System:
Phillips CDi
Developer: Animation
Magic
Publisher: Phillips
|
Release Dates |
|
 |
1993 |
|
 |
October
10th 1993 |
|
 |
Unreleased |
|
|
|
|
The Faces of Evil was
released on October 10th
1993, the same day as
The Wand of Gamelon.
They were both developed
by Animation Magic and
had a limited budget of
£600,000 each, and
because of this, they
share some graphical and gameplay
similarities.
The game starts when
Link complains to the
King of Hyrule that he's
bored because the land
is in a time of peace.
Faraway, in the land of
Koridai, Ganon's forces
are building, and he's
already captured
Princess Zelda. A wizard
comes to Link on a
flying carpet and whisks
him away to Koridai.
While this storyline
seems quite left-field,
at the time of the
game's development,
little of the Hyrulian
lore had been
established, and only
the simplistic NES games
were available for
reference. NCL had only
a passing input -
concentrating on the
look of the Link and
Zelda characters (as
they were the only IPs
included in Phillip's
five-character deal).
Both Animation Magic
Zelda games draw heavy
criticism; while the
beautiful backdrops are
accepted by fans, the
atrocious animated
cut-scenes that bookend
and pepper the games and
the poor playability
draw the most fire. The
animated cut-scenes were
created by a team of six
Russian animators who
were flown to the US
specifically for the
job, and the jarring
voice acting which
further ruined (or you
could say "completed")
these scenes were all a
result of the game's
insufficient budget and
Phillip's insistence
that all the
capabilities of the CDi
format were used.
However, the CDi machine
wasn't designed as a
games console and many
systems came with a laggy infrared
controller, and other
system limitations
further compounded
control problems. To
make matters worse, the
team of four artists,
three programmers and
one musician were given
little over a year to
create both games.
The only positive legacy
of the Animation Magic
Zelda games have been
the gorgeous backdrops -
they helped create the
most realised Zelda at
the time - but gameplay
and audio were
distinctly average; not
awful, but not worthy of
the "Zelda" label,
either. |
