Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon (1993)

Picking up where I left off with Link: The Faces of Evil--Animation Magic developed two Zelda titles simultaneously, similar to how the mainline Oracle games were simultaneously developed by Capcom (Sans the cool link functionality). Its counterpart is Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and it's pretty much just a separate pack of levels for what is essentially the same experience. The design, its very few strengths and numerous flaws are pretty much the same. The twist is that, this time, you play as Princess Zelda herself, a first in the history of the franchise.

As I mentioned in my review of Faces of Evil, I decided to try the fanmade remaster of Wand of Gamelon, and boy does it make a huge difference. The remaster boasts many improvements, including a 16:9 aspect ratio, vastly improved performance and improved controls that take advantage of the increased amount of buttons on modern controllers. The walk speed is no longer glacially slow, and combat feels much more fluid and enjoyable. It also includes quality of life enhancements, such as unlimited continues, autosave and picking up rubies by touching them instead of having to swing your sword. Since it runs natively on your PC as well, it is also more accessible than running the game on a CD-i emulator. If you've ever wanted to check these games out, this is the way to do it.

The Wand of Gamelon's cutscenes are just as, if not slightly more bizarre and iconic than the ones in Faces of Evil. As King Harkinian and Link have both gone missing in the island of Gamelon, Zelda takes charge to save the day. The mere fact that Zelda is finally given the protagonist spotlight makes this kind of a cool experience, especially when contrasted to the airheaded Link. I'll restate what I said about Faces of Evil: this is a ridiculous fever dream. A nightmarish relic of early digital animation. I absolutely love that it exists, against all odds. No matter how serious and artsy The Legend of Zelda tries to be nowadays, it will always live in the shadow of THIS masterpiece of audiovisual design. Think of it as a video game version to what The Room is for film.

But uh, yeah, this is still not a great video game. While the remaster's mechanical changes make the game much more playable, the overall design underneath is still pretty poor. Enemies still spawn seemingly out of thin air, and the maps still do a horrific job of letting you know what constitutes walkable ground. While the frustration is lessened by the improved controls, there is just nothing interesting to the level design. While there aren't any bosses that are as frustrating as Faces of Evil's Militron, they all simply amount to trial-and-erroring which item you need to use against them. At least, much like its counterpart, it's a pretty short experience.

However, I can definitely see the potential for this side-scrolling adventure format. I wasn't able to see it in the original CD-i versions of Animation Magic's Zelda games, but Seth Fulkerson clearly must have. The remasters that he developed made it much easier to see that tiny beam of light within these games, despite not being able to fix their underlying deficiencies. However, it does make me very interested to see how the game he subsequently developed, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, takes this formula. There's something so heartwarming about the inspiration he must have felt to put in all of that work into these games.

Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon are terrible. But hey, they gave us some hilarious cutscenes and inspired someone to take up game development, so I'm glad that they exist.