This great indie is a loving homage to the worst Nintendo games of all time

Most companies like to sweep the bad parts of their legacy under the rug. For Nintendo, that includes some The Legend of Zelda games licensed for the Phillips CD-i platform. Frustrating game design, poor animation, and a terrible controller cemented these games as some of the worst ever made, but that doesn’t mean people have ignored them. Some of the earliest “YouTube Poops” were based on footage and dialogue from those games. And now, the new Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore is full-on spiritual successor — and a Phillips CD-i-inspired controller is coming out to go along with it.

Playing Arzette can sometimes feel like watching a film like Ed Wood or The Disaster Artist, as it’s a high-quality reinterpretation of some infamous art. A decent platformer in its own right, Arzette (which is available now) and the CD-i-like controller coming later this year are a unique kind of game preservation that allows a new generation to experience the feeling of playing those infamous Zelda CD-i games without a lot of the baggage.

Come back when you’re a little richer

In the 1990s, Nintendo’s first foray into CD-based gaming was through Mario and Zelda CD-i games, but the results were disastrous. And the 2D platformers Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon are the two titles Arzette most greatly draws from, although a bonus game pays tribute to Hotel Mario. The Faces of Evil and The Wand of Gamelon were both fairly basic platformers that felt extremely sluggish to play due to hardware limitations and the controller players had to use. Mechanically, Arzette does the necessary uplifting to make platforming and combat feel smooth and responsive to player input.

It’s not as satisfying to play as something like Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, but that’s not a fair comparison. Arzette respects the originals enough to fully achieve the gameplay feeling the CD-i original failed to hit years prior. Gameplay was never the main draw of the infamous CD-i titles, though;