Zelda's Adventure
Your Quest
It is the Age of Darkness.
The evil Ganon has captured the young hero Link. Only Princess Zelda can rescue him. Her journey will be difficult, filled with many challenges and mysteries. Armed only with the advice of the wise court astronomer Gaspra, and the guidance of Shurmak, Zelda must set out on her journey deep into the uncharted southeastern region of Hyrule, known as Tolemac.
Before she begins, Gaspra warns her that the only way to save Link is to collect the seven Celestial Signs that Ganon has stolen, and that she must overcome one final obstacle: Ganon himself. Once she succeeds, she gains the knowledge and strength to rescue Link and brings the magical land of Hyrule into the Age of Lightness.
Background
In the 1990s Nintendo made a deal with Philips to develop 3 Zelda titles. The first 2 were side scrolling platformers, similar to Zelda II, and the third was a traditional top-down action adventure game.
Zelda’s Adventure looked interesting and I thought it would be fun to play on a portable system. I chose the Game Boy because of the existing Zelda games on the system.
The game sticks to the aesthetics of Link’s Awakening, but also incorporates some features from Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons.
This is a complete port of the CDi original and was developed in GB Studio, with a few modifications. Thanks to Beatscribe for composing the music. I hope you enjoy playing the game as much as enjoyed making it.
Download
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Comments
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i tried to play this game on a gameboy emulator for android on my phone an this error appeared after some minutes of gameplay
i tired to play this in my oldboy on a xiaomi redmi 9
Really appreciate the effort here, but sadly it just doesn’t “feel” like a Zelda game. I’m not sure if this is due to limitations of GBStudio or what, but it feels very “off”.
1 - Can’t move diagonally.
2 - Combat is very stiff, and has no visual or audio feedback that you’ve hit an enemy (or that they hit you). The comic bubbles don’t really fit.
3 - Can’t just walk over an item to pick it up, have to press a button.
4 - Moving around an arrow cursor in the submenu or map instead of just moving a selector from one object to the next.
Again, appreciate the effort. There’s some solid framework here, but it needs some more work done to “feel” right. I’m not saying it has to be 100% authentic to an official game, but like… play Link’s Awakening for a good idea of how this game should play like.
Bugs I found so far:
- Saves don't function.
- Enemies respawn when you unpause.
- Map of the dungeon doesn't work properly.
- Sometimes the game freezes if you hit enemy on the edge of the screen.
Overall, the game is still way too raw and needs a lot of work.
Same, there's also a lot of assets that appear to be official which could lead to a whole bunch of legal entanglements
I do however, want to see this game fully realized
I just wanted to drop by and say that a new version of the GB Studio creation software was released a few weeks ago near the end of January 2024. hopefully when John reads my recent comment, he'll try to make a new version of Zelda's Adventure game with the newest version of GB Studio that would fix or solve some of these random crashing problems, though this may a take a while.
Great game but cant load save game get
The dev seems to have abandoned us. I was hoping for a non-crashing version by this point, but no updates or even word that they are working on it. I guess on the bright side, I don't have to give them my money now, but I do think I would prefer to play this without constant crashes...
Crashed when loading my save.
The game is beautiful but after visiting a random church that healths you in the middle of the map all the text converted to blank boxes, not solved even restarting, so i couldnt complete the game. Also lot of random crashes totally at random walking or fighting in the world map enemies with the wand (hit boxes stop working and crash text, too many to mention). Also manual save not working on emulator (Ganbette).
Do we HAVE to download it? I just want something to play in my browser though...
Huh? But it's working for Me. 🤔
the game can be played directly from any modern web browser like Mozilla Firefox, Google chrome, safari & Microsoft edge. downloading the game is optional.
