Nintendo Leak Provides Evidence Of Big Ocarina of Time And Majora's Mask Design Changes

The big Nintendo leak has already given us enlightening new looks at the possibility of Luigi in Mario 64, a planned Pokemon MMO for the Game Boy Advance, and scary alternative looks for some of Nintendo's most recognizable characters. More information keeps surfacing from the massive asset dump, today giving new perspectives on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

The two Nintendo 64 adventure games are still some of the most highly revered in the franchise, but the leak, compiled by Switcher, seems to suggest that Majora's Mask might not have started as the direct sequel it ended up being. Instead, assets suggest it might have been additional content added to Ocarina of Time to help market the Nintendo 64DD--a disc-based hardware expansion that never made it out of Japan after being discontinued a year after launch.

Other assets point towards a boss rush mode in Ocarina of Time that was never used, which would have reduced dungeon sizes to a maximum of four rooms and funnel you towards each of the main story's most challenging foes. The mode was eventually added to the Nintendo 3DS version of the game.

The last interesting find relates to a crucial design change to Majora's Mask, where the Groundhog Day adventure was originally created with a week-long time limit as opposed to its three day cycle. The Legend of Zelda director Eiji Aonuma previously revealed this in an old installment of Iwata Asks, where he explained that the full week forced players to remember far too many NPC habits during each cycle.

"In this game the townspeople do different things each day and many different things happen, but when the timespan becomes a week, that's just too much to remember," Aonuma continued. "You can't simply remember who's where doing what on which day."

Considering Majora's Mask was created in a year, it was likely the best call too. There's bound to be more to find in the Nintendo leak, but so far, it's offered up some fascinating titbits for decades-old projects.