On this exact day in 1993, October 10, exactly 27 years ago, Philips Interactive Media released two important games on CD-i: Zelda: Wand of Gamelon and Link: Faces of Evil (both released on the same day). With the launch of Digital Video right around the corner, these releases did not get a lot of attention at the time. It is all the more surprising how their popularity in the history timeline of Nintendo has been shaping up: The Nintendo CD-i titles appear to be one of the most popular CD-i games ever created. Even today, these two games are the reason why people want to try and buy a CD-i player. Next to the upcoming release of Hotel Mario in 1994 and eventually Zelda's Adventure in 1995, the appearance of Nintendo characters in CD-i games is quite significant in the popularity of CD-i itself. If the market allowed for it, CD-i would have seen additional Nintendo licensed games including Super Mario's Wacky Worlds in 1994, Mario Takes America in 1995 and Donkey Kong presumably in 1993. We've learnt that most of these high profile titles were actually developed by relatively new and unexperienced game developing studios, offering game project ideas to Philips Media and granted money to execute their ideas exclusively on CD-i. When CD-i appeared to be more difficult to develop for, some of these projects were eventually cancelled.
Happy anniversary to Animation Magic's classics: Zelda: Wand of Gamelon and Link: Faces of Evil!
