Link: The Faces of Evil

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Link: The Faces of Evil

Developer(s)	Animation Magic
Publisher(s)	Philips Media
Release date(s)	October 10, 1993
Genre(s)	Action Adventure
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	Philips CD-i
Media	1 CD-ROM

Link: The Faces of Evil is a video game developed by Animation Magic and released for the Philips CD-i in 1993, on the same day as Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon. A follow-up to both games, Zelda's Adventure, arrived in 1994. All three CD-i Zelda games were the product of a compromise between Philips and Nintendo after the two companies failed to release a CD-based add-on for the SNES. Because this game has next to no connection with Nintendo, few "Zelda" fans consider this a true Zelda game, and Nintendo does not officially recognize the game as part of the Zelda series.

1 Plot
2 Gameplay
3 Development
4 Reception
5 Notes
6 External links

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Link, feeling increasingly useless in the now-safe land of Hyrule, has no idea that the far away island of Koridai has been taken over by his old nemesis, Ganon. Ganon has also kidnapped the Princess of Hyrule, Zelda, and is holding her captive there. A mysterious wizard visits Link on a flying carpet to inform the hero of the dire situation. Only Link, with the aid of the Book of Koridai, can defeat Ganon. After being refused a kiss from Princess Zelda, Link then flies away with the man on the flying carpet and moves towards a populated island of stone statues in the shape of diabolical faces known as the "Faces Of Evil".

The story is largely told through animated FMVs, in an attempt to make best use of the CD-ROM format. Many backgrounds were taken from the Zelda Cartoon and used as backdrops in the game.

A screenshot from The Faces of Evil.

The Faces of Evil is played using the side-scrolling view introduced in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. For a variety of reasons, it is generally accepted that this game does not play as tightly as Zelda II. These range from the quality of the CD-i controller, to the speed of the gameplay and the jerkiness of the character animations. The button mappings have been criticised as being illogical, for example having to crouch to open the inventory screen. Another problem fans saw was the ease a player has in killing Ganon, the final boss, with only one hit with the Book of Koridai, making him the easiest incarnation of Ganon in any Zelda game.

As a result of the early negotiations between Philips and Nintendo to develop a joint CD-system, Philips ended up with the rights to develop games around five Nintendo characters. Among those selected by Philips were Link and Zelda from the popular Legend of Zelda series. Wand of Gamelon and Link: The Faces of Evil were given the relatively low budgets of $600,000 each and it was decided by the Cambridge-based development team, led by Dale DeSharone, to develop the two games in tandem in order to more efficiently use the budget. On this low budget, each aspect of the two games were handled by the same small group of people.

Like the system they were created for, the three games were never very popular and today are obscure. The titles have been among the most maligned video games of all time, and are infamous for poor gameplay quality in comparison to the mainstream series.

The two most maligned mistakes, the full motion video (FMV) animation and voice acting were also the result of cost-cutting and industry inexperience: The FMV sequences demanded by Philips were outsourced to the newly opened Russian market, and the results, with their Russian style, were disastrous; the voice actors, selected from local AFTRA actors were completely misdirected and amateurish.^[1] As these two areas were considered key benefits to the CD-based technology, their flaws were all the more magnified.

The script also contained many oddities, such as the mysterious wizard shouting 'Squadilah! We're off!' upon departure.