Why is the character running 6 times faster than it should be?
crash while fighting moblins with wand south of the river mouth just after picking up the water item
This looks really cool! I will wait until it's been patched more, but I'm looking forward to playing this on original hardware ^^ thanks so much for all ur hard work :)
smacked a moblin too many times i just felt like mashing attack on it and got this lol
What I was able to play was fun! This is a good remake and I probably wouldn't have tried Zelda's Adventure otherwise. I'd love to finish it! Unfortunately, it wouldn't allow me to save and now it won't let me start any new save files either. I'm not sure whether the problem was related to me playing on my browser or not. If the game gets updated with patches at some point, I'll definitely come back and finish it!
I tried to use a combination of local saves and save states on my Analogue Pocket to get through it but I got so many crashes and corrupted saves I had to give up.
Really enjoyed what I played, I hope it gets some patches so I can actually finish it.
i wanna see her titties
+1 rep
YES dude
i found the virgin
I am going to try and put this on a Geek Tech Cartridge and see if I can play it with my Epilogue GB Operator after I flash the ROM to the cartridge. I will be using an i7 Windows PC. Looks like a blast!!!!
Got this error screen while whacking a Moblin with the wand to the west of the starting point. Playing on RetroArch's Gambatte core.
Fix the Kernal Panic, Its annoying.
yeah seriously i was playing this with my wife and when it crashed she refused to eat the pizza i made her for the rest of the night
I agree to an extent, the atmosphere of Tactics is much different than any Final Fantasy game I can remember.
Had fun with this! Thanks for doing it. Though, I did have lots of glitches when trying to play on actual hardware. The Save & Continue feature always leads to the game freezing at some point, and then when trying to reload, it just brings up a blank screen. During one attempt, the merchant selling the candle had no spawned items so I couldn't do anything with that shop or item. Damage from enemies would occasionally glitch, killing me without any signs of hitting me. I found the game worked best when using the Save & Quit option and then resetting the console, which leads me to believe it is a memory issue. Hope to be able to experience it on a Game Boy or Game Boy Player in full some day!
I have always been a fan of Demakes. However, one thing that can really come back and bite you in the ass is using trademarked names when doing Demakes. I have a suggestion that may save you from anguish down the road. Retool the game, just enough, so it actually isn't titled Zelda, and doesn't use the exact names from Zelda. Enough, where a cease and desist and/or legal threats from Nintendo will be meaningless to you.
This would also make it much safer and easier for wider distribution, without fear of takedowns.
Grizelda's Adventure:)
Link's name in Japanese is Rinku, so you could go with something like Rinku-San or similar.
If you at all would like to embrace this idea, and protect this amazing project, i'd absolutely be on board to help you with the "name" changes, so things are differentiated enough to avoid any legal dilemmas.
I love when people put a lot of love into stuff like this. But, I have seen Konami, Capcom, Nintendo, take down quite a few projects over the last 20+ years, that I have amassed in my personal collection. But, those that did games in a more "Mad Magazine", satire style name, to avoid infringement, ended up being fine:) The companies may email them to take the games down. But, legally, not much can be done! It would be an empty threat, at that point!
Anyways, food for thought:)
Kyland!
Holy crap. This is awesome. It reminds me of playing OoA and OoS for the first time as a kid.
Played throught the whole game and collect every item. I really enjoyed it, thanks for your work. There's one more thing that I noticed and botheres me a bit, the Maps for the last 4 Dungeons sadly don't work hopefully this will be fixed in a new version^^
Edit: The compass and the map actually don't spawn in the last dungeon even though they exist in the memory, this is hopefully also gonna get fixed
Something that might also need to be changed is the hitboxes of certain enemies
Some bosses are barely any challenge since you can just walk through them without taking any damage (for example Boss 6 Ursore)
Thanks a lot for your work. Rally interesting to give a new life to this bad old game.
But the game is very empty like the original, and there are not enough sound effects... that makes it a good adaptation but still not a good game.
Will you continue to work on it to improve it a little and give it a real second wind as if it had really been released on GameBoy. Thanks
Got this when saving in a building and refreshing the page.
