The Legend of Zelda - Cancelled Games

This page should not be edited lightly

This page is meant to highlight cancelled projects in The Legend of Zelda series. It sources and contextualizes information from a large number of interviews that have been conducted with the Zelda development team by various publications over the years. While this page is meant to highlight projects not commonly seen by the public, please do not link to illegally sourced information or assets on this page or anywhere else on the Zelda Wiki. Additionally, please do not edit this page if you are not confident in what you are doing and express your concerns on its talk page instead.

The Legend of Zelda - Cancelled Games

Ideas and Pitches That Never Left Pre-Production

A Remake of Zelda 2 for the Super Famicom

Following the release of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Shigeru Miyamoto and Yoshiaki Koizumi began working on a remake of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for the Super Famicom, designed using polygons. The two experimented with a thin, polygonal Link viewed from a side-scrolling perspective, similar to the original game. Plans to turn this concept into a full game eventually fell through, and both developers moved on to other projects. However, the team still wanted to create another Zelda based around swordfighting, the way The Adventure of Link was, and this eventually led to the development of Ocarina of Time.

A Side Story to Twilight Princess

Link's Crossbow Training

Following its release in 2006, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess went on to become one of the highest-selling games in the The Legend of Zelda franchise. Keen to give players that had enjoyed Twilight Princess a new game to play while avoiding the lengthy development cycle Zelda projects typically involved, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto asked the game's development team to explore ways to re-use Twilight Princess's existing world and assets.

The idea was to use Twilight Princess's vast terrain to develop a new game that would serve as an "extra story" or "side story" to the main game's events. However, as the team began to formulate stories for this new project, Miyamoto felt these stories were too vast in scope, describing them as "epic tales" as opposed to side stories. Development was halted while the team collectively pondered a solution.

Ultimately, Miyamoto suggested the use of the Wii Zapper to create the game that would become Link's Crossbow Training. Describing the Zelda team's reaction to the decision, Miyamoto stated: "They were kind of shocked. It was like killing all the ideas they were working with until then. Some even felt that we should not do something which makes it look like we are reusing the already existing software and selling it to the consumers."

Note: Coincidentally, the original concept for the Wii Zapper was first proposed by a member of the Twilight Princess team during the development of that game.

Sheik Action RPG by Retro Studios

Some time between 2005 and 2008, Nintendo-owned Retro Studios began pre-production on a new Zelda game that would have explored the origins of the Master Sword. According to concept artist Sammy Hall, who retroactively revealed it in 2020 via his ArtStation account, the game would have taken place within the "bad ending" of Ocarina of Time.

The project was described as an "action/JRPG" title that would have involved the last male Sheikah's journey transforming into the Master Sword, following a genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Sheikah tribe. During this time, a Dark Gerudo tribe would be giving a "100-year birth" to some form of Ganon. It is unclear if or how this concept would have fit into the events of the Zelda timeline.

Hall would later reveal that the idea for the game had come from former Retro Studios leads Mark Pacini, Todd Keller, and Kynan Pearson. Hall was asked to brainstorm the Sheik project in between his other work at Retro Studios, but stated that he doubted most of Nintendo's staff in Japan ever saw much of his concept work.

The Sheik project was ultimately shelved in 2008 when Pacini and Keller quit Retro Studios to pursue other goals. It is unclear as to what extent Nintendo was aware of the project, or whether the company ever had plans to support it. In a 2011 interview, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto stated that Nintendo was open to the idea of collaborating with Retro Studios on a Zelda game; however, when the question of a Retro Studios-developed Zelda was posed once again in 2016, Miyamoto suggested that Retro's busy development schedule and distance from Japan would make such a project difficult to coordinate.

Additionally, Miyamoto stated in 2016 that Nintendo had internally discussed developing a Zelda game centered around Sheik at some point, but it is unclear as to whether he was referring to the Retro Studios Sheik project specifically.

Note: An interesting parallel to note between the cancelled Sheik project and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is that the plot for both games involved a character transforming into the Master Sword.

