CD player in 1970. Following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russell's patents (then held by a Canadian company, Optical Recording Corp.) in the 1980s. The Compact Disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a focused laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals. Prototypes were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the late 1970s. In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new digital audio disc. After a year of experimentation and discussion, the "Red Book" CD-DA standard was published in 1980. After their
CD-i games from The Legend of Zelda series 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. The Philips CD-i did not sell well and the games saw relatively small sales figures. Though the games initially received largely positive reviews, they have been universally criticized since the mid-2000s. This is attributed to the reaction of many gamers to the obscure games' full motion video cutscenes