The Italian version of Link: Faces of Evil was copyrighted by Dale DiSharoon Incorporated, instead of Animation Magic. Of course it is linked together as Dale DeSharone (who originally was named Dale DiSharoon) was the owner of Animation Magic, after his time at Spinnaker. In the interview he did with John Szczepaniak, almost 15 years back now, he explained some bits:
Dale: "Let me explain the Disharoon/DeSharone name change now though. I got
married (2nd) fifteen years ago and my wife didn't like the name
Disharoon. She had lived in Israel for many years and wanted a different
softer 'sound'. Something she felt was more poetic. [...] The third person I called had just
completed a geneology and told me that the closest spelling to the
original name when the Disharoons first arrived in the colonies was
DeSharone. I liked it"
[...] In 1987 I moved from Northern California to Boston, Massachusetts to
help build a CD-i team for Spinnaker Software. Spinnaker had a deal with
Philips to produce seven launch titles. I was brought on to help
understand the capabilities of the platform and act as design lead. [...] We built Laser Lords, Alice In Wonderland, Sargon Chess, Paint
School I, Paint School II, Story Machine I and Story Machine II. I
designed, programmed, wrote editing tools and engines, and hired and
managed artists, programmers and audio engineers. [...]
I had originally planned to be at Spinnaker only one year as Philips was planning to release the machine in 1988. That one year turned into four, due to constant delays with the hardware emulation systems and the operating system.
 |
| This Italian version has a Spanish sticker on it. There was no specific Spanish translated version of Link:Faces of Evil so it could be in Spain they relied on Italian imports. |
After the launch of Spinnaker’s seven CDI titles I left the company.
Spinnaker did not have plans to continue CD-i development. As an
independent publisher I assume they realized they couldn’t make money
developing for CD-i without the development funding and R&D backing
that Philips (AIM) was giving in the early years. I chose to start a
new development company and was able to get development funding from
AIM. Most of the CD-i team from Spinnaker left to join this new group.
This is where the Link and Zelda story begins.
The question why Link: Faces of Evil was copyrighted by Dale DiSharoon Inc is still not clear to me. It seems like this is what his independent game studio was firstly called, but the games linked to this studio are from around 1987, so even before his time at Spinnaker. Perhaps it was lurking all the years and he went back to it around 1992, changing it to Animation Magic when things got more serious.
[Thanks, John Szczepaniak who interviewed Dale DeSharone in 2006 here]