Aonuma Discusses Why Zelda Games Are Not Developed in One Year Anymore

It’s no secret that Majora’s Mask was originally developed in just one year, utilizing assets created for Ocarina of Time. One may ask why the Zelda team has not experimented with one-year development cycles again as they did with Majora’s Mask. In an interview with IGN, Zelda director Eiji Aonuma explains that while he enjoys the challenge of such a short development period, a Zelda title would need to have a very compelling theme from the start in order to be developed in that way.

In the interview, Aonuma explained his views on one-year development cycles:

“It’s interesting, because there’s definitely this way that we talk about that sort of thing in development circles here in Japan. It’s often presented as a challenge to the developers themselves to accomplish something like that, because it can be very difficult to do. Since I’ve been in the role of producer, though, it’s not something that’s been presented to me as a challenge to take on very often. Sometimes I think about issuing it as a challenge to developers that I’m working with.” — Eiji Aonuma

This is the type of challenge Aonuma faced with Majora’s Mask. Development of the game began as a project called Ura Zelda for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, which would eventually become The Legend of Zelda: Master Quest. Aonuma expressed interest in developing a completely new Zelda game separate from Ura Zelda; Shigeru Miyamoto complied, but under the condition that Aonuma complete his game in one year. Development then began on what was called Zelda Gaiden (the game that would become Majora’s Mask).

Aonuma explained why he has not experimented with this type of development method again:

“When I think about the kinds of games that you’re describing, where you took the engine and you took some of the original assets and made a new game from that, you know, the kind of creation flow that we had for Majora’s Mask wasn’t limited just to those ideas. We also had to think about how we wanted to change the world, to take something kind of familiar and then warp it. I definitely like that sort of a challenge. I think it’s really fun to think about how you would take that sort of a game in a different direction. For me, in order to properly consider doing that again in the future, I think you really need a compelling topic or a theme with which to start.” — Eiji Aonuma

Majora’s Mask‘s time-based gameplay provided the compelling theme Aonuma referred to. I would love to again see a Zelda game that experiments with different gameplay ideas in the same way Majora’s Mask did. Perhaps one day the Zelda team would like to again challenge themselves and create another completely unique game.

Would you like to see Aonuma challenge himself in this way again? What types of gameplay experiences would you like to see explored in a Zelda game? Let us know.

Source: IGN via Nintendo Everything