Food Dude

Welcome to the micropage for Food Dude/Skate Dude! This should be your one-stop shop for info relating to this unreleased, barely-tied-to-Zelda CD-i title!

Info Table

A good chunk of the information in this section (minus the stuff at the very end) is sourced from two sources:

Development

The origin of Food Dude stemmed from an earlier CD-i project by Viridis called Stay Healthy for Life: An Interactive Diet. It had a similar focus on health and good eating and was also never released, though unlike Food Dude, this title was fully completed.

Food Dude (or Skate Dude, as it was originally called) would begin its development as one of two games that Viridis pitched to the Mayo Clinic, alongside the (released) title AnnaTommy. This pitch was successful, and Viridis got the funding to make both games. It appears that this pitch and subsequent development happened sometime after Zelda's Adventure was completed; the December 1993 issue of the British CD-i magazine mentions Skate Dude being in active development. This is some time after the Spring 1993 period that ZA was believed to be completed in.

Food Dude was a 10-level-long edutainment game starring the titular skateboarder, who rode around on a light purple skateboard and helped teach players all about good nutrition. The game's lone surviving screenshot (shown above) reveals that one of the levels had a sports theme with minigolf courses and batting cages, though it's not 100% confirmed if they were from the same level. The gameplay of Food Dude was a vertical (auto-?)scroller in which the titular Dude had to skate over healthy food like bananas and apples, which gave him power-ups. He also had to avoid junk food and cigarettes, which slowed him down and caused ailment-themed creatures to spawn - more on them later.

In keeping with the game's RADICAL 80's AESTHETIC, the Dude would have said things like "Way cool!" if the player's movement was good enough, and the game's soundtrack consisted of loud guitar music. The people that Food Dude came across would have yelled comments at him, though it's unknown if these were positive or negative. The Dude also had a kick ability that may have been used to defend himself against the ailment creatures (or was akin to a kickflip/push, it's unclear).

The Food Dude would have been able to purchase both progressive upgrades and abilities through a store, accessed either in the middle or at the end of a level (it's unknown if this was ever decided). These upgrades would have been to his skateboard, and included wheels, bearings, the board itself, and so on. As for his abilities, the Food Dude could have traveled over water, flew over obstacles, use speed "power bursts", thrown forks, and be able to move off-road (albeit slowly). This store system implies some sort of currency system, though it's unknown what it would've been.

Between levels, full-motion video cutscenes featuring the Food Dude would have played. They would have had a static background of locales such as streets or school hallways, and the Dude himself would have talked about hip, healthy, and environmentally-focused things. One of these cutscenes would have had him stop and go to the bathroom, though this may be part of the planned ailment system. More on that in a bit.

A planned feature of Food Dude was environment interactivity. The titular character could have turned on hoses, broke windows, and knocked people off ladders. However, this meddling with the level could have come at a great cost. Knocking over people's stuff, hitting specific landmarks in a level, or just picking up junk food/cigarettes would spawn ailment-themed creatures into the level. These creatures (possibly called "aliens" in the game's lone announcement) attacked the Food Dude and would chase after him, eventually catching him if he was too slow. With enough ailments or junk food, the Food Dude would die of a heart attack(!).

Multiple latex models were made for the game's ailments by Jason Bakutis (who also made models for Zelda's Adventure). While a group photo of the ailments' models does exist, only three of them have been confirmed:

Constipation	High Blood Pressure	Lung Disease

A portion from the game's only known development document also mentions a "stress head" that would've spawned as a result of knocking into people's things. What this ailment looked like is unknown, though it could have been tied to the high blood pressure head.

Food Dude was planned to be released in the US and UK by Philips, but this never happened. According to its developers, the game did not get very far in development before it was cancelled. This appears to be the result of a multitude of factors, such as Viridis' many gaming projects (which were almost always cancelled), the company's general inexperience with game development, and, well... Food Dude being both a developer's nightmare and a chore to play.

The game had a very quick pace, with almost no time to avoid obstacles in the level. This stemmed from the levels being designed before the gameplay elements were being figured out; this resulted in, among other things, item placement that did not take into account the player's jump abilities. As a result, the only way to win a level was to memorize its exact path. (It's also unknown if the above gameplay elements were ever actually coded into the game.)

Rediscovery and Zelda Ties

So, how do we know so much about this weird edutainment game? And why is it on a fansite for the CD-i Nintendo games? Well, just you wait!
For many years, the only public mention of Food Dude was in that December 1993 issue of the British CD-i magazine. It gave a basic plot and gameplay summary, and that was pretty much it. It wasn't until June of 2015 that something interesting happened...

An eBay listing popped up for an unknown latex model.
This was the Lung Disease model meant for Food Dude, though at the time, nobody knew this. The fansite Nintendo Player, upon discovering the listing, recognized the model from a photograph that was shared by Jason Bakutis for a Zelda's Adventure-focused interview. Nintendo Player would contact several Viridis employees and, in turn, reveal many brand-new facts about the development and gameplay of Food Dude.

A few years would pass before the next Food Development. In 2019, Zelda's Adventure would have its graphics and maps ripped by Shikotei. Among these sprites were never-before-seen cut content, including a very peculiar man:

It was the Food Dude himself, though the connection had not been made yet. He was actually thought to be a surfboarder at first, as his sprite was loaded on a map bordering water. Over the next year, I (yes, the person writing this website and page) would discover more things about this oddity.

First, I discovered a voice-line of a guy saying "Radical, dude! Totally!". This line matched up well with the discovered sprite, and might even be a leftover from his "Way cool!" system of dialogue. Then, I stumbled into the Nintendo Player article for Food Dude, and saw that the sprite matched up identically with the player in the lone gameplay photograph. Wasn't a surfboarder after all, ha ha.

With these discoveries in mind, I came up with a little hypothesis; that there was an undiscovered easter egg featuring the Food Dude. I tried to figure out its activation trigger for the better part of a year, but nothing worked.
That was, until October 30th, 2020.