The Best Zelda Facts on YouTube

[Music] did you know every korok seed and breath of the wild is actually korok feces fans had suspected that hestu's gift the prize for collecting all 900 korok seeds was an elaborate poop joke due to its appearance and description but developers have confirmed that the joke is deeper than fans thought himaru fujibayashi director of breath of the wild has stated that every korak seed is poop he told ign it's just the backstory that the kind of hidden thing in the game the whole way is that borax seeds are actually korak poop we just thought it would be funny to make that a big joke this isn't the only humor from the game's production brainstorming sessions and pitches led to two unused game ideas hyrule wars which featured link running between two massive armies and the legend of zelda invasion which featured an alien presence that would abduct cattle although developers had some fun with breath of the wild's production the team encountered more struggles than ever before breath of the wild's open world was directly influenced by the lukewarm reception of skyward sword which was criticized for its linearity series producer agnuma found that players wanted to explore the areas between skyward sword's three main provinces and this feedback was developed into an open world the zelda team had previously tried to create a seamless interconnected world with the wind waker but hardware restrictions limited how many islands they could include breath of the wild marked the first time the zelda staff worked on a city-sized map approximately 12 times larger than the one in twilight princess to prepare themselves the team looked to other open world games like skyrim as well as the original legend of zelda where players were free to explore the entire world from start to finish to help get a sense of scale and perspective fujibayashi took maps of kyoto and overlaid them on the game's world he didn't imagine traveling the distance between places he knew in the real world but within the game some younger developers at nintendo were working on a game with a large world at the time so the zelda team's veterans stepped aside to let these young programmers take the lead this led to many of the franchise's traditions being challenged by the newer devs developers performed tests as the project went on which highlighted two main issues with the game one problem was that most players followed a similar path and didn't explore many areas of the game another problem was that players felt like they were being guided this was because story events unfolded on pathways between towers and the towers would naturally attract players as they're very noticeable on the horizon placing all the game's events on these routes also meant that if players did wander off the beaten path they rarely encountered anything worthwhile to solve these issues several events were repositioned and the team came up with a formula to encourage exploration they strategically placed different sized hills and mountains to hide landmarks and points of interest when a player went over or around a hill more landmarks would be revealed to them and because different kinds of players would choose different ways to get around the hill the landmarks they saw would be different this would ultimately lead to multiple divergent paths between players with exploration being encouraged no matter the playstyle the internal code name for breath of the wild was you king which continued in alice in wonderland theme seen in other zelda code names ocarina of time 3d was codenamed queen a link between worlds was jack majora's mask 3d was joker and triforce heroes was alice breath of the wild was the first zelda game to be developed in hd from the ground up nintendo created demos of wind waker twilight princess and skyward sword running on wii u development kits to help them settle on a graphical style the wind waker stood out to nintendo and they opted to give breath of the wild cel-shaded graphics this experiment also led to the development of the wind waker hd while cel-shaded graphics were kept for breath of the wild the wind waker's intense use of it was dropped the team thought that an overly cartoony art style might drive away older players and wouldn't allow them to create the realism that they wanted however they knew that some cartoonishness would help bring the visuals together stylized visuals allow more people to suspend their disbelief and something that might seem absurd in a photorealistic game fits more naturally interestingly the game's french outdoor art direction was a suggestion from bill trinin of nintendo's treehouse another idea from treehouse staff was to use crabs in the game's cooking mechanic early and development crabs were used to make elixirs instead localizer nate bidorf convinced breath of the wild's director to use them in food recipes instead explaining simply that people love eating crabs these weren't the only suggestions from outside of japan the game's pro heads-up display option which leaves only link's health on screen was actually requested by nintendo of america and europe concept art was shown at the game developers conference panel in 2017 that showed link in a tracksuit with a guitar and a spacesuit with a metroid and on a motorcycle the art team never envisioned these ideas making it into the final game and used them only as an exercise to defy zelda traditions that said the motorbike was later added to breath of the wild as dlc the team found it difficult to make link's distinctive hat look appealing and felt they'd run out of ways to make it look cool after skyward sword they experimented with all manner of designs for link including a few european inspired designs and even an older link whose arm was replaced with shika technology eventually they decided to alter link's default look entirely as the player would be changing clothes throughout the game anyway when designing zelda games the team waits until they have a design for length then make a single enemy and experiment with the two characters for the wind waker the first enemy was a moblin and for breath of the wild the first enemy was a bokoblin interestingly the horn sound for the bokoblin was just a random horn one of the developers owned and brought to work one day nintendo went the extra mile with the sound effects and even made sounds for avakovlan picking its nodes the guardians were also one of the first designs made for the game they were based on aegean uma's impression of the octoroks from the original legend of zelda he imagined them to be much larger than how they appeared later in the series and based the guardians on that interpretation however the team gave them a mechanical look as a huge octopus enemy would be quote kind of gross the decision to make them look mechanical also bled into the game's design and story the technology and look of the chica culture was inspired by the jomon period in japanese history which isn't well known outside of japan one example of this jomon influence can be found with akala's lab robot cherry cherry looks a lot like a dogu a type of figurine from the jomon period there's over 15 000 of these dogu figures in the real world but because the jomon period took place over thousands of years their purpose had been lost to time the team tried to keep many aspects of the game simple zelda's character design was originally planned to only have features with a purpose however the team ultimately realized that this approach didn't result in a believable unique character writers and designers eventually worked together sharing what they'd learned to create a final character for zelda and continued making changes to her up to the very end of production breath of the wild's gameplay was tested in a 2d prototype before its mechanics moved into the full game technical director taku hirododa used the character data from the original zelda to create a prototype although this prototype didn't include any puzzles that allowed players to make their own path to a goal using the mechanics within it while breath of the wild attempted to retain the feeling of discovery and exploration from previous games it also changed many of the series conventions one of the first traditions to be scrapped was collecting hearts to heal which was replaced with hunter-gathering and cooking mechanics puzzles in previous zelda titles each require their own unique set of assets which would have been impossible to fine-tune in a game as large as breath of the wild to produce their workload while also increasing the number of possible solutions for puzzles the developers created a universal set of rules for the