Did you know? Instead of using a magical
conductor's baton, Link was originally planned to control the wind using a theremin.
This alien-sounding instrument was accidentally invented by a Soviet radio engineer in 1920.
Leon Theremin was trying to make something else entirely, but ended up with the world's first
major electronic instrument. Instead of touching it, the musician leaves their hands floating above
it -- one hand controls the frequency, and the other controls the amplitude. But how exactly
did this almost get into a Zelda game? A movie about Leon Theremin had just come out in Japan,
about how he invented the instrument, traveled the world playing it, became a Soviet spy, then
got thrown in the gulags. And it turns out that a few Nintendo devs saw the movie and thought, "hey
that's an interesting story, let's have Link play a theremin in the next Zelda game!" To control
the instrument, players would've held their GameCube controller like this, with the analogue
and C-sticks each representing one of Link's hands playing the theremin. The game's title
comes from the primary instrument, so up until halfway into development, the theremin itself
was the Wind Waker. This was all explained by the game's director Eiji Aonuma, in a 2003 issue
of Nintendo Dream we recently had translated, and they joke that the game could've been
called The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Theremin. For this video we delved into hundreds
of magazines looking for cut content and obscure facts about The Wind Waker, and ended
up translating several magazines and some online interviews into English for the first time. We
want to keep going the extra mile to get new and interesting facts for you guys, and if you want
to see more of it too, leave a like on this video, it really helps us out. So anyway, Aonuma
and his team were all set with a Zelda game based around a theremin, then Shigeru Miyamoto
came in for playtesting and, as he tends to do, upended the tea table. According to Aonuma: "He'd
play what we made and point out what was weird... We had the Wind Waker item ready to some extent,
when Miyamoto came to me shaking his head saying 'no no no.' He talked about how it was 'entirely
unacceptable' [...] We were using both sticks at first, adjusting with both hands like how you play
a theremin. By moving both hands like this (then the magazine notes that Aonuma aims his palms down
and moves his hands up and down), you could change the sound... But eventually we [changed it to]
the baton, and everything else fell into place from there." By the way, a big thanks to Daniel
Romberger for making this demonstration for us, so we can see and hear a theremin in action --
check out his channel for more Nintendo remixes. Miyamoto also changed Wind Waker's difficulty.
It was initially harder, but a lot of Ocarina and Majora players got stuck on bosses and never
got to experience the full game. So to make sure everyone could reach the ending, Miyamoto toned
down the difficulty, especially the bosses, compared to how the Zelda team originally had it
set. When the HD remaster released a decade later, they added Hero Mode to compensate -- but
Aonuma said even though he's the director, this new mode was too hard even for him. He
got stuck on Gohma and gave up, then asked his team if the difficulty he was experiencing
was some sort of bug, and they were like: uhhhhh... no. Another aspect that Miyamoto wasn't
keen on was Wind Waker's art style. Initially, Nintendo was just gonna improve on the graphics
from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and they even built a prototype in that style. But later on
in the conceptual phase, the Zelda team's artists proposed Toon Link -- the rest of the team loved
it, and dove head-first into the cel-shaded art style. Aonuma didn't think Miyamoto would like it,
so he waited till they were already in pretty deep to show it to him. And he was right -- Miyamoto
literally cringed, and didn't think it would sell. Aonuma recalls: "If I had gone and
talked to him from the very beginning, I think he would have said, 'How is that
Zelda?' Miyamoto had trouble letting go of the realistic Link art style until the
very end. [...] At some point he had to give a presentation against his will. That's when he
said something [to me] like, 'you know, it’s not too late to change course and make a realistic
Zelda." But the team was super enthusiastic about the new style, and insisted they didn't
want to give it up. It was inspired by the anime they watched as kids -- especially Hayao
Miyazaki's 'Animal Treasure Island' -- and Aonuma says Wind Waker's kind of unique in the way it
doesn't feel like a Zelda game. It's more of an adventure across the sea where the main character
just happens to be Link, and for that reason, the story was also kept from Miyamoto for quite
a long time. Miyamoto really wasn't thrilled with the situation, but ultimately accepted it
because with the team they had, it would've taken 10 years to make a realistic Zelda, but a toon
Zelda could be made in a fraction of the time. But before we cover even more exclusive
Wind Waker facts not found anywhere else, a word from this episode’s sponsor, Buyee. If
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our link below. And now back to Wind Waker. Most other Zelda titles make you feel like you’re
Link, but in Wind Waker the team tried to make it feel more like you're guiding Link, almost as
if you're watching an anime. In other words, he's his own entity outside the player's inputs.
