Link: The Faces of Evil

Link: The Faces of Evil is a video game developed by Animation Magic and released for the Philips CD-i in 1993. It was developed in tandem with and released alongside. Both titles were followed up a year later by, which was developed separately by Viridis Corporation.

, along with the other two titles, was the product of a compromise between Nintendo and following their failure to release a CD-ROM based add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. They are the only licensed games developed for and released on a non-Nintendo system. The games have been subject to much criticism, and Nintendo does not recognize them as canon to series.

Story
The land of Hyrule is experiencing a period of peace, yet Link is feeling increasingly useless and bored with no adventures to go on. Suddenly a wizard named Gwonam arrives on his flying carpet, informing King Harkinian that Ganon's army have taken over the island of Koridai. Ganon and his minions have begun enslaving the islanders and transforming them into monsters. Although the King readily volunteers their aid, Gwonam explains that according to a written prophecy, Link is the only one who can defeat Ganon. As Link and Gwonam fly back to Koridai, the wizard tells him about the island's "Faces of Evil"; giant mountains and stone structures that are in the shape of Ganon's minions and are being controlled by them. Gwonam beseeches that Link must conquer each Face of Evil before facing Ganon himself, who has his own Face of Evil.

Link adventures through Koridai and along the way meets several islanders who have evaded capture. At Firestone Lake, Link and Gwonam realize that Princess Zelda was captured by Ganon and put under a sleeping spell since Link left the castle. As Link journeys to rescue Zelda and the islanders of Koridai, he confronts and defeats the masters of the Faces of Evil: Goronu, Harlequin, Militron, Glutko, and Lupay. He also retrieves the Book of Koridai after defeating Glutko which he brings to the reader Aypo in Nortinka. Aypo translates its verses and reveals that Ganon can only be defeated with the Book. Link also later finds Gwonam's residence at the Hermit Flat and is given the Lantern of Vision to help him see the Sancromies that swarm Ganon's Lair.

After all other obstacles have been cleared, Link finally journeys to Ganon's Lair where he confronts the villain deep within his Face of Evil. Link defeats Ganon by throwing the Book of Koridai at him, which magically imprisons him inside its pages. Ganon drops the key to Zelda's prison chamber, where Link finds and wakes her up by ringing a gong. Gwonam then teleports inside to take the pair back to Hyrule. He announces that peace is restored to Koridai and proclaims Link as their hero.

Gameplay
differs from most conventional games as it is a platformer with a side-scrolling view, similar to. Stages are accessed from a world map, with more becoming available as Link clears an area or defeats a boss. Stages typically consist of several sections, usually with multiple enemies and traps in each section. If Link loses all of his Life Hearts and perishes, a Continue screen with a counter will display, allowing Link to restart at the area's entrance so long as he has enough continues. If however he dies three times, Link will be sent back to the world map and be forced to start over. Each stage has two Triforce Maps that serve as exits; one at the beginning and one at the end which clears the stage. In addition to simply reaching the second Triforce Map in each stage, some stages also have special items and power-ups in them that are necessary to progress through certain stages. Link also encounters several characters who provide him with essential equipment and information, often requiring a specific item in return that is found somewhere else.

Link also collects Rubies from defeated enemies, which are used to buy extra equipment from Morshu's shop in the TFoE: area. Some items in the game also require Rubies to use and will consume a certain amount each time they are used.

Interactions with characters are achieved through the use of cutscenes, which play whenever Link approaches a character and touches them with his sword. The game explains this oddity by calling Link's sword the "Smart Sword", a sword that cannot hurt friendly characters and instead encourages them to talk. The cutscenes use voice acting to provide Link with instructions and story. Very little in-game text is encountered otherwise.

Development
and, and later , were the result of a compromise between Nintendo and. After their attempt to produce to CD-ROM based add-on for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System fell through, Nintendo reached a compromise and gave Philips the license to five of their franchises' characters for use with the Philips CD-i. and were both developed by Animation Magic. The developers chose to make two separate games featuring Link and Zelda. Due to their small development budget and time restraints, the developers resolved to combine their funding to produce a single game engine that would be used by both games. The development team consisted of four programmers, one audio engineer and composer, four artists, a producer, and a freelance writer who would help to design both games. As Philips were expecting full motion video animation, the games' cutscenes were outsourced to a new animation company in St. Petersburg, Russia, founded by games' creator Dale DeSharone and Igor Razboff. Animators were flown over to work on the game cutscenes.

Almost no supervision and input were given by Nintendo during the development of the games, who were mostly concerned with the designs and sketches of Link and Zelda. Philips also gave very little input, however games' creator Dale DeSharone expressed in an interview that he believed that Philips would not have approved of a top-down view for the games. The lack of input from both companies gave the developers more room for creative development.

Reception
The three Zelda CD-i games, particularly and, were subject to much criticism from reviewers and series fans alike. The games sold poorly and suffered from critical reception, with key complaints regarding the confusing and unresponsive controls, dull and repetitive gameplay, and poor animation and voice acting used in the game's cutscenes.

This game, along with, were frequently used to create "YouTube Poop" remix videos, which added to their reputation among series fans.

Trivia

 * , along with and  were among the first  titles to have extensive voice acting with dialogue, despite not being made by Nintendo themselves. Extensive voice acting with dialogue wouldn't happen again until, this time being made by Nintendo themselves.