At its Summer Games Showcase, Limited Run Games announced modern ports for lots of classic games, like Gex Trilogy. However, Limited Run and Seedy Eye Software also cursed the world with the reveal trailer for Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, a game that functions as a spiritual successor to two of the maligned Zelda games released for Philips CD-i. It faithfully mimics the janky cinematics of Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, but even more impressively, the sidescrolling action gameplay is a pixel-perfect imitation of the style used in those games. It’s so obvious that a ton of love and attention has been put into making this update on an abomination.
As Limited Run explains, “The Kingdom of Faramore is beautifully realized by Rob Dunlavey, the artist behind the world map paintings from the games that inspired Arzette,” and Jeffrey Rath and Bonniejean Wilbur are voicing characters. You may not know who they are, but they voiced Link and Zelda, respectively, in some of the CD-i games. So this game is rooted in CD-i Zelda down to its very core, even if official PR is wisely tiptoeing around any mention of Zelda to avoid the ire of Nintendo.
In the end, will this game be better than the games that inspired it? It kind of has to be, right? We won’t be waiting too long to find out, as Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore will arrive in 2023 on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox, and PC via Steam.
Finally we can talk about this one! I am the producer and co-writer on this amazing CD-i Zelda successor from @thedopster! For all you fans out there, this is gonna be an amazingly fun adventure, that plays better than your wildest dreams! https://t.co/1P7JPLWenv
— Audi Sorlie (@PC98_Audi) July 12, 2023
