The same thing happens to you and me. And it’s normal. The Legend of Zelda is a saga that reinvents itself and evolves with each new installment, classic upon classic, but when remembering the three games developed in the West, the natural thing is to laugh or cry: the infamous Zelda trilogy released on CD- I is mediocre to satiety, and that it was done in a hurry and in any way is no excuse. It goes without saying that for Nintendo and its own Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the saga, practically do not exist. That said, there was a fascinating attempt to shape and pose the genuine magic of the kingdom of Hyrule from across the Pacific. More concretely, from Austin, Texas.
Retro Studios he hardly needs introductions at this point in the game. Although his headquarters is quite a distance from the headquarters of the Big N, his team has earned the well-deserved reputation of being the ace in the hand of Nintendo. To them we owe the spectacular Metroid Prime trilogy, the superb latest installments of Donkey Kong Country and, when necessary, they came to the rescue of other sagas such as Mario Kart or the fourth installment of Metroid Prime.
With a career like this it is impossible not to have him a special attachment to the Zelda saga. Enough, like asking Nintendo to make their own game. And this is where things get complicated since, based on contrasting sources, we are not only talking about one new game, but two. Both really interesting and novel, by the way.
In iGamesNews We did a complete review of all the canceled The Legend of Zelda games, but the truth is that some of them deserve much more special treatment. Because, as you can see, what Retro Studios wanted to do doesn’t even deserve to be forgotten along with other papers in a drawer, much less buried among seas of data that won’t be used on some hard drive. That being said, this is the legend of the impossible Zeldas from Retro Studios.
The context, or why Retro Studio asked Nintendo to make their own Zelda games
Retro Studios was founded in 1998 and it took just four years to join the Nintendo family of studios. Which is not usual: unlike the current Microsoft or Sony, Nintendo is extremely cautious when it comes to acquiring new studios. Of course, reasons were not lacking: despite the fact that in May 2002 it had not yet been launched Metroid Primethat game would redefine the GameCube catalog and the new identity of the Nintendo of the new millennium.
Of the 10 games that bear his signature (discounting his participation in other projects), seven are related to Metroid. Although, of course, that has a trick: we are taking into account the compilation Metroid Prime: Trilogy for Wii or the recent (and controversial) remaster of Metroid Prime. For reference, we have counted the two versions of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze for Wii U and Switch as the same.
No study likes to dedicate itself solely to the same saga. That’s clear. There were lots of attempts to make other games and for one reason or another, none of them ended up being successful. But it is that in Retro Studios they are very fans of The Legend of Zelda. so much so that in their offices there is a meeting room called Lost Woods which is decorated in the theme of the hero of Hyrule, Master Sword included.
Thus, when in 2004 the sequel to Metroid Prime hit the shelves, and they considered making a debut on the new Nintendo consoles, they wanted to do something new and that responsibility fell on Paul Tozour, who has always been a huge fan of tactical strategy games. That Final Fantasy Tactics If it was released a year earlier on Game Boy Advance and convinced critics and gamers alike, it was also an unmistakable sign.
Thus, after proposing a first game unrelated to another license, Retro Studios decided to turn that idea around completely and set it in the Zelda universe, which led to a month-long internal work that will finally take its final shape. of a very detailed document of no less than 22 pages that, according to Tozour himself, was sent in May 2004 to Nintendo itself and is rejected at first.
Which brings us to the million dollar question: What was on those pages?
Heroes of Hyrule: The “Zelda Tactics” That Never Was
One hundred years ago, three heroes sealed defeated an arcane evil and sealed it in a book. Since then, the whole world lived in peace and freedom, without the suffering of what tormented them in the past.
Until one day, that book fell into the hands of a young man.
Heroes of Hyrule tells the story of Kori, a simple young man who dedicates himself to helping the elderly owner of an antique store. By chance, and during the absence of the owner, our protagonist discovers a secret room with a mysterious book that narrates the adventures of three heroes from the past: the powerful goron dunethe intrepid rite serif and the learned zora Krel.
Needless to say, each of them symbolizes the qualities of the triforce itself: power, courage and wisdom.
In the game raised by Retro Studios are offered a double gaming experience: The adventures of Lee Kori himself appear on the screen as a tactical RPG in which the three protagonists must navigate different scenarios to prevent a greater evil and rescue Link. Each of them is specialized in a specific game style and, instead of gaining experience, you progress Zelda-style, unlocking upgrades and new abilities that enable exploration of the environment.