game they used objects like wood and metal and elemental forces such as wind and fire to create a set of chemical reactions the game's combination of materials elements and physics could also be used to solve many problems for example if a rock octa-rock eats a rusty sword it'll grind the rust off and spit out a newly sharpened sword this chemistry engine allowed players to create their own puzzle solutions instead of just following what the designers intended it took the team a year just to create this system and the tools they needed to develop the rest of the game development took so long that nintendo decided to release breath of the wild on the switch alongside the wii u differences in the two systems hardware resulted in less emphasis on the gamepad and the wii u version however alnuma felt that focusing on a single screen made for a smoother overall experience when the game was first shown some fans speculated that the new incarnation of link was female though this was never intended the rumor sparked an internal discussion of a female link with anuma even consulting zelda creator shigiru miyamoto on the idea aonuma also implied that the dialogue started by fans as well as many female heroes and hyrule warriors opened the possibility for a female protagonist in future zelda games although some have criticized the game for its minimal use of music breath of the wild was planned to have little to no music in any of the overworld the team eventually decided to include music in important areas and villages so players would immediately know that they'd found something noteworthy substantial voice acting was a first for the franchise and was included so that story moments would leave a bigger impression on the player interestingly many scenes were originally going to remain text only only major cutscenes were planned to be voiced but nintendo ultimately decided to dub all of the game's cutscenes voice acting was also a contentious subject during development with some wanting no voices at all this was partly because devs wanted a silent link so that players could easily project themselves onto the character they also thought that it'd be strange if link was silent while everyone else was talking but this turned out to be far less jarring in practice due to the game's scope several features had to be cut during production the game originally had tiny people similar to the minish from the minish cap and link was even planned to shrink down and interact with these tiny people however the team thought they already had a distinct lineup of unique races and people for the game and opted to scrap this idea an unused line of text in the game states that the master sword has returned to the forest it normally goes unseen but can still be triggered in game this is done by exploiting a glitch that causes the master sword to disappear from the player's inventory the text seems to imply that it was possible to drop or lose the master sword at some point in development due to the franchise's infamous glitches it's become a favorite among speedrunners the speedrunning community had an early interest in breath of the wild as nintendo stated that players could beat the game by starting a file and running straight to the final boss nintendo actually sent some speedrunners pre-release copies of the game meaning breath of the wild speed records were being established before the game was even officially released [Music] breath of the wild also contains a number of secrets and easter eggs the game's monks are based on a kind of self-mummification practice by buddhist monks and may specifically reference the process of sakushinbutsu in this medieval process a monk would eat nothing but plant material such as pine needles resin and seeds over eight to ten years the monks would also slowly reduce the amount of water they drank ultimately leading to dehydration and starvation the process would help mummify the body as can be seen with the mommyhomeyokiai in japan's homuji temple the way these buddhist mummies are displayed could have influenced how the monks are presented in breath of the wild the name of an early shrine in the game omen-ow is an anagram of zelda producer aj aunuma's last name however aonuma isn't the only developer that was referenced in this way several of the game's shrines and monks are also named after zelda's staff including art director satoru takizawa designer hiroshi sakasai and physics programmer katsuhisa sato naming each shrine and monk after a member of the staff was actually suggested by satoru takizawa himself breath of the wild may also include another tribute to a staff member satoru awada the former president of nintendo who unexpectedly passed away during production satori mountain is named after a japanese term for enlightenment and a derived form of satori is used as a given name in japan as satoru on certain nights a unique steed called the lord of the mountain can be found standing underneath a cherry blossom atop the mountain cherry blossoms are common imagery in japan for transience and change taking a photograph of the lord of the mountain gives the player a description that seems to directly reference iwata it says legends say that this holy creature is a reincarnation of a sage that died on the lands it now protects it's sometimes known by its other name satori another npc named baatrik also greatly resembles wada and can tell the player about the lord of the mountain strengthening this connection shortly after release it was discovered that each symbol in the game's shika language corresponded to a letter of the english alphabet allowing for messages to be translated writing on the distilling stones atop each shika tower reads master using it and you can have this in text on the placeable beacons reads it's dangerous to go alone both of these texts reference the original legend of zelda in pre-release footage of breath of the wild there were two secret messages at the beginning of the game these messages were hidden on the stones that grant the player new runes the first reads now loading do not turn off your and the second reads all your base a nod to the infamously bad translation of the 1989 game zero wing one more sheika script message is actually hidden in the box for the collector's edition of the game when deciphered this message reads the hyrule fantasy which was actually the original japanese title for the very first legend of zelda [Music] [Applause] [Music] did you know originally ocarina of time ran on the same engine as super mario 64 and both games were even developed concurrently however ocarina's engine was so heavily altered by the end of development that its co-director shigeru miyamoto considers them two completely different engines this concurrent production reflected how the original mario and zelda games were made alongside each other and shared ideas concepts were also traded between ocarina and mario 64 such as horse riding which was actually planned for mario 64. ocarina of time also planned to use ganon's castle as a hub world with portals to different areas similar to how players jump through paintings in peach's castle however the team realized that nintendo 64 was more powerful than they originally thought and reconstructed the game to be more open the fight with ganondorf's doppelganger going in and out of paintings is a relic of this castle hub world idea even earlier than this however ocarina was influenced by a failed attempt at remaking zelda 2 the adventure of link before work began on ocarina nintendo experimented with a polygonal remake of zelda 2 using the super effects chip nintendo's yoshiaki koizumi described the prototype in motion as a thin polygon link seen from the side and fighting with his sword the emphasis on swordplay came from a desire to incorporate chanvira style swordfighting chambra is a genre of film known as samurai cinema in the west and is known for its intense sword fighting which is often one-on-one this desire was carried over to ocarina of time and is likely the reason the first teaser for zelda 64 was a one-on-one sword fight miyamoto initially intended the game to have a first person perspective with the camera switching to a side honor third-person perspective while swordfighting this first-person perspective would show off more of the game's terrain and allow the team to focus on developing enemies and environments rather than link's appearance the concept was abandoned when young link was introduced as miyamoto believed a third person view would help highlight the differences between young and adult link the switch from 2d to 3d presented nintendo with some issues as fighting in 3d