Tony Trippi - Link: The Faces of Evil (1993)

 

Composer: Tony Trippi
Console: Philips CD-i, Windows 7+
Game Release Date: 1993-10-10 (CD-i), 2020-11-27 (Windows)
Bootleg Release Date: 2020-12-07 [SnowBlue Extended Version]
Ripper: KHInsider
Runtime: 2:40:11, 77 Tracks

I had originally planned to post an extremely rare late 90s Japanese PC game OST but then I heard about this game getting re-made. More on that later. In celebration of the re-release I have decided to post the OST for the more well-known game. This is the Link: The Faces of Evil, not "Legend of Zelda" like all the other games in the series. If you have been on the internet for at least 15 years now and watched any bad game reviews or seen any YouTube poops you will know what this game is. 

For the few that still somehow haven't heard of this game, lemme explain. In the early 90s, Nintendo and Sony were working on a console together. Things went south and Nintendo decided to work with Philips instead. At the same time the Sega Mega-CD was a thing and Nintendo saw how awful that turned out. Seeing that they scrapped the agreement with Philips. As part of the agreements dissolution Nintendo allowed Philips to use some of their characters in games for Philips console, the CD-i. Philips then contracted out development of the licensed games to a third party studio and thus the games Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon were made. There were also a few other Nintendo games the CD-i got like Hotel Mario but that's a story for another time. 

Link and Zelda are notoriously bad games. Both these are considered the worst Zelda games in the series. They suffer from poor controls, poor level design, bizarre dialogue, impossible levels of difficulty and incredibly cryptic BS to progress. The most notable thing to come out of the game is the cutscenes. Those cutscenes spawned hundreds, if not thousands of edits on YouTube in the form of YouTube poops. Those cutscenes are probably the used source amongst all YTPs second to the cutscenes in Hotel Mario. Philips is still around although they have retired from the console business. Currently the two games are considered not canon and aside from the YTP/YTPMV community nobody talks about it. At least, until now. 

As of writing this post both The Faces of Evil and The Wand of Gamelon have been remade! Game developer and Twitter user, Dopply (@thedopster) released an entire remake of both games in Game Maker. He used the original assets but from what I understand remade the game from scratch. It's not a 1:1 remake and Dopply improved the controls, subtitles, widescreen mode, autosaving and generally made the game more enjoyable. I ran a quick demo and it played a lot better than the original. Everything feels so much more fluid. I'm playing too many games right now to this a shot, but I will be giving this a run later.  

The games soundtrack was composed by Tony Trippi. He has also done work on other CD-i games as well. He also has a handful of credits elsewhere on the PS2 and stuff, but he is mostly known for his work on the CD-i LoZ games. He has a website (http://www.tonytrippi.com) although it doesn't look like it has been updated in some time. It looks like the last thing he worked on was Coded Arms: Contagion back in 2007. Since then I don't know what he has been up to. 

Despite how popular the cutscenes are in the game, the music is not as well known. Regardless of its notoriety is is very good. It has a electronic and hazy sound to it. Very warm. The style is similar to that of the Lego Island soundtrack. Cartoony, library funk inspired electronic music. I would also add there are general themes of 'fantasy music' as well but all wrapped in a lo-fi sequencer sound.

 
The most attention I saw from the soundtrack was a post on /r/vaporwave claiming some of the songs were proto-vaporwave masterpieces. I wouldn't say the music is proto-vaporwave but I can see the comparison. Parts of it have a that library funk sound, some sequencer & MIDI and notes of synthpop. Just from the few CD-i games I am aware of you'd think that they put the entire budget into the music. This isn't even the only "vaporwave-like" soundtrack on the CD-i! I may get around to posting the other one at some point. 

Below is a download to the soundtrack plus a link to the release thread of the remaster. The quality of the MP3s are 160kbps with the exception of a few tracks at 320kbps. The original version of this has most tracks sitting at half to a full minute long. I have taken it upon myself to extend all the tracks. That was the main reason I couldn't post this last week, didn't want to spend time doubling them yet. 

At the time of writing this the download link for the re-release was up. He's since taken it down. It can still be readily found elsewhere though. 

Stream [Short Version]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbWQGjfUbnw
Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUvU1E1QmdBZ1QjN0FrRDZPRnB6VTFlV2Y4dmQ1Tm94YzJ0UGNWMGQ3OEZEd01ISDFhWEdaWQ==
p@ss: trippi