Iwata Asks: A Link Between Worlds Originally Called ‘The New Legend of Zelda’

Is it Friday yet? A Link Between Worlds is almost upon us, which means it is time for Nintendo to unveil an all new Iwata Asks. These things always bring us extremely interesting insights into the development of Nintendo’s most beloved games. Interesting tidbits such as the fact A Link Between Worlds was actually originally going to be titled The New Legend of Zelda. The interview is so robust we’re going to forgo our usual 10 post breakdown this time, since it would take nearly 20 posts to cover everything stated. Not only that, but we also are hard at work on our A Link Between Worlds Walkthrough, leaving us with not as much time as we usually would have to do proper Zelda News coverage. We plan to make up for this, of course, by including a full breakdown below!

• Development was rough, as the dev team was split to work on Wii U projects
• Miyamoto is very impressed with the game, telling Iwata that ‘This Zelda game is good!’
• Aonuma mentioned that Miyamoto never told the dev team those comments!
• The project first was discussed after completion of Spirit Tracks
• There were three people on the dev team for a whole year—this is when the idea for the wall-merge mechanic came up
• The original idea wasn’t to follow A Link to the Past
• Miyamoto wasn’t keen on the game idea at first. He said it felt like an idea that was 20 years old, but not as a compliment
• Shikata came up with the wall-merge idea, and was extremely determined to include this idea in the game
• A prototype for the idea was thrown together in just one day
• The prototype paved the way for all sorts of unique gameplay/puzzle ideas
• As already discussed, the prototype used an overhead angle view and Spirit Tracks‘ Link
• The team then disbanded to work on Wii U games, with Shikata fearing the project would never see the light of day
• The departing dev team members left notes to tell other devs how great the idea was
• Aonuma wanted to release a new 3DS Zelda by 2013’s end to make fans happy
• Aonuma quietly revived work on A Link Between Worlds without the core dev team
• Nov. 2011 is when development really started, which was just after Skyward Sword‘s dev came to an end
• Tominaga put together some ideas for a dungeon with the wall mechanic
• He was so confident in the idea that he told Miyamoto he could make 50 more dungeons that used the mechanic
• Miyamoto wasn’t impressed again, but finally offered a hint to base the game off of A Link to the Past. Aonuma also had the same suggestion
• The idea to switch the camera to a side-view from the overhead view when in wall-merge mode came earlier in development
• The team was skeptical of taking a remake approach with A Link to the Past
• Aonuma decided to show what he meant by doing a prototype in three days
• Miyamoto saw all these ideas together and finally gave the game the go-ahead
• The top-down view took a lot of trial and error
• The dev team faked the look by angling everything in the game to make it look interesting from above
• Mouri wanted to do the game in 60fps and insisted on it
• They decided at the true start of the project to do 60fps
• The team believes this makes for much smoother music
• The item touch screen management was something Aonuma wanted to do with Ocarina of Time 3D; the fact that that game was 30FPS meant they couldn’t implement that idea
• The team used ideas of height to factor in 3D visuals
• Development of the Tower of Hera took a long time
• The team wanted to really show off the 3D visuals with this dungeon
• The dev team felt the idea of hitting springs with hammers to launch up floors in the dungeon was really something special
• The design of dungeons also allowed for more activity to take place outside dungeon walls
• Iwata was originally unsure of the idea, but was convinced when he saw the E3 demo
• The topic of how Link looked when merged with walls was a big topic of discussion
• The team wanted to express that Link was being painted on walls, rather than entering them
• This merging idea gave birth to Yuga, who was used as an explanation as to how Link could accomplish this
• Takahashi-san drew an avant-garde Link at first. This idea was tossed aside when the team took a more mural approach
• Link could originally jump when wall-merged, but the team took that out to keep from confusing gamers
• There was talk of naming the game The New Legend of Zelda. The team was afraid that the name would have people thinking the game was a remake
• A game concept was rethinking Zelda conventions, but it wasn’t always like that
• Shikata hears from friends that play Zelda and get stuck, which he feels is a big problem for the series
• Shikata worried about allowing players to tackle dungeons in any order
• This also caused problems during development
• Talk first went to discussing the ability to buy all sorts of items at the shop
• Aonuma says a personal hobby lead to the rental/purchase system
• The team wanted players to rent items cheap, but want to keep collecting rupees to buy items outright
• The team mulled over ideas for how rentals should work, even thinking that items might have to be returned the next day in-game
• The system they came up with adds tension, because you don’t want to lose your rental items when fighting
• The team also wanted to make it very easy for players to get around the game world, which lead to warps/portals
• The team worked very hard on implementing the contrasting worlds with this game
• You can use play coins to pay a ghost for in-game hints
• The team really hopes new players come in with the series’ changes
• Some younger devs were very taken aback by changes this game made to the Zelda series, wondering if Nintendo could actually get away with these ideas
• There are baseball and Cucco mini-games
• The Cucco mini-game is so tough in advanced mode that no one in the Mario Club test team could beat it

So much good stuff. Credit goes to GoNintendo for providing us this extensive breakdown.

Source: Iwata Asks