introduced a new axis for the player to manage for inspiration to solve their issues some members of the team travel to toei kyoto studio park which often had period drama shows at one point the team saw a ninja show where a samurai caught a kusarigama thrown by a ninja when the chain was pulled taut the ninja moved in a circle around the samurai this became the inspiration for the z targeting mechanic the trip to toei studio park also inspired the game's enemy ai when an actor was fighting multiple assailants only one would attack at a time allowing a single actor to deal with many foes this same principle was incorporated into the enemy ai in ocarina of time actors from the park were also hired to do motion capture work for the game an actor was hired for link's standard movements and a professional katana stunt actor was hired to perform link's attack animations ocarina's character illustrator yusuke nakano has said he based link's appearance on a world famous hollywood actor nakano never revealed which actor this was but we do know that ganondorf was also based on an actor and which one character designer satoru takazawa stated that ganondorf was based on christopher lambert best known for his role as conor mcleod in the highlander series toru osawa ocarina's scriptwriter wanted ganon to be a more complex personality and show that ganon isn't simply pure evil osawa tried to show a more human side to ganon and sought to portray him in a similar way to rao from fist of the north star the team opted to use real-time cutscenes over pre-rendered scenes and this was done for several reasons not only did they want cut scene visuals to be consistent with the gameplay but they also wanted to be able to adjust scenes quickly pre-rendered video can take hours and even days to produce and changing them would have been a much greater ordeal than altering real-time cutscenes their decision proved to be wise as miyamoto changed the game's story just months before release and several cutscenes had to be reworked ocarina of time was intended to release for the nintendo 64's disc drive add-on this version of the game would have taken advantage of the internal clock and extra space of the 64 dd to present a persistent world for example cut grass would remain cut and signs would stay broken once destroyed eventually development was shifted onto the regular nintendo 64 following poor sales of the 64 dd the switch to less powerful hardware resulted in many planned features being cut despite this hope still remained for a 64 dd version ocarina of time was planned to get an expansion titled the legend of zelda ura or another zelda exclusively for the 64 dd although it's linked to the development of ocarina of time we'll explain the story of ura zelda in a separate video in a previous episode we mentioned a controversy surrounding the music in the fire temple in versions 1.0 and 1.1 of ocarina of time the fire temple's music contained chanting taken from islamic prayer from version 1.2 of ocarina of time onwards the music was changed to remove this chant it was widely believed that the change was made due to backlash from the muslim community however research conducted by gametrailers.com suggests another explanation for the game's removal while nintendo did indeed confirm the chanting was removed because of the religious reference the rom data for version 1.2 of the game shows the rom was completed before ocarina of time's release this implies that the change was made preemptively and not because of any backlash according to a nintendo representative the chant was taken from a commercial sound library the same sample was also used in the nintendo 64 version of cruising world which corroborates nintendo's claim members of the zelda universe forums were eventually able to track down the sample in question on an album called best service voice spectral volume 1 where the track was simply called track 76 it's possible that the game's composer koji kondo was completely unaware of the track's religious implications due to the innocuous title there's evidence to suggest that the character faro was planned to have a more significant role during development she has a unique design amongst the kokiri despite not having a plot significant character she also had another design at an earlier point suggesting the character was either developed or repurposed at some point she appears to be related to mido in some way as she'll constantly reference them when spoken to while wearing different masks the pair also share a naming convention both of their names end with the syllable do with the first syllables being me and pha all three syllables are found in solfegio in english-speaking countries where people would practice the picture their voice while saying do re me [Music] in the legend of zelda the wind waker a male kokiri character becomes the sage of the wind and is also called fodo because of this some have speculated that fato from ocarina was originally going to be the sage of the wind herself at some point the game has more unseen secrets the iron knuckle enemies that are found towards the end of the game all have gerudo thieves inside of them the players can see the gerudos heads by positioning themselves so that the camera clips through the iron knuckles helmets it's unclear how canonical this inclusion was supposed to be most iron knuckles simply vanish once defeated the exception to this is the mini boss of the spirit temple after its defeat its armor falls off revealing naburu inside as all iron knuckles share the same basic model in game having a gerudo inside every one may have been a time saving measure by nintendo allowing them to reuse the same basic model for all iron knuckles another possibility is that iron knuckles were originally intended to have contained garudos but this story element was altered late in development perhaps due to the dark implications of them being enslaved by ganon in either case the 3ds version removed the gerudo heads from inside the armor cementing that these iron knuckles are not gerudos in the current continuity in 2011 to celebrate the series 25th anniversary nintendo released hyrule historia a compendium of zelda series up to that point the book contained trivia behind the scenes facts and a timeline of events which had been the topic of debate for years leading up to that point the zelda timeline's pivotal moment is centered around ocarina of time which splits into three separate timelines one where link is defeated during the events of the game the child era where link returns to the past and ganondorf is executed before he ever came to power and the adult era the timeline that continued on after ganondorf's rule interestingly it seems that ocarina of time was originally to have contained three separate timelines in and of itself past present and future this is suggested by unused text in the game's code which reads the entrance to the past the entrance to the present and the entrance to the future the owl kepora gebora is confirmed by the hyrule astoria to be the sage of light rauru guiding link through his journey as a child all of the seven sages were named after townships and zelda 2 the adventure of link this may have been an oblique reference to the fact that ocarina of time was originally inspired by a failed remake of zelda 2. in the official zelda timeline however ocarina of time takes place before zelda 2 meaning that the towns were most likely named after the sages the game has more obscure easter eggs as well in the forest temple the player will encounter the four post sisters meg joelle beth and amy the characters are named after the four main characters in the 1832 novel little women meg joe beth and amy march the post-sister's distinctive giggle is also ganondorf's laugh samples sped up [Laughter] in the german version of the game the four carpenters working in kakariko village are named john paul george and ringo after the beatles ipona also took her name from real world inspirations she's named after a celtic horse goddess as a result of her association with horses epona was also associated with life health fertility and plenty when ocarina of time was translated into different languages certain changes had to be made one example can be found in the french version of the game where the word deku was changed to mojo this was because the french pronunciation of deku would be decom which sounds like a slang term for feces and french however one change in the french version added a potentially vulgar phrase the french game's flower bombs are called shopitur which is meant to mean exploding cabbage but can also mean farting cabbage [Music] did you