How The First Zelda Was Made and Considered Sci-Fi Instead of Fantasy
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Published 2023-05-17
This The Legend of Zelda documentary details the development of action-adventure RPG game The Legend of Zelda and goes behind the scenes of its creation. Discover how Nintendo built upon the success of the Famicom, known as the NES outside of Japan, and introduced an ad-on called the Famicom Disk System that used proprietary floppy disks. Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka were the only designers on the team and produced all the sketches, concept art and pixel art. The main inspiration for the original The Legend of Zelda came from Miyamoto’s childhood. The documentary also explores all the design decisions that Nintendo made and shows how they considered a time-traveling Link in a futuristic setting where the Triforce was made out of electronic microchips.
It also takes a close look at all the hurdles the team had to go through. After creating an initial prototype that featured a two-player mode where each player had to create a labyrinth and then explore it, Miyamoto and Tezuka realized the building aspect wasn’t as fun and decided to scratch it entirely. Additionally, the team also considered a first-person perspective to select a dungeon to explore until they decided to create an overworld where the player can move around freely and discover dungeons more naturally. Furthermore, just before the game was set to go into production, the developers discovered that a certain music track was still copyrighted, which meant composer Koji Kondo had exactly one day to create something new. Lastly, the documentary takes a look at the impact the original The Legend of Zelda had on the gaming industry and how the massive franchise continues to innovate and captivate gamers.
0:00 Part 1
3:41 Ad
5:09 Part 2
References:
thatguyglen.fun/video/how-the-first-zelda-was-made…
Script written by Anine Van de Ryck.
Outro song: Thank You R.G.E. - Joe Bagale
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All Comments (21)
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It's nice to think about how the map was originally designed on grid paper and translated into the game, only for kids to play the game and translate the map back onto grid paper ☺
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When Miyamoto made Zelda, he wanted to recreate the experience of exploring caves as a kid. When today's developers make games, they want to recreate the experience of playing Zelda as a kid.
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Wow, time travel and then seeing the water physically drain from the lake? Miyamoto was the lead on Ocarina of Time, it looks like the N64 finally gave him the technology to use those concepts!
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I find it insane, that Zelda AND Mario were produced at the same time
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Nice to see that basically every idea conceived during LoZ's development eventually made it's way into a sequel or fan-inspired game
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Crazy how koji kondo wrote the main theme in 1 day
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Something that wasn't mentioned here - Koij Kondo was in a cover band in highschool that played, among other things, a lot of Deep Purple [something he's admitted to being a big fan of]. If you listen to the track "April" there's a part strikingly reminiscent of the zelda theme. He's never directly said they were related but it's pretty obviously an inspiration!
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Damn, imagine being handed TLOZ by Miyamoto and accidentally not implementing half of his creation. I wonder how that happened...
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I've heard most of this before but this was an excellent compilation of some of the most interesting facts about the first Legend of Zelda game. Hearing it all together right after Tears of the Kingdom's release, it's a great reminder that many of the team's unused ideas for The Legend of Zelda ended up being saved and used decades later, especially time travel in Ocarina of Time and high technology in Breath of the Wild — even more so in Tears of the Kingdom.
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It's pretty funny that the dungeons were accidentally only half programmed in, leading to the space left over being turned into the second quest. One has to wonder what the game dungeons would have looked like if the programmer hadn't made that mistake.
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I feel like tears of the kingdom has matched or surpassed his original vision of being on an adventure.
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They gave Pol's Voice a different weakness in the NES version. They die in one hit to arrows, and are the only enemy in the game that don't 'consume' the arrows upon being struck, meaning you can potentially kill several in a single shot.
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Its wild to think that Nintendo wouldnt be where it is today if Miyamoto had a bad childhood lol.
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“Uh oh, the music is copyrighted! Quick! Write a masterpiece in one day!”
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Finally i understand why themanual said loud noises would hurt that one enemy. Thank you so freakin much
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I love how they had the Time Travel idea from the start
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Interesting how this means both Oracle games have connections to the original Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons draws on its original dungeon design and bosses for the exploration. Oracle of Ages delivers on the time travel idea as a game element for the puzzles.
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Thanks for this throwback to simpler times 😊 ! After all these years, this is still my favorite Zelda, and one of my favorite game ever. I spent hours (days?) with my neighbor drawing maps on graph paper…
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Imagine only using half the dungeon maps and your boss being like, “No problem, we can just make a second quest 😊.” That can’t be how that went down 🤔.
