Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Was Originally Going to be a Zelda Game

We all fondly remember the Captain Toad side missions in Super Mario 3D World, but apparently the entire concept for these was intended to star The Legend of Zelda‘s hero… Link. The chief reason? He couldn’t jump. Shinya Hiratake, the man behind the entire concept of Captain Toad, stated that he wanted to build these tiny platforming worlds that took away your ability to jump. Since the Mario characters are all known for jumping, his mind floated to the Zelda series, where Link cannot jump by standard means. The idea and concepts for this game eventually floated to Miyamoto, who thought initially it was an idea for a physical product (a board game perhaps?). When the game was presented initially, it did star Link in the leading role.

“We must have done too good of a job with our demo,” says Hiratake, “because during our presentation, Mr. Miyamoto asked us how we were planning on bringing these dioramas into production. He thought we were pitching him an actual physical product design.”

During that meeting, the one that showed off the initial idea, using Link was shot down by Nintendo’s higher ups. However, Miyamoto and the rest did think the idea had merit, so they allowed them to explore the idea as side missions in Super Mario 3D World. Obviously today we’ve seen the result, as Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker comes out this December. Miyamoto is a large reason this happened, since he was the chief person telling the team to pursue it as a stand alone game after 3D World came out.

“We like to think that Mr. Miyamoto finally realized the vision we had for a diorama those many years ago,” says Hiratake

Source: Gamnesia