know majora's mask's concept of time recurring with varying results came from the german film run lola run the movie is broken into three story segments that all start the same way but develop differently over time nintendo developer yoshiaki koizumi originally used as idea to develop a board game like project themed around cops and robbers the player would have seven days to catch a robber in a world that was small in scope but full to the brim with content koizumi's game was ultimately cancelled and its core mechanic was passed on to majora's mask majora's mask also started with a seven day cycle this was reduced to three days so players didn't have to wait around for or keep track of too many in-game events the change was also made due to the massive workload making seven days of content would push the team far beyond their one year development deadline nintendo's original plan was to develop a remixed version of ocarina of time for the nintendo 64 disk drive but zelda series developer aginuma didn't want to rework the game he'd spent years making what he thought were the perfect zelda dungeons in ocarina of time he didn't want to change them so he requested to start work on a new zelda game instead ayanuma's request was approved but only under the condition that he complete the game in a single year the stress of creating an entire game in such a short period of time gave ayanuma nightmares in an iwata asks interview ayanuma recalled a dream where he was chased by deku i was thinking about an event for the deku and had been trying to figure out what to do with it i thought of it at home and deku's appeared in my dream i woke up screaming the next day scene director takumi kawagoe showed ayanuma a cutscene he'd been working on kawagoe's cutscene shocked ayanuma as it was exactly like his deku nightmare ayanuma wasn't the only one dreaming about the game the idea to have the moon crashing into termina as the main threat came from one of yoshiaki koizumi's daydreams he dreamt about what would happen if the moon suddenly started falling to earth and how people would react speaking of which the moon didn't always have a face early builds of the game show a faceless moon suggesting it remained featureless for some time even the game's promotional art depicts the moon without a face masks were chosen as the focal point for the game because nintendo believed the full potential of the masks wasn't realized in ocarina of time the developers decided to give link new abilities through wearing the masks rather than using items and decided to go with deku goron and zoro versions of link to cover air land and water each of the masks was given a core storyline and non-playable characters would interact differently with each mask although these characters react differently to each iteration of link they don't react to the actual transformation process these transformations were visually intense so it didn't make sense for non-playable characters to not acknowledge link transforming in front of them in response to this nintendo tried making the transformations in twilight princess more realistic they made link unable to transform in front of others to avoid the issue altogether but the mechanic forced players to constantly find vacant spots in the overworld so it was scrapped to make the game less annoying the world of termina got its name from the word terminal however the name doesn't relate to mortality it relates to termina being a hub in ayanuma's own words as it means a place where people come and go terminal became termina the name majora is romanized as mujura in the japanese game mujura is a mixing of artist takaya emamura's last name and jumanji someone at nintendo was clearly a fan of the robin williams movie the late williams himself was actually a fan of zelda and even named his daughter after the series majora's mask has another potential reference this time concerning the happy mask salesman it's possible the mask salesman is based on the creator of zelda shigeru miyamoto in the game the masked salesman comes across as an omnipotent force pulling strings behind the scenes he even carries a mask that resembles mario who miyamoto also created miyamoto also arguably has a physical resemblance to the character another mask in the mask salesman's collection greatly resembles the mirror shield the mask in fact came first and its design influenced the creation of the mirror shield according to ayanuma when the mirror shield was being designed we wanted to have some kind of pattern for the reflection we couldn't make it like the shield from ocarina of time as the design is too detailed and wouldn't fit the image of this game but the happy mask salesman is carrying a mask that has a face of distress so wouldn't it be interesting to use that design included in majora's mask are three unused variations of a youngling mask curiously they're placed alongside the objects for skull kid suggesting he was planned to wear them it's even possible to dress skull kid in the masks by changing minor values in the game's code in an early trailer for the game there's also an unused mask resembling adult link from ocarina of time it's thought this mask would have turned young link into adult link allowing him to use items from future segments of ocarina of time there's no demonstration of link transforming with the mask but concept art of an adult majora's mask link appears in the hyrule historia the mask was removed from the final game and link was given adult links items it's likely the adult mask was replaced with the fierce deities mask it's often questioned where the fierce deities mask came from as the main transformation masks are based on deceased characters in an interview with game informer ayanuma said the memories of the people of termina are within the fierce deities mask in the japanese game the fierce deity is a buddhist kishan these deities take on wrathful and unsettling forms to lead individuals to enlightenment there are often inverse manifestations of peaceful figures symbolizing the vices of man and the effort it takes to vanquish evil the fierce deity's mask can only be bought by trading 20 of the masks link acquired from the residents of termina and is attained just before the final boss battle with the evil entity majora because of this it's likely the mask symbolizes the struggle of the game's characters and is a physical manifestation of their efforts to overcome evil as kiishan take the negative form of the peaceful beings this could be why link becomes a savage looking version of himself when wearing the mask there are some other strange occurrences in majora's mask the romani ranch aliens were inspired by a booming interest in supposed ufo-related cattle mutilations in japan this is also the reason the game has a ranch in the first place the aliens that attack the ranch during the first night are based on the flatwoods monster a monster that was very popular in the 1950s and 60s the andrew and cafe wedding was based on events that took place in august 1998 where north korea launched tapodong missiles over japan several zelda developers were attending a wedding of a staff member at the time and acknowledged the strange circumstance that missiles could destroy everything in any moment they thought the setting would fit well in termina as terminus residents also had a force of destruction looming over them did you know the wind waker was planned to feature a cloud-riding frog that would serve as a guide similar to ocarina of times navi the idea to use a dedicated guide character was dropped and the frog design was repurposed for zephos in cyclos there were also unused guide designs for a cat and an acorn with a face zephos and cyclos are named after fuchen and raichin in the japanese version of the game after shinto gods of wind and thunder and lightning nintendo wanted link to carry another character through dungeons before medley's character even existed they also wanted any assistant character to fly but they didn't want them to fly too well and make exploring the dungeons trivial because of this design choice they considered having link accompanied by a rito that was too fat to fly properly but they ultimately settled on medley makar was originally planned to be used as a flotation device that allowed link to walk on water link was also going to be able to hook shot and pull himself towards makar since makar can fly to places out of link's reach this would help the player traverse the wind temple the developers felt bad for makar however so he was given the ability to scatter seeds and grow trees that the player could hook shot onto the character tingle was only meant