Did You Know Gaming? Unlocks the Secrets Behind Another Batch of Lost Zelda Games

Posted on December 13 2022 by Kora Burton

“Did you know that Nintendo cancelled a Zelda game between Link’s Awakening and Ocarina of Time so they could make Star Fox 64 instead?”

With this attention-grabbing line, the popular and talented team over at the YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming? (DYKG) began their most recent video “The Mystery of Ura Zelda SOLVED.” With the help of data miners, translations of old magazine interviews, and insider perspectives from folks who worked on the games, DYKG sets some facts straight on three lost Zelda titles: Zelda Super FX, Zelda Treasure Tracker, and Ura Zelda.

During the last few months, we’ve been lucky to witness some fantastic Zelda content from DYKG, including two separate in-depth investigations, one on a cancelled Sheikah-inspired game for the Wii and the other on a would-be DS tactics-style game titled Heroes of Hyrule. Unfortunately, some of DYKG’s impressive journalistic content has received the ban-hammer from Nintendo, with their Heroes of Hyrule video removed earlier this month after receiving a copyright strike on YouTube (see our coverage and DYKG’s response here).

While DYKG is assessing their options for having their Heroes of Hyrule video reinstated, it’s even more impressive that they’ve kept on rolling with their groundbreaking brand of gaming content. Their video “The Mystery of Ura Zelda SOLVED” is a 25-minute thorough breakdown of several Zelda titles that never reached audience hands, making expert journalistic use of written evidence, developer insights, and educated theorization to tell an interesting and informative story. DYKG also provides sources for further reading in their video description for the extra curious or doubtful viewer.

Something I always really love to see in DYKG videos is the high level of community collaboration. For this investigation, they received help from a variety of knowledgeable and talented individuals such as Ocarina of Time modder and Nintendo 64 Disk Drive enthusiast LuigiBlood, who provided their expertise after poring through tons of Ura Zelda leaked data, and the modder Zel, who reconstructed nine mini-dungeons to provide some in-game footage in action. Also on deck narrating this lost Zelda deep-dive was Tony from Hard4Games, a channel we covered recently for their game-preserving work sharing a rare Majora’s Mask debugging VHS tape.

If you enjoy what DYKG does and want to support them, head on over to their YouTube channel and check out “The Mystery of Ura Zelda SOLVED” and their other investigative deep-dives.

Did you watch DYKG’s most recent video on lost Zelda titles? What do you think of the channel as a whole, and the situation with their copyright strike from Nintendo? Do you think their Heroes of Hyrule video will ever be reinstated? Let us know down the in comments below!

Source: Did You Know Gaming?