Link: The Faces of Evil and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon are infamous for the questionable quality of their animated cutscenes, but what about the gameplay itself? Those who have played the games tend to find them on the lower end of So Okay, It's Average, brought down by a number of issues, most blatantly the bad controls. Not that many people can even experience that, given that emulating a CD-i is notoriously hard, and getting the actual system and games is prohibitively expensive. The games' merits are thus doomed to be ignored...
...until one developer named Dopply set out to change that. Starting as a joke with his friends, Dopply learned how to use the GameMaker engine to recreate the games from scratch over the course of four years (excluding things like graphics, movies, and sound, which were ripped straight from the original game) so they could be played on modern computers, while also fixing the games' control issues (which were caused by the CD-i's controller only having 2 buttons, obviously not an issue on computers) and adding some quality of life features such as subtitles for the cutscenes and unlimited lives, and a few new secrets.
The games were previously available for free, but they were intentionally taken down a few days later to avoid running into issues with Nintendo's legal department. They can still be found if you know where to look.
Dopply, operating under the professional alias "Seedy Eye Software" and with funding and development assistance from Limited Run Games, would later apply the work done on these remakes into developing a full-blown Spiritual Successor to Faces of Evil and Wand of Gamelon, with the duology's background artist, Rob Dunlavey, and the voices of Link and Zelda, Jeffrey Rath and Bonnie Jean Wilbur, onboard. Titled Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, the game was released on Valentine's Day 2024 after an initial release date of late 2023.
Most tropes from The Legend of Zelda CD-i Games will also apply here. This page is for tropes specific to the remakes.
This remake adds the following tropes to the original games:
- Animation Bump: King Harkinian has much more detailed and fluid animation than Link and Zelda thanks to being an original addition to the remakes.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: King Harkinian fights with punches and kicks instead of a sword.
- Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: You have unlimited continues in Remastered mode, so dying only forces you to restart the current map.
- Evil Overlooker: Ganon is present in the backgrounds of the loading screens of both titles.
- Hand Blast: Since King Harkinian shares the same gameplay mechanics with Link and Zelda, he shoots energy bolts out of his hands and feet due to not using a sword.
- Hint System: You can press a button to receive a hint from either Gwonam or Impa, depending on which game you're playing.
- Secret Character: King Harkinian can be unlocked as a playable character by completing the game on Hero Mode.
- Unlockable Difficulty Levels: "Hero Mode", which doubles the amount of damage done by enemies and removes the Canteen item.
- Unsound Effect: When the blacksmith/former fisherman in Wand of Gamelon shows off his new job, "[flexes]" is written in the subtitles despite the flexing not making any sound.
- Video Game Randomizer: A fan made one for these remasters that can randomize the items, bosses, NPCs, and world unlocks.
