I recently found out about a rejected pitch for a zelda Game inspired by Final Fantasy TacticsAnd I mourn what could have been. Heroes of Hyrule was designed as a DS game that combines tactical combat with puzzle-based exploration. Unfortunately, Nintendo scrapped the Retro Studios idea before it ever saw the light of day.
YouTube personality Shane Gill’s latest entry in his Do you know gaming A series of videos exploring gaming secrets, trivia, and long-lost products sheds light heroes of hyrule, that Retro Studios unsuccessfully proposed to Nintendo in 2004. Gill sourced the information in his video from a 22-page design document and an interview with one of Retro Studios’ developers. Gameplay has been described as turn-based strategy with puzzle-solving elements.
According to the pitch document, Link should not be the protagonist of the rejected concept. Instead, the main character was a young boy who comes across a history book about defeating Ganon. Two-thirds of the story took place in the history book, which came to life as you read it, while the remaining third took place in the boy’s ‘present-day’ town. Instead of leveling up with experience points like in a traditional role-playing game, the heroes – members of the Gorons, Rito and Zora – accumulated power-ups and abilities by solving puzzles and exploring like in a traditional role-playing game zelda Game. They would also insert real-world objects into the book to give its heroes new abilities or stat boosts.
It was necessary to fully explore both sections in order to advance the main storyline, as the protagonist had to collect book pages in their own world to advance the story. Similarly, there were areas in today’s city that were inaccessible until you obtained certain keys from the story world. Each page in the book would represent an explorable region of the campaign, and new areas would be unlocked as players gained new abilities. There was also an underlying narrative tension built into the game’s projected progression. Ganon would initially be sealed within the book, and stitching together the scattered pages would allow him to break free.
The pitch was created by Retro Studios, known for developing Metroid Prime Trilogy. They felt “burned out”. Metroid Prime 2‘s development and wanted to work on a new IP. Programmer Paul Tozour led the pitch for Heroes of Hyruleand Metroid Prime Game Director Mark Pacini helped shape the ideas that eventually made it into the 22-page document.
After the studio opened heroesSatoru Iwata reportedly told Retro Studios developers to work on it Metroid Prime 3: Corruption for the Wii. They were also asked to revive them Donkey Kong country franchise, a project that Tozour was not interested in and led to him and others leaving the company.
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“We sent it over [Nintendo] SPD and immediately got a no, you don’t do that. To this day I don’t know why,” Tozour said during an interview with DidYouKnowGaming. “They just didn’t seem interested in that gameplay concept.”
boo I’m interested and I’m sure other people would be too.
