ZELDA'S ADVENTURE (1994) - SHRINE OF FIRE & GANNON'S GAUNTLET
The run up to the Shrine of Fire had my true victory over this game: finding the Food Dude easter egg!
For those who don't know, this easter egg references an unreleased game by the same studio, and went undiscovered for decades - it was finally found in 2020, after datamining revealed the sprite and voice clip and pure trial and error found how to access it (you have to equip the Diamond and hold the use button for around 5 seconds on this screen).
With the true game beaten it was onto the postgame, the final shrine. It was pretty uneventful - more or less a straight run through some caverns with a generic lava cave design, including a handful of "forge" rooms with stock photos of anvils scattered about. There was one room that inexplicably had circus monkeys for enemies, though - misplaced and intended for the Shrine of Illusion or Strength, perhaps? There was also a room with an enemy whose design I've already forgotten, who could only be damaged with the Gold Necklace I found in the Shrine of Strength. I have a policy of not using guides for final dungeons in puzzle-heavy games like this, so that took a bit of trial and error (thankfully, there is visual indication when you're using a weapon that can't damage something). The boss was a pretty forgettable dragon guy named Warbane, and much to my surprise, you're dropped straight into the final gauntlet afterwards, with no chance to leave! Thankfully, it was pretty easy - it's a boss rush, but none of the bosses have been upgraded and your attack increases with every shrine you clear, so only Agwanda and Warbane posed any real threat. Then it was on to the final battle with Gannon. Funny coincidence: his
boss music is oddly reminiscent of the "Yuga, flawless, flawless Yuga" chorus from Link Between Worlds! He teleports around and fires waves of electric balls that feel...
extremely inspired by Sonic 1's Final Zone. He would be tough, except he only ever fires downwards - staying on the top of the screen means you only have to avoid him actually teleporting on top of you. And with that... Zelda's Adventure is complete! The ending was aggressively present, but at least we got another look at the old wizard guy, who I recently found out was played by like a 20 year old wearing an old guy mask. Also, funny note: the antipiracy message is after the credits, and nowhere else in the entire game. Should probably let people know playing it illegally is a fine before they've put dozens of hours in!
I guess I should go ahead and give my final thoughts here too. It's easily the worst game I've played for this thread so far, but I still found myself enjoying it? The fact that I took about a month's hiatus in the middle of it might seem to suggest otherwise, but I was always going to do that at some point in this thread, and it's not really by any fault of this game. It's definitely in a tradition of 90s CD-ROM adventure games that I've only ever been vaguely aware of, and I get the sense that it's not a very good one of them, but I don't play those games often, so the weird visuals, low-budget voice acting, and strange design remained intriguing for me right up until the end. Speaking of, I should address the elephant in the room - the puzzles. I used a guide for the whole game, but I honestly don't think it would be that awful without one? Most of the puzzles just involve getting a key item at point A and bringing it to gate B, and the combat is mostly easy enough to make trial-and-erroring everywhere seem like it wouldn't be that bad. There's definitely a couple puzzles, like getting a lance spell at one end of the map to damage a boss at the other, but overall I'd say this aspect of the game's reputation is a bit overblown. I'm definitely glad I played it, though - and now it's on to a handful of spinoff manga before getting to one of the things I was most looking forward to for this thread: the Satellaview games!