesn't appear in the game. And then the words one month later explode into dust and then fly away, which is also like a lot of work. It looks kind of cool. And it's,

and one month later, still not contemporary time. It's later still. You wonder if any, if, if like they, they fought this at all or were like suggesting anything internally. And Phillips was just like,

no, we need the King asking what's for dinner. Like that has to be in there. Well, knowing that Phillips is a Dutch company, it would have been, no, we need to get the King needs to ask what is for dinner.

I think they worked backwards from, I can't wait to eat. I was so hungry. I can eat an Octorok. Yeah. Knew that lines of a fucking Cadillac. So how do we build it? That was fun, Matt.

Thanks for putting that together. That was great. Hey, that's this week's Get Played. Links to our social media in the episode description, including our Discord server if you want to join our little Fortnite grouping. And our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram. Also check out Get Animated, our other show, which is behind the paywall. Heather, we're covering Star Wars Visions this week.

Star Wars Visions seasons one and two will be covered in our Get Animated podcast. And after that, we're on to either a new series, a new movie. You'll have to tune in to find out. So check that out.

It's on patreon.com slash getplayed. You get new episodes day and date. Or if you're on Stitcher Premium, they're available a month later. Eva Anderson has been our guest. What a delight to have you in studio. I get new episodes day and date, or if you're on such a premium, they're available a month later. Eva Anderson has been our guest. What a delight to have you in studio. I can't believe this is like, this feels so wild to have all like the three of us,

plus a guest all in studio with Alex. It's just like, I don't know. It's I don't, I feel like kind of crazy that this is the thing that they used to be. Normal is now like a, like a unique experience. It's the first time it's happened in like three years.

Wow. It has not happened. Well, I feel extremely privileged to be here, guys. Thanks for having me. What a gift for us. Thank you. Eva, do you have anything

you want to plug? Yeah, I want to plug the Entertainment Community Fund. You can donate to it. It's for people who are going to, crew members who are going to lose their jobs because of the WGA strike.

They can take out grants and yeah, donate to the Entertainment Community Fund. Entertainmentcommunity.org. Yes. It's a great organization. I'll put the link in the show notes, too. Thanks, Matt. So it'll be there for you. Well, there you go.

Because the studios and the conglomerates are fucking us all. Yes. Yeah, it's true. They're the worst. But you know what? We're showing our power. We're withholding our labor. We're out on the picket lines.

And the studios know that you got played. Oh, shit. Blech. It's the price.