Action role-playing game
An important influence on the action RPG genre was the 1986 action-adventure, "The Legend of Zelda", which served as the template for many future action RPGs. In contrast to previous action RPGs, such as "Dragon Slayer" and "Hydlide," which required the player to bump into enemies in order to attack them, "The Legend of Zelda" featured an attack button that animates a sword swing or projectile attack on the screen. It was also an early example of open-world, nonlinear gameplay, and introduced new features such as battery backup saving. These elements have been used in many action RPGs since.
CD-i games from The Legend of Zelda series
Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon and Zelda's Adventure are action-adventure games produced by Philips for the CD-i as part of Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda" video game series. Not designed for Nintendo platforms, the games owe their existence to negotiations related to Nintendo's decision not to have Philips create a CD add-on to the Super NES. During these negotiations, Philips secured the rights to use Nintendo characters in CD-i third-party developer games. "The Faces of Evil" and "The Wand of Gamelon" were developed by Animation Magic and were both released in North America on October 10, 1993, and "Zelda's Adventure" was developed by Viridis and was released in North America on June 5, 1994. The games were given little funding or development time, and Nintendo provided only cursory input. None of the games are canonical to the "Zelda" franchise.