A Sequel to Link's Crossbow Training

The Crossbow from Link's Crossbow Training

The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has stated that he was once considering a sequel to Link's Crossbow Training, expressing a desire to do "something more and better" in the field of the first-person shooter.

According to Aonuma, he would have liked to include a full-fledged online multiplayer mode through the Wii's Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service in such a game. Judging by Aonuma's statement, the project never went into development as Nintendo felt he should focus on developing an entirely new Zelda game instead.

Multiplayer Games for Nintendo DS and 3DS

Multiplayer games along the lines of Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures were explored on both Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS.

The first instance of this was in 2004, when Daiki Iwamoto, a programmer that had worked on Four Swords, prototyped a multiplayer Zelda along the lines of that game, for the Nintendo DS. At the time, series producer Eiji Aonuma asked Iwamoto to focus on other ideas instead. This would lead to the development of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.

The second instance was in 2009, when designer Hiromasa Shikata (who had served as one of many sub-directors on Twilight Princess) and programmer Shiro Mouri (who had served as lead programmer on the Nintendo DS Zelda games) were brainstorming ideas for the Nintendo 3DS handheld, which had not yet been revealed to the public.

During the development of Spirit Tracks, Shikata had felt the game's cooperative gameplay mechanics were well suited to a multiplayer game. Perhaps due to this, Shikata and Mouri's initial approach to a 3DS Zelda was a game centered around player communication, similar to Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures. When the pair presented the idea to their managers, it was turned down by Shigeru Miyamoto, who felt the concept sounded stale. This eventually led to the development of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.

Following the release of A Link Between Worlds, both Shikata and Mouri would go on to develop The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes', eventually giving the 3DS its own distinct multiplayer Zelda.

Games That Were Altered / Cancelled During Development

Zelda 3

File:ALttP Sci-Fi Zelda Concept Art.png

Concept art from Hyrule Historia hints at a scrapped sci-fi element

A number of ideas and features were in consideration for the third Zelda game, many of which were cut during development.

The first Legend of Zelda game was originally going to involve sci-fi themes, whereby the main character would travel between the past and the future, and the Triforce was a trio of electronic chips that would play a role in his adventure. For the third Zelda, the development team considered the idea of a science fiction backdrop once more, as demonstrated by concept art of a sci-fi Zelda revealed in the Hyrule Historia art book.

In a 2017 interview, director Takashi Tezuka also revealed that the third Legend of Zelda game was originally going to involve a "multi-world structure," where events taking place in the hub world would have an effect on the others. Three worlds were initially conceived for the game (one of which may have been a futuristic or sci-fi world as suggested by the concept art), but Nintendo felt that three worlds would be too confusing for players and reduced the idea to just two worlds instead.

Shigeru Miyamoto had also initially wanted Zelda 3 to adopt an RPG-like party structure, well before the game even went into development. Miyamoto's original idea called for Link to be accompanied by three companion characters—a fighter-like elf, a magic user, and a fairy whose role would consist of reconnaissance. This idea was never used either, and the design for the fairy was instead utilized in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

Finally, another idea that was cut during development involved the game being more open-ended in its structure, with multiple paths through the world. Another idea that was scrapped during development included multiple paths through the world, so that the player's experience would be more open-ended. This idea was abandoned due to memory constraints (with Miyamoto hypothesizing that it would have required 150% more memory than the Super Famicom possessed) and the complications it would have caused in terms of game structure.

"Zelda 3" was ultimately released as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Ura Zelda

The title screen of Ocarina of Time with a 64DD disk inserted.

When Nintendo revealed the Nintendo 64 to the public in 1995, the company also announced an add-on peripheral for the device, dubbed the "64DD". This was a disk drive that would provide the Nintendo 64 with additional RAM, as well as rewritable memory, that would allow for user-created content to be saved to the disk.

The company's first 3D Zelda game, Ocarina of Time, was intended to be developed with the 64DD peripheral in mind, utilizing its hardware to create a persistent world with lasting effects such as trees remaining cut once the player had chopped them down, or Link leaving permanent footprints behind him wherever he walked. This idea was ultimately shelved, owing to the fact that the 64DD consisted of mechanical moving parts like a hard disk, and depending on where on the disk the data was stored, it could take longer to retrieve. This would potentially limit the number of animations that could be programmed for Link, which led to the team's decision.

