The Adventure of Zelda

News: Updated in 2024, Nov. Some OoT text edits, Zelda glyphs, Peahats, and the Z2 long sheet. Downfall intro.

Zelda relationships

Though now faded by the rapids of time my sweetest gaming memory is playing Zelda 1 for the first time. The game offered a living world to explore, and because I didn't understand the limitations of games back then it felt like anything could be beyond the next corner. I still remember walking straight into the first dungeon by chance – and no, I didn't actually use the guide in the manual. It was such a strange and atmospheric place to stumble into.

When people hear that I still prefer Zelda 1 over the sequels they probably figure that I'm wearing nostalgia googles. I won't deny that there's an element of nostalgia present, but the truth is that Zelda 1 is fundamentally different from its sequels (the same is true for Metroid 1). I see it more as liking a completely different type of game which just happens to look like a Zelda game. The game is certainly not without flaws, but let's leave those for another time.

Some time ago I took the time to research some of Zelda's possible precursors, like Adventure, Ultima (which seems to have been hugely influential on the RPG genre so it has to be mentioned), Dragon Slayer/Xanadu, Tower of Druaga and Hydlide. Upon playing Zelda 1 again, I got this funny next-gen feeling, because Zelda felt so polished in comparison. It felt like it was 1987 and the future!

I'm not sure what to think of Zelda 2. As a kid I felt something wasn't right about it, but I forced myself to play it anyways. It was a bit of a chore to play through - a quality which grew stronger in the games following. Talky talk, no-go-zones, errands to run, and a set path. The combat in Zelda 2 was quite enjoyable though – especially duelling the knights and skeletons.

2011 Chibi Scale Art (edited 2019, 2024)

I decided to draw some Zelda creatures because I hadn't done that in years. The Zelda games change the story, style and monster designs a lot in every game (and the manuals have their own style too), so I decided to just use the sprites from the original games as a base and ignore the newer games. I drew these roughs over the course of a few days, taking it somewhat easy due to lingering RSI (wrist) problems (thankfully mostly healed in 2024) .

A lot of the Zelda 2 monsters are sort of based on the ones in Zelda 1. Because I like Zelda 1 more I gave it override priority in the case of say, Octoroks and Moblins. In some cases I mixed and merged, but there are some confusing designs like... Scorpion = Ghoma? Fire Lizard = Zora? I don't know why the mono eye looks so similar to the... other floating eye, so I made its eye-white into teeth instead, just to separate the designs.

It would be cool with some idle behavior and equipment differences to make the creatures seem more like living characters. Zelda 2 did this a bit with the skeletons and lizard guys if I'm not mistaken. It's an aspect which I want to explore more in the future.

Not sure what to do about the slimes since they vary a bit in depictions. It's hard to best the DQ slimes...

I found notes by Miyamoto, suggesting that Zelda 2 was supposed to be a "Mario Adventure" game. Thinking about it now... there are the boomerang guys and the red hammer brother flail throwing beast... In Link's Awakening there are some enemies right out of the Marioverse. It feels like a violation, but I certainly can't say no to Chain Chomp.

I'm not happy with all of these designs, though I've edited some heavily in 2024 so I'm beginning to feel like I've "solved" some of them after many years of trying. The lore text is old.. but I'll leave it in.

The Manhandla has some vulnerable bits underneath which reflects the game mechanics. I like the eye/tube peeking out. I had a sideview presentation in mind when I made the original concept so it became a walker. Theres a slightly different top-down variant of it on the evolution sheet. Since it has 4 limbs and a spiky crabby body it could be a Tektite cousin.

Some Dodongos could be armoured. I'm reusing, or rather, morphing my established Tektite anatomy where appropriate as a way to suggest that some creatures may be related. In addition, there are some radial lifeforms like the Like-like, Peahat, Roper, Leever.

Here I was exploring poses/frames to make side-view figures more lively and contextual. I had a platforming game like Zelda 2 in mind when doing these. Added some other sketches and colouring in 2024.

Tangent: These are all "chibi" proportions by the way, unlike on later images. I often did these back in 2011. The designs will have to change a bit when targeting more realistic proportions, (smaller head and more detail/grit) but I think trying both styles can inform one about a design's strengths and weaknesses. If a more realistic design loses its "oomph" when truncated into a simple cartoon figure, then it probably doesn't have anything which makes it identifiable that makes it pop. The fault then could be the details mostly being high density nonsense (hard to truncate and caricature-ize), or the whole figure and silhouette being too generic and muted. For example, imagine if you redesigned a 40K Space Marine, taking away the chonky shoulder pads, scaling down the decal markings, making the silhouette skintight, and adding lots of panel lines and sub-plating all over... then the design would lose its mojo. The Deadspace armour goes more towards skintight, but it still has a strong theme with the sort of Roman armour banding. It doesn't matter much how many bands there are as the general visual is something which would survive reduction.

