Even a game trilogy as infamous and silly as the Philips CD-i Zelda games have some pretty awesome moments, as these examples will attest.
- How about Link defeating his powerful archnemesis Ganon by simply throwing the Book Of Koridai at him? And Zelda gets to do this in her own game by defeating Ganon with the Wand of Gamelon? Link's Death Glare as he does the deed and pushes Ganon into a Villainous Breakdown before he's sealed away makes it even better; even with how goofy he is, you can tell he's absolutely done with him and everything he put the Koridians through.
- Heck, how about the fact that Zelda herself, the person the whole series is named after and usually delegated to being a Damsel in Distress, is not only made playable — something Nintendo themselves never did until The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks many years later — but got two entire games all to herself in this series?
- Militron's introductory speech "WORTHLESS KORIDIAN, YOU MUST BE HARDENED WITH FIRE! GO AND KILL!", his Badass Boast "Now, you must DIE!" and his Ass-Kicking Pose during the phrase is quite a standout in an otherwise very silly game, because both scenes actually come off as an intimidating moment acted with conviction, not to mention the fact that the animation in that sequence is actually pretty good by the game's standards. Also, "Feel the fires of war!" is just as badass.
- Militron also is the one boss in the side-scrolling CDI games who is actually tough. He can shoot fireballs from his mouth and takes four hits in the head with the sword to be beaten. While he would be pretty basic in any other game, here he is way above the boss standards by actually being a proper hard-to-beat one.
- King Harkinian gets a chance to establish himself as Hyrule's powerful ruler in the ending of Wand of Gamelon, by blowing off the traitorous Duke Onkled's plea for mercy and sentencing him to scrub every single floor in Hyrule.
- Keep in mind, this may imply he has to scrub the floors of the dungeons in Hyrule too — as in, the "filled to the brim with killer monsters and various deadly booby traps" dungeons. If this is true; then The King is, by proxy, sending the Duke off to his death!
- And even if the dungeons weren't among the locations Onkled would have to scrub, having to clean the floors of commoners would still be an arduous and humiliating punishment for a traitorous duke.
Onkled: Please, your omnipotence! Have mercy!
Harkinian: After you've scrubbed all the floors in Hyrule, then we can talk about mercy. Take him away! - Keep in mind, this may imply he has to scrub the floors of the dungeons in Hyrule too — as in, the "filled to the brim with killer monsters and various deadly booby traps" dungeons. If this is true; then The King is, by proxy, sending the Duke off to his death!
- The Ice Queen's two sequences are surprisingly competently done by these games' rather low standards, and in some ways they actually don't feel like they'd be place in a proper Zelda title. Aside from some Department of Redundancy Department Rhyming with Itself in the second sequence, there's nothing unintentionally goofy, Link looks dignified for once rather than a silly Idiot Hero (and a pretty-boy too, much like his various counterparts), and he doesn't ruin the scenes with any dialogue. The contrast with the rest of the two sidescrolling games is so notable that the Game Grumps speculated that it was directed by someone other than the normal director.
- CD-i Ganon might be the weakest incarnation of him in two of the three games, but in Zelda's Adventure, he is scarily competent. He conquers another realm as usual and actually manages to defeat and capture Link by himself. His design is one of his most nightmarish, and he can restore all previous bosses who worked for him to life for a Boss Rush. Then does he go down in one hit, like his other CD-I incarnations? Nope. He teleports, has a hard to avoid and damaging spell, and takes a lot of punishment before he is defeated. Ganon's newfound competence between the two other stories is maybe the best part of this game.