Awesome job! Got this error you may want to review:
Hello, the game looks really good. Can you share the .gbsproj source code?
That's available here - https://github.com/john-lay/zeldas-adventure
Hey would you be interested in porting this to Gamemaker 2 or Godot and use a custom engine maybe a DX version. I think you can make a much better game if you do this instead of using GB Studio (as it's limited in freedom). If so let me know, I'll help (could be fun). I've done this sort of thing before. You'll lose GB compatibility, but you can stick to the spec anyway.
(Example in built in about 2.5 hours)
https://2d-knights.itch.io/zledas-adventure-concept
that looks cool. I couldn’t play it on my ipad (no keys) but the graphics look spot on.
Thanks, I threw it together quickly (sorry no touch screen support) If the author of this project doesn't want to work on it maybe I'll turn it into something or release the source.
Nice work and thanks for the offer, but I’ve enjoyed the challenge of working within the limitations of thr Game Boy. Having the game playable on original hardware is one of the appeals of the project.
Cool. I suggest using pure GB Z80 assembly then as it may become difficult to mold GB studio to make a decent Zelda Engine especially as you continue to add features.
https://www.chibiakumas.com/z80/Gameboy.php
Hello, I need to ask, how to play this game. Tried it on my cell and it does not work so what devices is this playable on? Would it work on my laptop?
Just the Gameboy right? So how do I install the game on my gameboy? I have been looking here for the answer but you don't say. You have to give some type of an explanation for us less technical please.
Thank you
you ned to use a gameboy emulator
To play it on an actual Game Boy you would need to download the ROM from here and put it on a Game Boy Flash Cartridge. Do a web search for "Game Boy" and "Flash Cartridge" for more information, anywhere that you would buy a Flash Cartridge from will also have the instructions to use it.
I use a Geek Tech cartridge and an Epilogue GB Operator to Flash the cartridge and play using Windows 10. ETSY has Geek Tech or you can go directly to the company with a Google search. It's Batteryless save so you never need to worry about leaking. You may want to save money though and use something like mGBA it should be fine. Just make sure you get the right one for your PC there is 32 Bit and 64 Bit. Just set up your Joystick on settings and set your ROM on settings. You can Google everything. Emulators are great.
I bought My Boy! and My Old Boy! for my Phone for Emulators if you are playing that way. I believe I used my 8bitdo GBros adapter and a SNES Classic Mini controller with bluetooth. They are worth the money. Good deal if you want to play on your phone.
Same error here. OpenEmu on MacOS 12.3.1
This is fantastic. Great work!
Got this after entering the earth shrine and striking the skeleton npc that speaks to you. Wasn't sure if they were an enemy but I believed this happened after it was killed
Are you interested in offering the game in other languages? If so and you provide the text, I would like to translate it for you in German!
Same here for French!
Even if it's probably far too much to ask, I would also be happy about a German translation.
Hi! Haven't logged a lot of time, but I noticed the combat is a bit dodgy. I'm doing up a LoZ game and if you like, I'd be happy to share scripts. The only 2 things I don't have down is player blink/invincible and player push back when hit. Otherwise it's fun and I haven't hit any crashes.
hi, i am enjoying the game but after my first death i started again and although i have picked up the boomerang spell in subsequent plays i cannot use it. The wand works fine though. I am not sure whether this is a bug or not. I am using a RG351M running Amberelec. Brilliant idea by the way. Would love to see a GBC or GBA version one day !
I figured this out now. You need enough coins to use the boomerang as it is a spell and not a weapon. Each throw is one rupee.
Found 2 issues while playing through the game, one is just a small one where a piece of all has no collision (picture 1)
the second one is a bigger problem, whenever I enter the area in picture 2,all of the text stops working and only displays white text
making a save and reloading it gives me the error screen of picture 3
1)
2)
3)
Interesting. Thanks for the detailed feedback. It helps a lot.