By 1998, following the release of Ocarina of Time, videogame development costs had increased significantly. The industry had grown increasingly competitive with the introduction of Sony's PlayStation platform, which enjoyed the vast majority of support from third-party game developers. Anticipating a need to release games faster to support the Nintendo 64, Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto felt that the solution was to work on games with shorter development cycles, that still had the potential to sell well. In Miyamoto's view, Ocarina of Time could have been finished much sooner, had Nintendo "cut some parts".

In order to give the Nintendo 64 a second Zelda game in a shorter time, Miyamoto asked his team to develop an updated version of Ocarina of Time for the 64DD. This project, titled "Ura Zelda," was meant to use remixed dungeons from Ocarina of Time and add other enhancements such as fleshing out unresolved plot threads. Eiji Aonuma, who had designed the dungeons for Ocarina of Time, was put in charge of development. Unenthused by the idea of remixing his older dungeons, Aonuma eventually asked permission to create an entirely new Zelda game instead, which would lead to the development of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Aonuma would serve as director on Majora's Mask, while a separate team would work on Ura Zelda. In 1999, Miyamoto would state that Ura Zelda was being developed in parallel with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, and that it would "use the existing Ocarina of Time cartridge" but with different dungeons, treasure locations, and story events that made use of the 64DD peripheral. At the time, Miyamoto also stated that Nintendo was considering using some sort of network technology for the game.

Ura Zelda would eventually be released as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest in 2003 for the Nintendo Gamecube. The final game would not include most of the ideas originally planned for Ura Zelda. These included:

• A persistent world with permanent consequences of the player's actions

• New story events

• More quests involving masks and the ability to use the GB Camera to create masks for Link

• The use of "network technology"

According to Miyamoto, development on Ocarina of Time Master Quest had been finished for some time, as of August 2000. It was eventually released as a pre-order bonus for 2003's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, in order to help spur pre-orders for that game.

Note: A Japanese ROM of Ocarina of Time can be tricked into believing a Nintendo 64DD disk has been inserted. Doing so will display a "Disk" icon on the game's title screen. This demonstrates how the game was designed to be compatible with the 64DD as stated by Nintendo following its release.

A remake of The Legend of Zelda on the Game Boy Color

The Mysterious Acorn

Following its formation as a subsidiary under Capcom, game development studio Flagship began collaborating with Nintendo on the development of a trilogy of Zelda games for the Game Boy Color in 1999, under the title The Legend of Zelda: The Mysterious Acorn. One of these three games was meant to be a portable conversion of The Legend of Zelda with new features.

As development would progress, the team would discover unforeseen hurdles with porting the first Zelda game to the Game Boy Color. Flagship hadn't accounted for the fact that the Game Boy Color used a narrower screen than a television. As a result, the GBC wasn't able to display rooms built for the first Zelda (which had been designed for TVs) in their entirety. The player needed to move around to be able to view the full extent of the room they were in, which meant it was easy to miss details such as stairways, cracks in the wall, and other similar clues meant to steer progress.

These hurdles, combined with feature creep and Flagship's relative inexperience, would lead to the development team constantly having to rework the game's story and environments to fit one another over the course of a year. The remake was eventually cancelled, and the remaining two games in the intended trilogy were released as Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages.

Note: While the trilogy was in development, the three games had different placeholder subtitles in Japanese. The commonly accepted translations for these are Mystical Seed Power, Mystical Seed of Courage, and Mystical Seed of Wisdom. The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia confirms that Mystical Seed of Power would become Oracle of Seasons. This would indicate that Mystical Seed of Courage became Oracle of Ages, owing to the piece of the Triforce depicted during the game's introduction, and that Mystical Seed of Wisdom was the game that was cancelled.