The interesting thing is that, in a certain way, events happen as The endless story, so the enchanted book is missing pages and contents. And that’s where Kori comes in: to progress, she’ll need to interact beyond the library and find pages or use what she’s learned in the story to find out what happens to the heroes of Hyrule. So, for example, when the time comes, they discover a song and Kori must touch it to get the next page.
According to the 22 pages produced by retro Studios, Heroes of Hyrule was presented to Nintendo as a “game of exploration, puzzle solving and strategic combat” in the Zelda universe. Furthermore, it was specifically designed for the Nintendo DS, and his grand plan was, in addition to fulfilling his dream of paying homage to previous Nintendo DS games, The Legend of Zelda With a unique and different foray into the saga, offering an original alternative to fans who had become obsessed with Final Fantasy Tactics.
And yet, it seems that it was not the only game that Retro Studios considered making.
The Sheika Action RPG: The Other Forge of the Master Sword
Although the project of Heroes of Hyrule failed to take off after Nintendo’s refusal, from Retro Studios they continued to explore the possibility of making their own game of The Legend of Zelda, even if it wasn’t directly tied to the main saga. And while the possibility of making a tactical RPG was no longer on the table, they came up with a different way to approach Hyrule’s past through an RPG experience.
we know through of statements to IGN by concept artist Sammy Hall, who worked for Retro Studios, which at some point between 2005 and 2008 went into pre-production on un Action RPG de The Legend of Zelda. Of course, with a very distinctive peculiarity and very similar to the previous discarded project: instead of living the adventure through Link, we would know the story of the last man of the Sheikah clan.
The starting point and setting of the game, whose name is not known, would be born directly from the darker ending presented in Ocarina of Time. In it, our hero Sheikah travels through a ruined kingdom of Hyrule, witnessing a shadowy Gerudo spin-off tribe bring Ganon back. The most interesting of all: the game would have a big surprise and would serve to tell the story of how the Master Sword was created.
From here a note. Although, at this point in the game we all know more or less the history of Link’s sword, it should be remembered that until 2011 (that is, the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword) had neither been addressed in the games nor established in a more or less official and canonical way. And the same goes for Zelda’s own timeline.
On the other hand, and as Paul Tozour has established very specifically, it was not exactly a game of The Legend of Zeldabut -textual words- “an experiment that did not end up going well set in the world of Zelda”. In fact, as a game it would offer an extremely simple and intuitive character control system. Even without being officially announced, It was even speculated that it would come to Wii.
Unlike Heroes of Hyrulewe know from Tozour that Nintendo did give the go-ahead in 2007 and that nine Retro Studios workers developed a prototype of this Action RPG for nine months, set in the universe of The Legend of Zelda. What happened? Well, the experiment did not end up going as expected and in 2008 the study was very involved in other projects.
Luckily, much of the art created for the occasion can still be seen from the ArtStation profile del propio Sammy Hall.
Both projects may have been forgotten, but many of their ideas have made it to the Hyrule we know
As we mentioned, and unlike the canceled tactical RPG Heroes of Hyrule, both Nintendo and Miyamoto himself found the idea of offering an Action RPG of The Legend of Zeldaand even many years later the Japanese genius found it very fascinating to offer an adventure focused specifically on the Sheikah and their past.
Luckily for Zelda fans, fate will end up aligning and, after the release of The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, we met interesting proposals that remind us in one way or another of these projects that never were.
- input, with the DLC the Ballad of the Chosen we would know the adventures of the chosen ones of a powerful garudo, a tiny but wise zora and a rite that has plenty
- In addition, Nintendo did dare to play a tactical role, although at the hands of Ubisoft and with the characters from the saga of Super Mario Bros. thanks to the Mario + Rabbids crossover and its sequel.
- And as if that were not enough, it is worth remembering the Hyrule Warriors spin-off, in which, in addition, we get to know the past of the Sheikah a little better.
Perhaps we will be left with the thorn what would have happened to the story of Zelda if these canceled games had come true, but we are left with what did happen: the saga of The Legend of Zelda Not only is it considered cult-worthy, but it continues to convey the genuine sensations of discovery and sensation to several generations of video game fans.
And who knows? Maybe we even see some of these ideas discarded in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
All artwork is by Nintendo or created by Retro Studios for the canceled projects. Some of them are the work of Sammy Hall
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