zelda

In the 1990s, Philips Interactive Media published three action-adventure games based on Nintendo's Legend of Zelda franchise for its Compact Disc-Interactive (CD-i) players. The first two, Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, were developed by Animation Magic and released simultaneously on October 10, 1993, and Zelda's Adventure was developed by Viridis and released on May 10, 1996. The two latter entries are the first to feature Princess Zelda as the protagonist instead of Link. Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon use the side-scrolling view introduced in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987), while Zelda's Adventure has a top-down view reminiscent of the original 1986 game. All three are non-canon to the Zelda franchise.
Faces of Evil, Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure were created after Philips secured the rights to use Nintendo characters in CD-i games. They received little funding and development time, with Nintendo providing only cursory input. All three also dealt with the technical limitations of the CD-i due to it not being designed as a game console. On Philips' insistence, the games featured the CD-i's capabilities, including full-motion video (FMV) cinematics. The FMVs of Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon were animated, while Zelda's Adventure used live-action FMVs.
Concurrent with the low sales of CD-i consoles, the three games were not commercially successful. Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon received mixed reviews at the time of their release, whereas reception to Zelda's Adventure was mostly negative. Retrospective reviews, however, have panned all three for their unintuitive level design and awkward control schemes. The FMVs of Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon also received renewed criticism for their rough animation quality after they became widely available through video-sharing websites such as YouTube. Edge noted that Zelda fans consider the CD-i games "tantamount to blasphemy".

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