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, 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.

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.

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.

Gameplay videos on YouTube