10 Biggest Risks In Video Games (That Didn't Pay Off)
4. Nintendo Giving Philips Free Reign To Make A Zelda Game
The big Ninty is usually very protective of their first-party titles, preferring to make them in-house with trusted partners, but in the case of the Zelda property, it was once loaned out with terrible results.
Back in the 90s, Nintendo decided to let Philips Interactive Media produce a series of three adventure game titles for their Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-i) players. Known as Link: The Faces of Evil (1993), Zelda: The Wand of Gamoleon (also 1993) and Zelda's Adventure (1994), the games are utterly and totally bizarre.
They received very little input on Nintendo for what to do with the 'games' - as we use that term loosely as they're almost not - and Philips produced a weird mix of full-motion video cinematics with terrible acting and incredibly rough animation, topped off with weird sidescrolling or top-down sections that just didn't work properly.
As sales of the Philips CD-i were extremely poor, sales of these three bizarre Zelda titles were also terrible.
These games are also one of the only titles in the Zelda series where Link is actually voice acted and says words. However after hearing his voice actor, you'd wish he hadn't.