to appear in majora's mask wind waker writer mitsuhiro takano spoke about tingle's creation the image that came to mind was an otaku type guy who went on and on and never stopped talking but also someone who had a really pure heart for some reason players grew to like this oddball which is why he was a top pick for inclusion in the wind waker wind waker director agonuma also jokingly told electronic gaming monthly tingle's just a 35 year old man who for whatever reason seems to think he's a fairy on our team we have a lot of guys over 30 who still seem to think that they're children the tingle tuner in wind waker was added so that family and friends who didn't regularly play games could join in this was ideal as the device allowed a second player to drop items into the game this meant they could help out but avoid action sequences designed for experienced gamers nintendo had wanted to use wind as a main feature in a game for many years but faced software and hardware limitation on previous consoles they managed to make use of wind in smaller ways like in several mario games but it wasn't until the technological advances of the gamecube that they were able to effectively illustrate wind blowing the team also used this boost in power to implement a focus system where link looks at and interacts with different objects and enemies it was added to make the world feel more alive and give players an indication of what link can interact with nintendo's space world 2000 tech demo led many people to believe that this more realistic style was to be the art style of the wind waker however the demo was an experiment made before the release of majora's mask it was made to see what the gamecube could do and was just one possible idea rather than an indication of where the series was going this relation to majora's mask might be why link uses the hero's shield in the demo rather than ocarina of time's hylian shield wind waker's stylized aesthetic came from artist yoshiki harohana who made a cartoon inspired mock-up of link after seeing this graphic designer satoru a moblin in the same style the team started development with just link and two moblins in a field they discussed whether it'd be interesting for link to pick up a moblin's weapon in a battle and use it against them this mechanic was implemented in the final game and was greatly expanded upon the wind waker's story may have had a greater connection with ocarina of time the game has unused concept art for an adult link and although a static statue of an older link appears in hyrule castle these concepts show an adult link in various action poses some concepts even show link facing off against ganon and there are concepts of link's progression from child to an adult this could suggest link was planned to change over time similar to in ocarina just as there was a ds island in phantom hourglass wind waker was planned to have a gc or gamecube island it never made it into the game and the only reference to it can be found in a hyrule historian there's also an unused area called stovepipe island which was an island of steam and smoke with a hot spring lake and a valley of magma there's more evidence of cut features within the game itself a pair of wearable boots labeled water boots can be hacked back into the game link can equip the boots which plays the same animation used for equipping the iron boots it's speculated that the player would have used the water boots to sink below the surface similar to in ocarina of time the game also has several unused test rooms containing pools of translucent water the translucent water might have been used so that players can see themselves move and interact with other objects under the water this would give more weight to the sinking water boots hypothesis two unused sail icons can also be found in the game both use the sail design seen in the final game but are named zora sale and the tingle sale in an interview with mtv ionuma stated that the boat speed in the gamecube version of wind waker was limited by the console's hardware capabilities in the wind waker hd nintendo included a swift sail to make traversing the overworld faster at least one of the unused sails may have been planned to serve this function two dungeons were cut from the final version of the game so that nintendo could complete the game on time the two dungeons were replaced with the infamous triforce fetch quest some fans hoped the missing dungeons would be included in the wind waker hd hyonuma commented on the matter saying i'm aware that a lot of users wanted those two missing dungeons to be implemented in the wind waker hd but to be honest we've already used those two dungeons for other titles after the wind waker already so right now technically they don't really exist anymore this might explain why twilight princess had a larger number of dungeons than usual in 2005 ionuma publicly apologized for the triforce fetch quest in the original game telling eurogamer i apologize that we didn't fix the triforce hunt at the end of the game it was slow and dull [Music] did you know the miniature likely based on a race of tiny humans from ayunu folklore known as the koropok guru like the minish these beings are often portrayed as carrying leaves and as small as thumbs it's also possible that minish cap's developers took inspiration from european folklore the minish that live in towns behave very similarly to the brownies of british legend and similar european tales brownies are set to help with household tasks and try to please people in exchange for gifts but hate being seen these same traits can be seen in the minish although they seem to act more selflessly at one point in the game the minish help the shoemaker rem finish the pegasus boots as he sleeps this plot point is based on the brother's grim tale the elves and the shoemaker in the tale a poor shoemaker repeatedly buys leather goes to bed then wakes up to a finished pair of shoes in the morning which he sells for a high price he eventually finds that elves have been making the shoes for him at night the shoemaker and his wife then decide to make clothes for the elves to thank them but this gesture frees the elves of their servitude and the shoemaker never sees them again the idea to make link change sizes in minish cap came from the team at capcom wanting to keep in line with zelda tradition zelda games often have link go between two worlds such as a light in a dark world or the past and the future a contrast between big and small was chosen early in development and this concept guided the title's production capcom took a different approach when developing the game however and made copious amounts of concept art nintendo usually make far less and opt to create game assets from scratch to save time although the game seems to take cues from the wind waker and uses many of its characters the world of the minish cap was designed to have its own unique identity developers then decided to bring in residents from wind waker that fit minish cap's atmosphere and made them part of the world the minish cap is one of the only games in the zelda series to be released in europe before the united states this was due to the launch of the nintendo ds which came out in december of 2004 in the u.s nintendo of america delayed the release of minish cap so that the two products weren't competing with each other conversely the ds wouldn't launch in europe until 2005 and nintendo of europe wanted to push the minish cap as a major release for the holiday season the minish cap was also available in europe as part of a limited edition release that included a special zelda themed gameboy advance sp out of all of the limited edition packages produced six of them contained a special golden ticket anybody who found one of these tickets would receive a 24 karat gold plated game boy advance sp only seven of these systems were made six were given to golden ticket holders and the seventh was given away as part of a magazine promotion [Music] as a side effect of its early release the european version of minish cap is actually an earlier build of the game and contains several glitches not found in other versions if the player tries to fuse kin stones with the character eenie then cancels and leaves the screen they'll be unable to fuse kinstones with him again this makes one of the game's side quests impossible to complete another example is if the player uses the boomerang or bow immediately after lighting the lantern this will allow them to perform several tricks such as levitating in mid air or shooting double arrows some regional differences also hint at unused content the description for the ice wizrobe