How Twilight Princess SAVED the Zelda Franchise

Zelda it's one of Nintendo's most prolific franchises you got your Mario and you got your Zelda boom that's a Nintendo I mean if you walk up to some Rando on the street and ask them do you know A tingle they're gonna say yes because it was on America's Most Wanted last week but did you know at one point Zella was on the brink of failure this is the story of how the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess saved the Zelda franchise [Music] please when Shigeru Miyamoto hit the Mean Streets of Nintendo back in 1977 he quickly Rose to internal stardom after creating Donkey Kong out of unsold arcade Machines of radar scope in 1981. then came the famicom NES in the West [Music] with the Japanese release of the famicom Miyamoto worked on two games that would come to Define Nintendo devil world and excitebike but afterwards he would simultaneously work on two little games at the same time Super Mario Brothers released in 1985. and The Legend of Zelda released in 1986. [Music] again he worked on these at the same time which is insane to me these two games were Mega successes for Nintendo Super Mario Brothers sold around 3 million copies within four months in Japan alone and became a system seller and a huge reason that NES succeeded in the west meanwhile The Legend of Zelda sold 1 million units on its first day in Japan alone and afterwards these two games would become Nintendo's pair of golden geese laying critically acclaimed system sellers one after another in fact we have a whole video about Zelda's games and our excellently written history of Zelda video by Lucy James so fast forward to this you got your Mario 64. Zelda Ocarina of Time these two games defined and set the stage for 3D games to comment in all of gaming while Zelda was back and forth one of Nintendo's largest properties Ocarina of Time absolutely blew the other games out of the water as the fourth best-selling game of all time on the N64 with 7.6 million copies sold we're talking about a game that wasn't only fantastic as one of the few 10 out of 10 meme games of all time but a trendsetter Ocarina of times lock on Z targeting is still used to this day it defined and still continues to Define how to handle action in a 3D space and Majora's Mask in our opinion was weird as and seriously one of my favorite Zelda games so the stage and hype was set for Nintendo's next system the Nintendo GameCube everybody and I mean everybody was looking forward to what new Mario game was coming and what new Zelda game was coming then spaceworld 2000. foreign [Applause] consumers were looking for a brand new super mature Zelda with ultra realistic Graphics at least realistic compared to you know this but the thing is while Western audiences loved it ejawanoma hated it mainly reviews of manly reviews what are you doing here oh I have a green screen nothing's real by the way manly did an amazing video on the same topic and if you haven't seen it you should so agnuma took one look at the sick battle between link and Ganondorf and Zed nah this isn't Zelda this isn't Zelda at all and instead of this he gave us this [Music] there's a long-running perception that this was biyamoto's favorite version of link as he always wanted Zelda to be a cartoon that's a lie Miyamoto hated Toon Link when he had to present the game against his will he told awanoma that it wasn't too late to make the graphics realistic regardless if you think the game's amazing or not which it was by the way reception in the West um not so good after witnessing the cool more mature version of the hero of time Western audiences were not stoked when they instead saw this Leapfrog version of link that looked like he belonged in Coco melon this is a disgrace to the Zelda franchise I wanted mature and I got five-year-olds why why why this is disgusting I have never seen this game I just hope this is a cruel joke but it doesn't matter what I think what matters is what Nintendo thought even though the GameCube itself underperformed according to agnuma Zelda's numbers were incredibly disappointing in Japan while the New Direction hadn't appealed as many people in the west which was now becoming a Marcus Zelda would rely upon so the team thought about what the issue was and decided it was Innovation sure okay clearly if they made an Innovative Zelda game with a brand new style of gameplay they'd be able to reel back in Japanese players so the solution was clear two castles baby what that's a terrible idea the game was four Swords Adventures a follow-up to an offshoot game bundled with the Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past GBA port and all players had to do to play as main multiplayer feature was on a GameCube and one Game Boy Advance per player as each one would serve as a controller yeah it didn't do well I mean look the scores were fine but in terms of sales we're talking less than 400 000 copies sold for a Legend of Zelda game less than 400 000 later that year Capcom released the Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap a more traditional Zelda Adventure that sold pretty well at 1.76 million copies but really not much better than Metroid Fusion which sold 1.6 million copies and I'm sure you all know how rarely Metro games have released since Metroid Fusion and Prime 3. so the question is was Zelda on the same downward trajectory as Metroid Pokemon Smash Brothers Mario Kart Mario and now even sometimes Kirby we're starting to outsell Zelda games with Zelda no longer Nintendo's Golden Goose so EJ Allen Norman decided to swallow his pride in Wind Waker 2 baby what no not at all why would you think that AJ alanova decided to shake things up he went back to the realistic Graphics in the original GameCube presentation but on a horse behind the scenes AO Newman knew they needed to try the more mature looking link to relate to an older teen Western demographic and Miyamoto didn't feel like that was enough of a change for a new Zelda he told the team they should focus on horseback riding so four months later the team had a very basic prototype of horseback riding working and dropped a surprise trailer at E3 2004 which garnered the prior