This separation was emphasized with Link's eyes, he looks around independently of the player's
actions and what the player sees. In early builds shown to the public, Link's eyes were solid
black, but a fan from Europe sent in a letter saying black eyes made Europeans uncomfortable.
In response, Miyamoto said: "His eyes would change between seven different colors... We made
it so his eyes were temporarily red in battle, then blue when he calms down, and green when
he’s talking to people, and things like that. But ultimately, we realize a human
with red eyes is kind of creepy, isn’t it?... So at that point we decided
to just give up on the idea." Ultimately, they looked at Mario's blue eyes and said let's
just make Link's eyes blue and call it a day. Fan letters continued pouring in, especially from
girls, asking them to get rid of the Toon Link altogether. Lots of girls demanded in no uncertain
terms that they bring back the stud from Ocarina, the teenage heartthrob they fell in love with
five years earlier. But Nintendo ignored them. Wind Waker's timeline placement changed as well
-- Miyamoto said they initially placed it at the very beginning, before the other Zelda games. But
shortly after release, Aonuma said they'd changed it to take place 100 years after Ocarina of Time,
a fact reflected in the game's story. Probably the biggest changes in development were for the sea
itself. According to Aonuma: "We wanted to do away with the Hyrule we’d had so far. We didn’t
want to just remake the same Hyrule from the N64, so what could we? How about we just sink the
whole thing! [...] At first we had plans for primary and alternate worlds like A Link to the
Past, where you could go back and forth between present and past Hyrule. But we couldn’t make
something like that in the limited time we had." In A Link to the Past, you can warp
back and forth between the Light World, where most of the game takes place, and a dark,
twisted version of Hyrule called the Dark World. Wind Waker would've used a similar mechanic,
but instead of the Dark World, Link would've explored Underwater Hyrule. This concept art in
the Hyrule Historia gives us a better look at how they were thinking that might've worked, with Link
using a key item to warp down to the Lower World. To get back to the Upper World, Link would've
grabbed onto hooks belonging to fishermen, who'd yank him back up to the surface. Wind
Waker spent one year in the planning stages, which gave them time to decide which parts of the
Great Sea lined up with which parts of Ocarina's Hyrule, but Nintendo only gave them a year and
a half in actual production. So unfortunately, the team simply didn't have enough time to fully
implement their ideas, and the only underwater location they could include was Hyrule Castle.
