Why A Link Between Worlds doesn’t use stylus controls

Unlike the two Nintendo DS Zelda titles, A Link Between Worlds won’t feature touch screen controls. Rather, Nintendo opted to implement traditional button controls, almost identical to A Link to the Past, in fact. There will be some changes, however, as the 3DS can utilize two screens and is 3D, so the controls won’t be exactly like those of the SNES game. But there will probably be very minimal touch screen input.

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Again, this comes from the recent Wired interview with Eiji Aonuma.

Wired: Moving on to the 3DS version. Link to the Past is very loved by Zelda fans, obviously, but why after the DS games were playable only with the stylus, it seems like you’ve pulled a 180 to go back to the buttons-only formula of the Super Nintendo games. So I’m curious as to why you went in that direction.

Aonuma: When I made the first DS Zelda game, I had to take advantage of the touch screen. And using the stylus created a lot of opportunities for introducing new surprises and a lot of new fun. So it’s actually kind of interesting because I ended up making two games for that platform, which is actually kind of special. With 3DS, we’ve now got the 3-D, which we did that with Ocarina of Time but I wanted to incorporate that as a function, the 3-D aspects, the 3-D capability. I wanted to make that actually function as a part of the game. Link to the Past is a 2-D world and I wanted to make players experience that shift between 2-D and 3-D. But it’s hard to play with a stylus when you have 3-D on the top screen. Those two things just didn’t match up. So I went back to the button controls. I did move, though, from D-pad controls to the stick, which means a shift from digital to analog. Another thing is, Link to the Past was only up, down, left, right and diagonal. Now you can move in any direction. So we’re tightening up, we’re tuning those controls as well and it’s actually creating new experiences and a new way to interact with Link.

I think most people would agree that Nintendo does a good job with using their console’s individual abilities the best they can in their first party titles. However, I also think that Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks’ popularity and success were hindered by the touch screen controls.

The touch screen input certainly wasn’t terrible, and it was actually great to use for items such as the boomerang, but I think many people welcome the reintroduction of button controls, especially so they can enjoy the 3D effects the most. And with the 3DS’ fantastic Circle Pad the game experience may even be more enjoyable to those who love A Link to the Past’s controls.

That’s all Aonuma said about the control scheme of A Link Between Worlds, but if you’d like to read more of Wired’s interview with him, head on over to their interview, here.

What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Wired