figurine in the european game says they're weak against fire so hit them with your fire rod there's no fire rod in the final game however there is a fire rod in the game's data graphics text and even some functionality for the fire rod are still in the game because the fire rod is similar in function to the lantern it's believed the lantern replaced the rod towards the end of the game's production the game also has a crudely drawn unused character that wears only a cape hat and trunks the character was most likely used for testing purposes early in development three items used to debug the game still exist within its data they're named cell overwrite set enemy set and mega crush only cell overwrite set is still functional and lets the player copy and paste surrounding tiles and edit the environment some of the minish cap's unused content also references other games there are three unused stained glass windows these were originally meant to be part of hyrule castle and depict valu jabun and the great deku tree from wind waker similarly the three goddess pearls from wind waker also exist within the game but are left unused it's unclear whether they would have played a significant role in the game zolls gills and potaboos from the legend of zelda four swords also exist in the code of minish cap by hacking the zolls and gels can be spawned in one of three colors and the potabu can be modified to split into a different number of mini potabus when hit there's an interesting secret in the caster wilds area that can't be seen under normal circumstances outside of the playable area of the cave there's japanese text that says mogura which means mole considering the cave needs to be dug out this writing seems to be a reference to the mole mitz item another possible reference is that vati's laugh seems to be a shortened version of the happy mask salesman's laugh from majora's mask [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] did you know in a link's awakening dx staff questionnaire zelda creator shigeru miyamoto confessed to having nightmares about game-breaking bugs in zelda games ironically development on link's awakening was more carefree for miyamoto and marked the first time he took a back seat on a zelda project he joined the team towards the end of development to test the game and offer feedback link's awakening originally began as a hobby project by programmer kazuaki morita to test out what the game boy was capable of morita tried to make a zelda style game this caught the eye of takashi tazuka who'd just finished co-directing the legend of zelda linked to the past tuzuka yearned for more however and decided to join in on morita's pet project tuzuka recalled we weren't particularly planning on a zelda game for the game boy but we thought we'd try it out to see how it would work so at first there was no official project we'd do our regular work during normal work hours and then work on it sort of like an after-school club activity more people got involved over time and tuzuka became impressed with their work as the project grew pushing him to formally pitch the game to nintendo luckily the project was quickly approved and development on the first handheld zelda game officially began in spite of the game's new official status the team still enjoyed relatively free reign due to the game being on the game boy the crew originally planned to port a link to the past to the game boy but the project evolved into its own unique title as the team added more to the game the game even borrowed an unused idea from a link to the past such as combining items for new effects for instance the fishing mini game was added in for fun by merida who has a reputation among his colleagues as an avid fisherman lead programmer on a link to the past toshihiko nakago explained in an iwata asks interview he's the kind of guy who makes fishing games without even being asked morito wasn't the only one who had fun either other members of the team enjoyed squeezing in nintendo characters such as yoshi kirby dr wright and many more into the game the crew often didn't even ask permission to put in these references tazooka stated it was for the gameboy system so we thought oh it'll be fine maybe that's why we had so much fun making it it was like we were making a parody of the legend of zelda not everything was a joke though for example the surreal themes of link's awakening were heavily inspired by the cult classic american tv series twin peaks tuzuka recalled that twin peaks was popular at the time and the show's drama came from a small number of characters in a small town as well as its focus on dreams so when it came to making link's awakening he wanted to make something that would have deep and distinctive characters despite being small in scope however while tazuka was brimming with ideas the team struggled to plan out a story although yoshiaki koizumi was only brought onto the project to write the game's manual he was quickly roped into writing the entire story alongside kensgatanabe as well the pair were relatively free to write whatever they wanted as long as it remained in line with tsuka's vision and didn't include anything related to hyrule princess zelda or the triforce this proved to be a big leap for koizumi in particular who'd exclusively worked in smaller support roles beforehand nevertheless koizumi put his years studying film to good use and took the reins to make the game's storyline and the world of kohalint island meanwhile tanabe worked on the concept of an ominous giant egg sitting atop a mountain into the story an idea he'd been kicking around since working on a link to the past despite link's awakening's laid-back development the game went on to make a serious impact on the evolution of the zelda series it introduced many firsts in the franchise and set the bar for future games to come in fact the game served a major inspiration for ocarina of times developers series producer aegyanuma stated the staff who worked on ocarina of time had all played link's awakening so they had a sense of how far they could go with the series i'm certain it was an important element in the series making a breakthrough if we had proceeded from a link to the past straight to ocarina of time without link's awakening in between ocarina of time would have been different in return malin and talon were added to ocarina of time as direct references to marin and taryn leading up to link's awakening's north american release nintendo held a publicity stunt known as the zelda whistle stop tour at the event participants started a three-day cross-country journey on a train in new york city on the train each contestant was given a game boy with a pre-release copy of link's awakening with the goal to beat it before arriving at their destination the first to complete the game would win a one thousand dollar prize for the charity of their choice additionally each player was given 5 rupees represented by mamba candies that they could use to buy hints from nintendo game counselors if they got stuck more rupees could be won over the ride by correctly answering questions about the state the train was passing through at the time the event didn't go as smoothly as nintendo hoped however the train ride was planned to end in los angeles but a major bridge on the route collapsed shortly beforehand and the destination was switched to seattle at the last minute later when the train arrived in chicago for a transfer matt williamson was locked inside his sleeping compartment and wouldn't answer calls eventually the train crew was forced to take a sledgehammer and break the door down where they found williamson fast asleep with his game boy still at his side afterwards williamson was affectionately nicknamed sleeper by the other contestants for the rest of the ride while the event was primarily held for the press 1990 nintendo world champion jeff hanson was also invited to attend hanson managed to beat the game before anyone else roughly two days into the journey however nintendo refused to give hansen the prize hanson told nintendo life unfortunately there wasn't really any incentive for nintendo to give me the only non-journalist the money so i was a little disappointed to find out that i did not qualify i recall that there were several others that also beat it before we arrived in seattle and the first one to do so after me was declared the official winner according to russo cola a writer for egm who came in second place behind hanson the journey was fun for those involved despite any setbacks socola wrote from new york to seattle we played the zelda game had fun got harassed by rude amtrak personnel and generally stuck together