They also wanted to make the ocean a lot smaller, but according to Aonuma: "Part of the reason the
sea's so vast is because if we made it smaller, there wouldn’t be enough time to process the data
for whatever island you were heading towards. We had to strike a good balance with
the boat’s speed for the same reason. In the middle of development... we
wanted to make the boat go faster. But doing that meant the game couldn’t
read all the data, and it froze a lot." As a result, the ocean ended up bigger than
they wanted, and some fans thought getting from island to island took too long. Which is why they
eventually added a Swift Sail in the HD remaster. In the final game, if you reach the edge of the
ocean, the boat says you can't go any farther and forces you to U-turn. But the Zelda team
originally thought of making the ocean continuous, to simulate the world being round -- like
how the world works in Skies of Arcadia, a Dreamcast game that launched while Wind
Waker was in its planning stage. That way, if you sail off the right side of the map,
you'd suddenly appear on the left side, or if you keep going up, you'll come out at
the bottom. But they ended up scrapping that idea for story purposes. Wind Waker was brand
new when this magazine interview took place, so the developers didn't wanna reveal
too much about the plot. But they did say you'll understand why they didn't make the
world round when you see the game's ending. They're probably alluding to Wind Waker's final
moments, when Link and Zelda sail off into the distance, looking for a land that'll become
the next Hyrule. If the game's ocean was round and continuous, that would've implied the game
world was the entire world -- meaning Link and Zelda would never find the land they were looking
for. In other words, a cool gameplay concept was scrapped for the sake of the story. Speaking
of Wind Waker's ending, a direct sequel was originally planned for GameCube, which would've
seen Toon Link riding a horse around on the great plains. So it seems Link and Tetra would've
discovered the land they were looking for... but Wind Waker's sales fell so far below expectations
that Nintendo decided to make Twilight Princess instead. Ubisoft staff also tried making
a Wind Waker sequel for Game Boy Advance, but the project got canned after just one month.
And in 2007, Aonuma said he wanted to make a new Wind Waker for Wii, but knew he wouldn't be able
to swing it, presumably due to the disappointing sales of the original. Toon Link did eventually
get a couple more adventures on Nintendo DS, but there was actually one more game with Toon Link
that did get made... but never came to the West. Tetra's Trackers was a GameCube spin-off game
released in 2004 -- the story picks up right where Wind Waker left off, with Link now trying to
prove he's got what it takes to join Tetra's crew and become a bonafide pirate. It was announced at
E3 2003, and was originally planned for worldwide release as a stand-alone GameCube game.
But during the last year of development, it got shrunk down and included with Four Swords
Adventures -- but only in the Japanese and Korean versions of the game. There it was called
Navi Trackers, but since the English title was announced as Tetra's Trackers, that's what
we're gonna call it. Tetra's Trackers was never localized into any other languages, probably
because it would've been difficult with the game's full voice acting. Have a listen and
you'll see what we mean: [short clip plays]. Tetra's Trackers never even got a fan translation, so we translated parts of it and added subtitles
for use in this video. And it didn’t just feature Tetra -- a huge cast of Wind Waker characters
make an appearance, and they talk constantly. Even minor characters, like Sue-Belle
from Outset Island. [short clips]. The "sploosh" guy Salvatore has his own voice,
and also does some impressions: [short clips] But probably the most disconcerting voice
comes from the King of Red Lions: [short clip]. We won't go over all the characters, but there's
a lot of them -- which would've made localizing Tetra's Trackers pretty tricky, and since
it'd already been relegated to just being a part of Four Swords, it probably wouldn't have
been all that profitable. So how does the game actually work? In Four Swords Adventures,
you plug up to four Game Boy Advances into your GameCube -- most of the gameplay takes
place on the TV screen, and occasionally look down at their GBA screen if they go into a
house or something. But in Tetra's Trackers, most of the gameplay takes place on the GBA, and
you occasionally look up at the TV to see the map and other miscellaneous information. It's
basically a treasure-hunting party game. Each player, represented by a different-colored
Link, runs through maze-like stages searching for pirates, stamps, medals, sea shells, rupees --
everything's worth a certain number of points, and whoever's got the most
points after 9 minutes wins. There's also a single-player mode
where you compete against Tingle. That's the short explanation. It'd probably
take fifteen minutes to explain it all in depth, and there's more development background as
well -- so we'll save all that for a future video. Make sure'n subscribe if you don't wanna
miss it. But for the purposes of today's video, besides the funny voices and visuals, we also
wanted to point out that Tetra's Trackers fits into the Zelda timeline riiiiight... here. It's
Link's initiation into Tetra's gang of pirates, right between Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass.