The Wind Waker 2

2003's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker had not performed to expectations. The game had sold relatively poorly in Japan, owing to the fact that the country's videogame market had begun to decline. Additionally, despite a successful pre-order campaign, sales in the west were also slowing faster than usual. Series producer Eiji Aonuma would discover that this was because The Wind Waker's cartoon-ish visuals had alienated the upper-teen audience that represented the typical Zelda player in North America—the series' largest market.

By the time The Wind Waker was released, game development costs on home consoles had risen significantly. This was something that Nintendo had been wary of for some time, as the company believed that creating games with constantly escalating budgets was an unsustainable business. Meanwhile, Four Swords Adventures, a concept pitched by Shigeru Miyamoto, had failed to set a new direction for either Zelda or the Nintendo GameCube, and Nintendo was uncertain as to what the Zelda franchise needed to do next. A declining Japanese market, rising development costs, and apathy from the western audience were putting pressure on Eiji Aonuma and the core Zelda development team to achieve some sort of breakthrough, failing which the franchise was under threat of being shelved permanently.

Early concepts for Midna, possibly from The Wind Waker 2

At the time, Nintendo was already planning the next Zelda game for the Nintendo GameCube. Tentatively titled The Wind Waker 2, the game would use the same cel-shaded visual style as The Wind Waker but would take place on land instead, with Link riding on horseback like in Ocarina of Time. During the initial stages of planning, the development team would discover that Toon Link's proportions didn't lend themselves well to horseback riding, and while an adult version of Toon Link had already been contemplated for the original The Wind Waker, the team felt this wasn't the solution they were looking for.

At the time, series producer Eiji Aonuma had become aware of the demand for a more realistic Zelda game from the series' North American audience. Given the facts, Aonuma appealed for The Wind Waker 2 to be drastically altered and the project went on to become The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

Twilight Princess would ultimately be a very different game visually, but art director Satoru Takizawa has stated that the character profile for Midna was inherited from a goblin/devilkin character that was to be featured in a "secret project" the Zelda team was working on prior to that game. It is assumed that Takizawa was referring to The Wind Waker 2 project in his statement.

A Horror Game Starring Tingle

Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love

In 2010, following its work on Ripened Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love, Japanese game developer Vanpool began working on a horror game starring Tingle as the main character. According to Nintendo's Kensuke Tanabe, the project was cancelled "due to a variety of reasons".

While no further details have been revealed about the project, it is assumed that Tanabe would have served as the game's producer, as on the prior Tingle games, and that Vanpool founder Taro Kudo, who directed Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland, would have been involved in some capacity as well.

Vanpool would instead go on to develop Dillon's Rolling Western and its two sequels, all of which would be produced by Tanabe. Kudo would direct the first Dillon's Rolling Western game, and would eventually quit Vanpool to go independent. He would then serve as the writer and director on various Paper Mario games, and his comments during this period (2017) indicate that he was an independent developer at the time.

Note: Taro Kudo's first directing job on Paper Mario was as a member of Vanpool, which co-developed Paper Mario: Sticker Star alongside Intelligent Systems. Following the game's release, Kudo would go independent but continue to work on subsequent Paper Mario projects with Nintendo. At present, it is unclear whether Kudo is still an independent developer or not.

Non-Nintendo Projects

The Wind Waker for Game Boy Advance

The Wind Waker GBA prototype

A prototype that was created in 2003 by Ubisoft staff members Davide Soliani and Fabio Pagetti, in the hope of pitching the project to Nintendo via Ubisoft. The prototype was produced in a month and purportedly ran well on the Game Boy Advance hardware. Described as "just a dream of a couple of young devs," by Soliani, the project was never greenlit by Ubisoft or presented to Nintendo.

When asked if a "whole vertical slice" of the project was ever produced, Soliani clarified that this was not the case. The only remnant of the project today is a single screenshot that was shared by Soliani via his Twitter account.

Prior to working on the prototype, Soliani had served as a "Game Design Studio Manager" on Game Boy Advance projects such as The Mummy and Tomb Raider: The Prophecy, both of which were produced by Ubisoft. Soliani would go on to be part of the level design team at Kuju Entertainment on Battalion Wars, a Gamecube game published by Nintendo. He would later work with Nintendo more closely as the Creative Director of Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle.