The Complete Cut and Altered Maps of Zelda Ocarina of Time | Cut Content

That last part of climbing up the tower really reminds me of walking up the final twisting staircase to fight the boss from Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.

The reason all the fences block off specific areas was because the maps from that build were what Nintendo used as a playable demo prior to release in order to showcase gameplay. Nintendo didn’t want players to wander off too far and see areas too early on.

I sometimes wonder if Miyamoto and the OoT devs of the time ever watch these videos and laugh at the incorrect guesses. "They shall never know the truth."

Having recently replayed Twilight Princess, it's fascinating how many cut ideas from OoT made it into that game. Castle Town with its massive walls, the bigger Kokiri Forest, and so on. I doubt that these concepts were cut just because of gameplay reasons. I bet if they had had the technology at the time, Ocarina would have been much closer to TP than what it ended up being. They really did want to create a seemingly endless world.

Notice how much more fluid Link's movements are in that earlier build at 13:08 as well.

2:02 The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps just weren't as good. Just playing through the retooled beta maps, like the fairly polished beta Deku Tree shows that there's a lot of traversal without much to do. 6:42 And I think they're cut for both games in this form because it was most likely just weak content. The OoT form of the Lost Woods especially- just look at it. You bring up later that you struggled to run it, but we don't know your emulation setup- and we don't know theirs, but presumably there were reasons they had gotten that far with that map, and it may have run better on real hardware. But they DEFINITELY could have streamlined the mechanics and system to work if they actually thought it would have been worthwhile, because we would have seen the gameplay system implemented- that's the part they cared about. Nintendo have OoT an ungodly amount of development time by the standards of this era of video games, more than enough to explore the limits of where and how they could push coding and hardware. (And it shows in how they executed the Actor handling system, which is really THE reason they were able to create Majora's Mask on the technical side of things) They weren't just taking away content, they were curating, editing and refining what they had, both on the front end and back end of the game. Most N64 gamrs focus on the simpler models, spaces and textures because development time was too short to troubleshoot and streamline the environments and assets. 1/4-1/2 the console's power was a general guideline, unless you were, say, making a rail-based game like a Fighter, Crash-like, or Panzer Dragoon-Like, where the polygons and player behavior was EXTREMELY predictable. And cartridges were extremely expensive. But Nintendo were making a special exception for Zelda 64, and were living up to it, even moreso than Mario 64, which had HAD to come out so early. The sad thing to me is that I don't think any OoT developer will EVER admit to the totally reasonable explanation that they shrunk most of the OoT maps in development (and probably most Twilight Princess maps after the WW feedback) to make the game a stronger experience, because folks in general just have it in their head that Bigger = Better, no matter what. 7:11 I'm more inclined to think this was about the UI being tailored to represent the Elemental/Spell Arrow system they had been planning. Perhaps the plain white around the bow would take a different hue for each element? It seems a little strange to me for it to be so pale otherwise 10:54 To me, this feels like the place where an antagonist would exposit some stuff, before having you fight the Iron Knuckle, possibly while they watch. You run to catch them, but they're gone. If this were Ganon's Castle, then perhaps it would be a place to bait you with a captured Zelda? And the lit up area would probably be some pre-Rooftop Showdown safety/rest/item-get spot, judging by general video game logic. 14:14 I never understood why people insist that these are the same dungeon, and not a test dungeon being repurposed, with the different wall textures. I'm thinking Early Ice Temple, repurposed from the test/beta/eyecatcher they made with the Triforce in it. 16:52 Turtle Rock instead of a dead Dodongo. For some reason, OoT decided that the child dungeons didn't involve enough being eaten by actual beings, so they had to make it a real head, I guess? Its the only reason I can figure that they made the change, and its a strange theme. 21:39 IIRC there's unused text about a secret entrance. It both likely explains this, and how there's that rather conspicuous unused area to the West of the Castle gates in the Final game. A later, less Gravestone-ish version also reflects the ALTTP secret entrance you use at the start of the game, in a way. 22:01 Exactly what I was talking about with the Map shrinking. But the farm inclusion makes sense- Malon/Link was the intended OTP by the developers. They even wanted to include a Lon Lon ranch fire, where you would have Malon on Epona with you as you jumped the fence and galloped away, saving her heroically. 23:41 Looks like one of the public maps, like for E3 or Spaceworld-type events. Iirc they even have a sign that says something to that effect (In Japanese) 25:23 Using more recent textures doesn't necessarily mean anything, if the textures were replaced in the same directory before the map editing was discontinued. I'd look at the metadata instead. Even then, that's not 100% reliable. 28:43 Just to clarify, the Forest Temple is one of the earliest development settings in OoT- the rumors of them initially going for a Mario 64 setup about being set in Ganondorf's castle and going into paintings started development with the Forest Temple AS the castle. You can see early ~'96 footage from Giles Goddard playing with Portal-esque tech in the Forest Temple for some funzies. 31:47 This area is so bizarre because of the textures to me- it goes to show what the system can theoretically handle, but how janky it looks when you go mixing and matching different fidelity and color scaling levels. 37:19 To me, with the white triangle sitting over the black, I think its visually supposed to read as a grey Triforce with a black center, and a single, smaller white triangle in the middle, but from the ground, it just looks like an inverse triforce, so they had to change it. They were probably trying to visually represent "Three mcguffins come together to give you the Power in the Temple" but it totally fell flat. Just happens sometimes, and they caught it. 41:29 The Gerudo Training Ground at one point was used as a public demonstration space- giving preview players goals was pretty standard. Overall though, I hope I don't come off as nitpicky. We don't actually learn new things if we all just parrot the same ideas- its EXTREMELY important to do independent examinations and come to one's own conclusions on things with the skills we have, like you have and continue to do. I know that takes a ton of effort to go in and look at all these things by hand, especially when you get stuck in spaces, and things crash, or don't want to record and such. So kudos.

A lot of times designers showcase early concept they got from managers, this is just supposed to foster more management conversation. It's not supposed to be fleshed out. So it's not really just an evil castle.

At 38:10, I always found it interesting as a kid that the great fairy as adult Link was moved from where it was as child Link to be north of the castle instead. Whenever the overdump happened and this map got leaked many years later my first thought was "well shit, that explains the age old question." The path even looks similar to the one in the final game as an adult.

Ocarina of Time would’ve been a goofier game. Good thing they stepped up their game and made peak.

Great vid as usual! Love this game!

the outdoor top of Beta Ganon's Tower reminds me of the Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.

damn, ive never even played ocarina of time but i love beta stuff like this, great video, keep up the good work

42:28 That's not the Spirit Medallion being grey, but the Light Medallion being white.

36:50 - That looks like a beta model of the entrance to that area of guards you have to sneak past to get to Zelda in the castle. The side water duct thing going off the fountain model really reminds me of that!

That water temple and deku tree temple is the best found plus the medallions and the beta lost food and korkiri forest which the N64 VIa everdrive can work.

Top tier compilation, sir!

Cant wait for shadow of the colossus one day. its gonna be big

The original beta design for link was so much better. Its an updated classic link, and the world and items also reflect that style. God i wish wed get a game that plays like oot/tp in that style. Classic designs were the best.

It's crazy seeing references to Team Beta Triforce. I was part of that team nearing 2 decades ago. Absolutely amazing era of beta Ocarina of Time discovery.

would have been so nice if they somehow got beta lost woods running on a n64 (if perfomance really is why it was cut) its sooo much cooler than the final version