But whether or not it's considered canon is controversial among fans -- especially after
it got bundled with Four Swords Adventures, which stars another Link who lives in a different
timeline. Four Swords definitely is canon, but since there's two Links on one disc, and
Tetra's Trackers only released in Japanese, some fans refuse to acknowledge it. But even
the developers don't think too much about the timeline and what is or isn't canon, so trying to
find a definitive answer is probably overthinking it -- either way, it's certainly an interesting
chapter in the life and times of Toon Link. Okay let's get back to those magazines we
translated. The whole staff talks about how glad they were to finally finish Wind Waker, and how
much crunch was required to get the game out on time. Looking back right after launch, they said:
"It was painful when we were making it... We really couldn’t go home."
"Or see our kids." "...When everyone came in to work in the morning,
I’d move from where I slept on the 3rd floor to my work station on the 5th floor, and then
go back to the 3rd floor at night. I had no idea what was happening in the outside world."
Aonuma wasn't even aware winter had arrived, adding: "I saw some guys [in the office] wearing
down jackets and thought 'What’s up with these guys?' When I eventually got to go home, I
was surprised to see how cold it had gotten." Even with all that crunch, Wind Waker's short
year-and-a-half development meant they just didn't have enough time to include everything they
would've liked. Aonuma says the very last thing they were working on when the clock struck
midnight was the crabs. In the final game, they're tiny and don't really do anything
except run away and dig into the sand -- but the Zelda team wanted to make them 10-times
their normal size and much more interactive. Nintendo Dream magazine makes a point of Aonuma's
regretful tone as he tells them: "We were going to have crabs on the shore and do lots of things with
them, but in the end we couldn’t make it happen! We were thinking about what to do with the
crabs when development ended... Sorry about the crabs." He also laments how the boat turned
out. In the final game, if you're on the boat, equipping the bombs makes a cannon appear,
and the grapple hook turns into a crane for dredging up treasure. But Aonuma says they
wanted to add a lot more tools for the boat, but didn't have enough time. They probably
could've implemented at least one more, if it wasn't for one guy on the Zelda team who vastly
overestimated the American education system. Aonuma said: "I’ve never sailed a ship before...
[and] I thought sailboats couldn’t move against the direction of the wind. But someone
who’s actually been on a yacht told me 'if a boat zigzags, it can still sail against
the wind,' which was the first I’d ever heard of that. I was told 'this is something
everyone in America learns in high school, and if you don’t get it right, there are
definitely going to be complaints.' So I thought we couldn’t cut corners there." The extra
time spent on the zig-zagging boat meant less time was left over for items. Previous Zelda
games always had a nice variety of mini-games, like the Shooting Gallery and Bombchu Bowling.
The team wanted to add some into Wind Waker too, like an island where Link can play Golf --
unfortunately though, time was so tight that Aonuma had to give the order to abandon the
idea. But as they were nearing the deadline, they came into the office one morning and were
shocked to see the Golf Island somehow appeared out of nowhere. Aonuma says someone must have
snuck in after hours and built it themselves, without anyone else on the team knowing. Sadly
though, a lot of other mini-games weren't so lucky, and along with two entire dungeons,
ultimately got left out of the final game. One that did make it in was the "sploosh" game on
Windfall Island, which was demanded by Nintendo's old-timers -- which kinda makes sense, since
it's based on Battleship, an old board game that boomers played when they were kids. Aonuma even
had to ban the strategy guide team from playing it because he was afraid they'd get obsessed and
never get around to playing the rest of the game. In the original Japanese version, Salvatore's
game is literally about sinking battleships. But when Wind Waker was localized
for an international audience, they changed it into a squid game. And when
the HD remaster released a decade later, they used the squid version in
every region, including Japan. But these aren’t the only secrets we dug up on