as a group bonded by such an unusual experience everyone on the whistle stop tour accumulated anecdotes learned more about each other and had a great time playing games and seeing the fields abandoned cars people and mountains through 12 states across the northern half of america when i tell people about the trip they look at me like i'm crazy that i actually went along voluntarily but overall it was a positive once in a lifetime experience for link's awakening on switch development seems to have started sometime in 2016. this comes from a recent issue of edge magazine where aegeanuma admitted to secretly teasing the game to edge back in 2016. in the 2016 interview aonuma stated nintendo has been telling me to create a new ip but then they're also telling me to make more zelda games i can't really share much i'm not sure i'm allowed to say anything but i really like the idea of a game where i can live as a thief that's all i'll say this was a nod to how in link's awakening the player can steal items from the town tool shop this wasn't the only clue fans got regarding the lynx awakening remake in mid-2018 nintendo updated the official zelda timeline on their website the main reason for the update was to add breath of the wild to the site but link's awakening was also moved during this update the game was moved from taking place after the oracles games to taking place before although this probably wasn't an intentional hint in hindsight it clearly signified that nintendo were thinking about link's awakening story according to aunoma there were two main motivations for remaking the game on switch firstly the original game boy version is 26 years old now and is becoming harder and harder to come by aonomo wanted to make sure that new players will always be able to experience link's awakening in some form and secondly the team believed link's awakening was the perfect place to try out a new experimental feature shigeru miyamoto was the first to bring up the idea of the dungeon creator feature he thought letting players arrange their own dungeons would be a fun feature to add when the team started to run with this idea they realized that every dungeon room in link's awakening is about the same size making the game a perfect fit this also had its own appeal as arranging preset rooms was like a puzzle in itself which seemed to fit the zelda series some fans have pointed out the similarities between the dungeon maker feature and the super mario maker games when asked if the success of the chamber dungeon mode could lead to a full-on zelda maker game aonoma told kotaku i can't predict the future but if people do love this idea of arranging dungeons i'll keep that in mind going forward we have something in mind for everybody when we make the game so that's what we hope players experience and enjoy as well but we understand also that players have a desire for free customization one noteworthy fact is that the switch and game boy versions share practically none of the same developmental staff producer agianoma didn't start working on zelda games until ocarina of time and the switch version is mainly being developed by grezzo who handled the 3d ports of ocarina of time and majora's mask the switch team had a different approach than the game boy team this can be seen with one action where the team actually asked permission to use non-zelda nintendo characters for a time the switch game's official website listed the number of players as to be determined fans speculated this meant nintendo were bringing back a feature cut from the original title multiplayer one designed document for link's awakening showed two links taking on some sort of enemy with a note at the side saying what are we gonna do about one player mode this seems to imply there was a co-op mode at one point possibly using the game boy link cable however the switch game site was later updated and clearly stated the game was for one player only did you know during development of a link to the past shigeru miyamoto wanted to include a party of characters like in final fantasy or dragon quest 2. in a publicized discussion between miyamoto and dragon quest creator yuji hori miyamoto revealed ever since i started making the first game in the series i've been saying that the 3rd zelda will feature a party one that consists of the protagonist who's a mix between an elf and a fighter a magic user and a girl the fairy that appeared in the second zelda title was actually a party member designed for the third zelda game her purpose was to serve the role of reconnaissance she would go and scout the surroundings without directly fighting the enemies other zelda games have also gone through drastic changes during development in early versions of the first legend of zelda the old man at the beginning would give the player a choice between the wooden sword and a boomerang to start the adventure with in the debug menu of majora's mask it's possible to access an unused cutscene of the great fairy physically training link in new techniques as opposed to just magically granting them like in the final version in the legend of zelda skyward sword the design for the loftwing creatures derives some inspiration from real world animals the large eyes and thick beaks of the loft wings are taken from the balian issep's wrecks or the shoe build stork the shoebill species lived in tropical east africa in large swamps from sudan to zambia the curled tales of the loftwings were inspired by a different animal the designer's pet sheba each loftwing that lives in skyloft has feather plumes matching their respective writer's hairstyle according to hyrule historia the designs for the human residents of skyloft are also modeled after birds this explains why some of the skyloftians have bird-like names and features like gruese pippet stritch and paro more elements of skyloft also have real world origins gratitude crystals are based on a popular japanese sugar candy con peto this candy dates back to 16th century japan and is said to have originated in portugal the most iconic symbol in the series the triforce shares the same design as an ancient japanese symbol called mitsuroko or three scales it's thought that the symbol dates back to the family crest of the hojo clan who were a major political power in 12th and 13th century japan today the three scale symbol is also widely recognized as the logo of an energy corporation called mitsuroko the seventh dungeon in twilight princess city in the sky has been noted by fans for its uncanny similarity to a piece called another world by m.c escher twilight princess's design for the ochres strongly resembles the bird-like creatures in another world in mc escher's peace the creatures can be seen standing on the walls and in twilight princess the okas are also seen standing and walking on the walls skyward sword contains a reference to the 1997 film the titanic while helping skipper get his ship back link will find himself inside of skipper's home on the wall there's a series of photos of skipper and his crew on the boat one of these pictures is of skipper holding another robot over the front of the ship just like in the iconic scene from the titanic in the legend of zelda link's awakening the lonely letter writer mr right is based on the advisor character dr right from simcity dr wright from simcity is in turn based on the creator of simcity willwright the theme that plays in mr wright's house is dr wright's theme from the snes port of sim city [Music] the legend of zelda wind waker has a very subtle reference to pikmin on the northern eastern and southern triangle islands before link places the pearls of the goddesses on the respective shrines the true goddess statues are enclosed in an outer shell nehru's shell has a crack where a mouth would be resembling the blue pikmin faror's statue has ears like the yellow pikmin and din statue has a nose like a red pikmin there is another reference to pikmin in a zelda game this time in the minish cat in the first dungeon an enemy called puff's duel can be found that sprays spores on the player this creature has similar trace to another mushroom enemy from the first pikmin game the mushroom creature in pikmin is also called puffstool and sprays the pikmin with spores it's interesting to note that in the minish cap the puff stools are only found when link is tiny like in pikmin where the entire game takes place on a microscopic level the two enemies do however have different names in the japanese version so it's not certain if this was intended to be a reference by the game's developers [Music] two philips cdi games link the faces of evil and zelda the wand of gamelon are widely