Nintendo 5-Star: Iwata Asks: Zelda Handheld History

Friday, March 19, 2010

Iwata Asks: Zelda Handheld History

Well this was a pretty revealing bit. Nothing of the sort would come to light if this was ten years ago. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

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Nakago: And I’ve got something even more interesting today. This is the first dungeon map ever created for Zelda.

Tezuka: Basically, we were going to make lots of dungeons using one square per room, and lay them out like a jigsaw puzzle.

Iwata: In order to fit in as many dungeons as possible given the limited memory, you were making them like you were doing a puzzle.

Nakago: Right. Tezuka-san said, “I did it!” and brought this to me. I created the data exactly in line with it, but then Tezuka-san made a mistake and only used half of the data. I said, “Tezuka-san, there’s only half here. Where did the other half go?” and he was like, “What?! Oops, I messed up…” But Miyamoto-san said it was fine just like that.

Tezuka: Heh heh heh. (laughs)

Nakago: So, using the half of the memory that was left over, we decided to create the Second Quest²⁰.

²⁰Second Quest: A second adventure of greater difficulty prepared for players who had cleared the original quest in The Legend of Zelda. When you play this quest, Link on the select screen changes so he’s holding a sword.

Iwata: Huh? Just wait a second. If Tezuka-san hadn’t messed up, there’d have been no Second Quest?

Nakago: Yes, that’s right.