reaction and it was announced for fall of the following year but there was one problem there was no game notice how the trailer has no subtitle it's just the Legend of Zelda so it was time to hunker down and decide what the hell this game was gonna be on the positive front that standing ovation and incredible reaction to the trailer served as a huge motivation for the team as they were excited by the overwhelming response however they had to come up with something new so the team thought about how prior Zelda games had alternate worlds light and dark and linked to the past past and future in Ocarina and decided to use this as motivation what if they took link as a rabbit from the Dark World and linked to the past but made it cool what if they made link a wolf Miyamoto wasn't confident with the direction where at the very least he didn't think creating a four-legged creature would work convincingly enough either way inspired by Minish cap which was also done in development using a similar mechanic with its big and small worlds asiao Numa and the Zelda team forged forwards E3 2005 came a brand new trailer and they decided on a title Zelda TP toilet paper [Music] but by E3 2005 just months before the planned launch date how Numa wasn't happy with the gameplay Innovations and they still needed something major sure fans were waiting three hours in line to play it at E3 but to AO Numa the game wasn't unique or good enough luckily behind the scenes Nintendo was working on something huge something revolutionary the Nintendo Revolution later known as the Nintendo Wii and Miyamoto approached aonuma about utilizing the new motion controller for Zelda he thought this would be the perfect Innovation to make Twilight Princess stand out and unique from the previous entries then satoru Iwata wanted to push the game back to ensure it was a masterpiece and told the team they made something that was 120 Zelda whatever that means it was decided to push back Twilight princess's release date by year to make the game available for both the Nintendo Wii as a launch title and available for the GameCube at the same time and the team got to work incorporating their game into the Nintendo Wii which they thought would help in the Japanese Market especially first they used the remote which could point at the screen for shooting Link's bow next they made us a link would swing his sword when players swung the remote because most players are right-handed they flipped the entire game and mirrored it on the Wii so link who's usually left-handed would be right-handed and the Nintendo Wii launch came so fall 2006 there I was little Dave waiting outside of my local game store overnight for my copy of a Nintendo Wii and The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess and so too were three out of every four people waiting in line for a Wii in fact 87 percent of people who purchased the Nintendo Wii at launch also purchased the Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess it went on to be so successful that became the best-selling Zelda title in the series until breath of the wild even outselling Ocarina of Time whereas Ocarina of Time sold 7.6 million copies Twilight Princess sold 8.85 million copies and for asiao Numa it was a personal success as it was the first game he'd ever made that his wife both wanted to play and finished what she did with her son hey Marissa will you play Twilight Princess with me no but going back to the sales you can see just how Stark of a contrast Twilight Princess was for the team while it still didn't sell as well as Mario Kart Mario or smash it was still the highest selling Zelda game ever and solidified once again that Zelda was a franchise worth putting the time and money into it's easy to think Nintendo can do whatever they want especially with the franchise as popular Zelda but I want to take a look at a quote from then president of Nintendo satoru Iwata in a conversation with Shigeru Miyamoto and aegian Numa Upon finishing Twilight Princess satoru iwadas says and I quote even with all the resources we have here at Nintendo we could only make something like this once every few years in fact it might not be easy to do something like this again so I really want everyone to have a wonderful time playing this game but after the success of Twilight Princess the next major game in the franchise The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword went on to receive a five-year development time and in a regularly High budget from Nintendo I don't think Zelda would have completely died if Twilight Princess wasn't successful but like Metroid f-zero and Pikmin I do think the trajectory this series would have changed and we would have perhaps seen a fewer zeldas or less time in budget allotted to Future games and who knows without it we might have never gotten Skyward Sword as we did or more importantly the team may have never gotten the chance and time to make breath of the wild today Zelda is bigger than ever and that's all thanks to the Legend of Zelda toilet paper thank you so much for watching Once Again a huge thank you to manly reviews for coming on this episode I highly highly recommend his own video on Twilight Princess as I really personally love it and his presentation style is incredible I know I'm one of the few people who think this but I'd actually rather replay Twilight Princess than Ocarina of Time and look I I know that Twilight Princess is like the same game in a lot of ways but to me it's a better Ocarina uh anyways I hope you enjoyed this if you did please go back and check out our episodes on Sonic and Resident Evil 4 and next week we've got an episode coming up on the Nintendo switch

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 97,296

Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Zelda, Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Wind Waker, Eiji Aonuma, Shigeru Miyamoto, Zelda History, Zelda Franchise, Zelda Struggling, How Twilight Princess SAVED the Zelda Franchise, ManleyReviews, Manley Reviews, DaveControl, what saved zelda, what made zelda better, what brought zelda back

Id: ta8QYE6ov_Q

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Sun May 21 2023