considered failures by critics and fans alike many people assumed that nintendo had absolutely no involvement in the development of these games but this isn't true the development team had to submit design documents and character sketches to nintendo for approval when asked about the cdi zelda games series director aj aionuma could barely remember them and had to be reminded of how poor they were according to dale descharone former manager of the development team that created the games the low quality of the cdi titles was due to tight budgets and the fact that the philips cdi was never intended to be a video game console in an interview on hardcore gaming 101 descharone stated it was dreadfully slow and severely limited what was possible if you look at the side scrolling in link or zelda you'll see that you can only scroll about 2 or 2.5 screens horizontally this was dictated by the video memory available it was just obviously not a game system and philips was actually very clear and telling us that they didn't believe the market for this device was games the zelda cdi projects were given a budget of around six hundred thousand dollars a one year deadline and the philips publishing branch expected the games to contain full motion video to cut costs on the animation around half a dozen amateur animators from eastern europe were given work visas to create the sequences they lived in massachusetts for six months and true every frame of animation for the games by hand the resulting product has become the subject of endless criticism by fans of the series ag aonuma's only public comment on these games was a chuckle followed by i don't know that those really fit in the zelda franchise did you know the very first piece of music you hear in the original legend of zelda was created in just one day originally the team elected to use bolero a classical piece composed for a russian ballet but that piece of music's copyright hadn't expired yet zelda's development was entering its final stage and the game was being prepared for mass production because of this the game's composer koji kondo had to make a new piece of music in just one night the valero piece was selected because the tempo matched the speed of zelda's opening sequence and this tempo was used in the new arrangement as well the legend of zelda was noteworthy at the time for switching its music on the fly depending on whether you were in a fight or not this implementation became a staple of the franchise and it was a challenge for condo to improve upon it in the legend of zelda ocarina of time since the map was built around hyrule field it was key that players didn't get bored of hearing the same music every time they had to revisit the area to combat this condo created 28 measure pieces some of which are specific to battles that could fit together in different ways randomly during development of ocarina of time zelda's creator shigeru miyamoto had to push to get a manually controlled ocarina in the game i like international music such as inca or latin i really wanted to put in an ocarina it seemed really zelda-esque playing an instrument is a much more enjoyable way to accomplish things than just casting a spell there were people suggesting playing the ocarina is too tiresome let's make it automatic i was undecided as well but when i went to examine the situation i found the complainers were happily playing the ocarina too originally a reed pipe was going to be used to summon napona link's horse but it didn't make sense to have two separate musical instruments once the ocarina was implemented so it was switched out the character malin was created thanks to shigeru miyamoto miyamoto was a fan of country musicians such as emmylou harris and he insisted on having a songstress in the game melon was originally going to stay in the ranch singing by herself and to the horses her story was changed halfway through so that once she was in the castle she'd no longer sing koji kondo recalls making the ocarina songs for ocarina of time in majora's mask as some of his most challenging work miyamoto's implementation idea for the ocarina was that each button would always be the same tone this meant that condo only had five tones to work with for over 20 toons across ocarina of time in majora's mask each with their own unique theme the gorons in majora's mask play the bongos because they are the favorite instruments of ajiao numa currently the lead producer for the legend of zelda franchise he considers playing music to be his hobby outside of video games and even started a band with some co-workers from nintendo how numa plays percussion instruments specifically drums mostly for fun he finds creating a rhythm to be enjoyable despite not being a musician at heart as he cannot read music majora's mask pamela is named after lyrics from a bossa nova style song which is probably why she and her father live in a music box house because of the brazilian roots of the bossa nova music pamela was originally foreign but her ethnicity was ultimately changed to japanese anuma got the sense that pamela was brave so he gave her the troubling situation of having a mummified father before onuma saw her moving around in game pamela was actually planned to have no father kondo decided very early on that the music for majora's mask would be informed by the style of chinese opera as he was inspired by the mask of majora itself i saw that and it really brought to mind for me for whatever reason a type of chinese opera the kind where the performers wear masks and the music is all percussive and there's a lot of symbols and bells and whatnot those two linked up when i first saw majora's artwork and i thought a chinese influence theme would be the way to go the masks he's referring to are called the damian among other names and were originally implemented in chinese musical performances in honor of tang dynasty warriors going to battle as the composer kondo was involved in more smaller details of majora's mask than might be traditionally expected in one particular scene where the mayor is sat between two people arguing kondo designed the music to match the feel of the argument since one character was on the left of the mayor and one on the right different parts of the music would play from either the left or right speaker along with the argument in another scene where kitsune is dancing kondo was approached by a director most likely aonuma who told him he'd like the music to sound more japanese the feeling that the director was getting from what he was seeing on the screen was just different from the impression that i got but i did go back and look at the scene and i understood more of what he wanted after that so i redid the music the e3 trailer for the legend of zelda twilight princess in 2005 featured a fully orchestrated musical accompaniment something which led many fans to believe that the game would be orchestrated as well in september of 2005 whether or not the game would be orchestrated hadn't been decided yet according to condo honestly it hasn't been determined yet but i would really like to push for it in the process of recording the trailer music i've gotten back in touch with how music from live instruments can be extremely powerful even when i've spent countless hours creating digital music with complex layers for nintendo's games artificial sounds just can't beat the real depth and expression of live instruments twilight princess eventually released without an orchestrated soundtrack according to how numa in a 2007 interview with ign kondo was deeply let down by this while he was indeed disappointed the team as a whole came to the conclusion that the game simply didn't need it when asked whether or not it was a nintendo decision kondo said we never got the feeling that oh this would be a place that could make more of an impact with the full orchestra we just didn't see the need for it this time if you power up the game and let it sit there there's a fully orchestrated piece there so we weren't against doing it no nintendo's staff wanted to include orchestral music and skyward sword but miyamoto initially shot them down insisting it wasn't necessary later the decision was made to give skyward sword an orchestrated soundtrack finally fulfilling the wishes of koji kondo you

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Keywords: zelda, the legend of zelda, legend of zelda, zelda facts, best zelda facts, best zelda, breath of the wild, ocarina of time, majora's mask, majoras mask, wind waker, minish cap, link's awakening, links awakening, link, ganon

Id: hOAoMSOAwkc

Length: 62min 2sec (3722 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020