Wind Waker. According to Aonuma and Haruhana, the Deku Leaf was originally a paper
fan. Its only purpose was fanning things, but later in development they came up with the
idea for Link to use it to fly around in the wind, so they changed it into a leaf. If you ever
wondered how deep underwater Old Hyrule was, Aonuma provides an answer in one of these
magazines. He says: "We limited the sense of how deep it is [because of the crane]. It’s
fairly easy to go to Hyrule as well. It’s deep enough to fully hide a person, and then a little
deeper still." He might be referring to its canonical depth and not its actual depth though
-- because in his Boundary Break episode, YouTuber Shesez moved the camera to get a visual of the
depth, which made it look to be around 40 feet. The only part of Hyrule you actually get to visit
is the castle, which is definitely deeper than both those estimates, but that's probably because
it's at the bottom of a chasm. Another interesting fact is that every item in Wind Waker had its
name translated in Wind Waker's English release, except for one -- the Hyoi Pear. As pointed
out by Aonuma in one of these magazines, the fruit gets its name from Hyoui, the Japanese
word for possession. As in being possessed, like how a spirit takes control of a person's
body. So if they'd translated the Hyoi Pear, it would've been the Possession Pear, which
apparently, they didn't think the Western audience could handle... well, probably the Western
audience's parents, if you know what I mean. One of the younger devs, Toshiaki Suzuki,
was selected as Wind Waker's, quote, "Tingle Specialist." Working on Tingle and his fairy
buddies was his entire job for quite some time. One of his co-workers said: "From dusk till dawn,
he thought about nothing but Tingle.bIt drove him crazy..." In all these magazines, Toshiaki's
only given one brief opportunity to speak, which he uses to say: "I've been thinking about
nothing but Tingle for these last few months. So please, experience adventuring together
with Tingle. The rare blue Tingle is on Outset island... dot dot dot" What he's talking about is
the rarest character in the whole game, and most people who've played Wind Waker never even knew he
existed. Knuckle is Tingle's little brother -- he carved the entirety of Tingle Tower by himself
when he was just ten years old. Then Tingle came along and put up a sign that said "For Tingle
Only," which made Knuckle so mad that he ran away to Outlet Island. The only way you can ever
see Knuckle in the GameCube version is by plugging in a Game Boy Advance and going to Outset,
which triggers an argument between the two fairy brothers. Then you play a mini-game to unlock
the Hand-Me-Down Tingle Tuner, an item only found in the ‘Cube version that lets you buy Arrows,
Bombs, and Bait anytime you want through the GBA. Finding Knuckle is such a hassle that the game
actually considers your figurine collection complete if you manage to get all of them
except Knuckle. Speaking of Knuckle's figurine, its description features an interesting secret
-- it says his studio is inside the head of Tingle Tower. It's impossible to get inside the
tower's head through any normal means, but it is possible if you hack the game. And by the looks
of it, it seems the Tingle Specialist really did go crazy -- just look at this place. Since the HD
remaster couldn't hook up with a Game Boy Advance, most of Knuckle's content got cut -- the argument,
the mini-game, and even the Hand-Me-Down Tingle Tuner he gives you. But he will appear on Tingle
Island after you get the five Tingle Statues, and Knuckle's figure now is required to complete
the full collection. It's been updated to say: "Supposedly, it used to bother him that
this collection was considered complete, even without his figurine." And if you're worried
about that Tingle Specialist who went crazy, don't worry, things worked out pretty well for
him -- he immediately got promoted to director and made Four Swords Adventures, and nowadays
he's producer on the Mario Party series. Did you also know that Ubisoft tried to make
a Wind Waker sequel for Game Boy Advance, and the Zelda team wanted to make a Twilight
Princess sequel on Wii? For these facts and more, check out the video on screen. If you enjoyed
this video, hit the like button and maybe share it with a friend. Huge thanks to Eurasia_M
for recording all of Tetra's Trackers for us, Danny Music for the theremin cover, and all
the folks who made today's video possible. And thanks to everyone at home
for watching. See ya next time.