A little sheet with misc. enemy designs. The Deeler is has that Unira style face which could have one or two eyes - I opted for a single eye here to make it more alien. The Zelda 2 "Wizrobe" has a... problematic look (and perhaps generic) so I haphazardly changed it into a new kind of hattifnatt finger creature (from Moomin). Perhaps the Octorok will sort of graze up dirt with its trunk snout, like a pig, accumulating up to three dirt/rock balls. Once out of ammunition it needs to repeat the process (and will run away from the player if too close).

I like the chunky-boar-fish feel of the Zelda 1 Moblins. I called my female Link here "Meld", after Zelda. Eld is fire in Swedish. Z and A joined/averaged is M). Meld is sort of a synonym to Link. She unites/mends/welds Hyrule with a fiery spirit!

I'm thinking the Moblin design might have come from the old Hobbit cartoon movie, and/or Disney's Sleeping Beauty cartoon movie (the Goons). There's a 1999 PC game called Drakan which has nice Moblin-like reptiles so I kept those in mind too working on mine (Bonner Orks influenced me as well).

I never liked the whole Ganondorf thing. Can't he just be an evil pig? Cleaned up in 2024.

Characters (2019)

I did these with a game in mind.

One way to lessen the monotony of a game is to offer multiple playable characters. In Psycho Fox you can switch in and out at any time (using a consumable), whilst in SMB2 you select character during intermissions. In both cases, which character that you choose has more to do with play-style than solving puzzles, and I like that. In TMNT, the turtles act as lives, making you use all of them.

Three characters seems right for a Zelda game, of course. They could each embody a Triforce piece - Wisdom, Bravery, Strength. You'd start the game as any of the characters, setting out to find the others in the early game. Like in Zelda 2, you'd level them up, but they each have slightly different proficiencies (Diablo 1 style?).

Left to right: Wisdom, White Mage, Rogue - I wanted to draw something more "girly" to balance the other characters which I had already drawn. The outfit is based on traditional white-pink/purple-gold Zelda from the "newer" games (anything >Z2 is newer games to me).

Bravery, Warrior - Started out as a redesign of the old future/bikini Zelda concept art piece, but I ended up putting some more clothes on for some reason. The design is a nod to 80's hair and pauldrons (e.g. Leda's Yohko).

Strength, Brute/Barbarian/Ogre - Fuzelchomp. Influence should be obvious, but there's a little Sheik in there too.

"Hey, Fuzelchomp, how'd you lose your arm?"

*Chain Chomp's eyes widens with a jerk*

Uh... so, I added a figure and now it's a trio of four? Three princesses representing the three pieces, but, surprise twist, it's actually a 3D Tetrahedron, which has four faces. Maybe the characters are from South, West, East and North? Or perhaps from different worlds altogether. There are a bunch of fan theories about a fourth Triforce piece. Some say the 4th piece is the negative space and the origin of shadow Link.

I'm thinking people use fake Triforce gems/stones as good luck charms on their armour.

Me thinks that sabre in the Zelda 1 logo is actually Zelda's sabre. Here I'm portraying Zelda as some kind of commander, maybe somewhat influenced by the Triforce of power, hence the horned diadem. Perhaps she and her army of shining knights were betrayed by someone on their way to the final battle with Ganon (long ago). Before she could run the traitor through, it triggered something using an magical item and they were all pulled into some massive dimensional trap on the battlefield. When the player frees the army using a macguffin, we see the traitor just slain by Zelda, establishing that little or no time has passed. Like furies (or rather, a Deus ex machina) the once lost army charges into the final battle where they're sorely needed.

World building (2019)

Eventually I wanted to just do some world building, maybe for a comic or visual novel which is a better way to explore and define than getting lost thinking about possible game mechanics.

Zelda 1 dungeon elements... scale-up test. This makes the pushable Zelda 1 blocks a real obstacle (hard to grab onto the beveled edge too) and I think it creates a more "monumental" feel. I believe one of Z1's gargoyle statues is a Loftwing from SS. The tall face is from some old art work (could be an Oocca face). I like the sci-fi shutter doors in Z1. The dungeons feel very alien and not like generic castle stuff or designer's puzzles.

Maybe an Ooccan face could take the place of the more generic easter island face (artwork from Z1 manual). I don't think it should be a very human face anyways, as the dungeons are quite alien otherwise. The 6-legged Z2 tektite might be part Gohma (an "armour-eyelid") because most tektites only have 4 legs.

I wanted some Elder-things & sci-fi influence and the of Oocca (sky-folk) came to mind. They look weird, were once larger, more advanced (even god-like to some?), and the created stuff (the Hyrule landscape afaik). I often felt Z1 looked a bit like a built garden & not organic like other games. I can imagine a scene where Ooccans are in a lab working consoles and managing creatures.

Perhaps later, the work of the old gods got corrupted... the dungeons, creatures, and floor plate levitation controls. Debiru (from Devil World) is the grand-daddy of elaborate dungeons so there's a clear suspect!

If I need my own Hyrule for some reason, a parallel Hyrule, or Parule might work. There was some "quarrel" in ancient times and certain problematic Ooccans were forced into exodus. Perhaps they had some dangerous plan which was rejected. They ended up creating Parule (by stealing a lot of material), but eventually they perished, leaving the automated garden world to it's own fate.

The Ooccans we see today in Hyrule have degenerated into chicken form. Perhaps they did so on purpose to avoid being corrupted/detected/caught by something?

Generally I want to avoid plain or typical creatures/monsters, like rats and manticores. Some of the creature designs in Zelda are kinda alien looking already so I'm pushing that aspect with my design interpretations. It's especially true for the radial ones I mentioned previously. I want to use the Like-like for something special (I've already used them for my Metroid project actually). The sword spirit in Skyward has a techy feel so I might build on that... it fits with the sci-fi -> fantasy post-apocalypse theme. Could also use the clay dolls from Zelda 1's sprite sheet planning doodles. Then there's the unused bikini-sci-fi Zelda concept.

Unrelated, I like Skyward's Impa. Maybe my fav design from that game. Otherwise, I think the 3D Zeldas have too much... uh... cultural appropriation type "Big Theme Idea" at a design meeting smell – "Let's go Inca!". I don't really care for an identity/theme which feels so... applied and blatantly taken from our world. It's Cowboy time! Arabian instruments! Ooga booga here comes the cannibals hippety-hopping – watch out they're blowing darts! Rather than promoting cultural style strongly I think the identity and atmosphere of the world can be sufficiently defined by the plot theme and visual monster/antagonist designs, even when formed completely haphazardly. Unfortunately those two areas is where the games have been the least consistent.

Then there's the wacky Crash Bandicoot designs, freak-show humans, and especially immersion breaking puzzles – who'd build a dungeon like that? It just pulls me right out every time. I'd rather have dungeons which are just rooms with monsters and a few things to discover if one decides to fool around and try stuff.

Misc props. Always liked the Dungeon entries in Z1... I drew a key door but a shutter door might be more appropriate, or none. Actually a generic key door might be an nicely soft way to keep and absolute beginner out of the later dungeons where they might die and get angry/confused. The key is quite expensive to buy.

The jumpy statue is from Z3, but OoT had something too. I mixed them a bit and did my own thing. Minish Cap had some neat armos-like designs iirc. Added a few chibi figures in 2023. Should the Z2 Tektite have six legs or 4? I've talked about it elsewhere I guess.

Knight... these come in a lot of variants in Zelda 3. I've liked the sprite of the horned beetle-like blue soldier ever since I first saw it in the early press material back then.

Anyways, I had an idea for a story that's more focused on a regiment of soldiers wearing the iconic armours and stuff. Skyward sword did something like that with the tunics. It might be interesting to see a story centred more on an evenly fought war and the drama around it.

Paraphrases of some of the scenes from the Z1 art, and a few panels for the soldier idea. The aforementioned story might be set centuries after Z2, but in the Z1/2/3 map area if there's such a thing.

Wizrobe.... Wizzrobe? It's strange how this design changes over the course of the games. Maybe if a Zol absorbs a skeleton it could look like the BotW design. These... "Stal-zol" might be my bad-guys.

Not quite happy with this wizrobe design though... too much detail? Also, I'm getting strange Adeptus Mechanics (40K) vibes from it. Could be the colour and grit. Slightly related: A Canticle for Leibowitz is an interesting book about lost technology. Slightly related again: I started watching a Breath of the Wild let's-play and it seems right up my alley with the free-roaming and lost tech stuff. However, I'm still sceptic about those Crash Bandicoot type creature designs and I think I prefer smaller open worlds. I may be repeating myself here because I'm writing some of these paragraphs years apart but I'm still grumpy about the same old things.

I had some idea that some factions/creatures can share outfits (in this case the wizrobe gear.)

Just getting some faces down for practice... haven't decided on a face style at this point, but I'm thinking smaller eyes and pupils. My Gibdos has blue skin (like Mr. Bump!) so it's not just a generic mummy. Also, a manual/instruction boooklet sketch, with little scenics for each enemy.

Zelda has a few writing systems but I don't think the devs put much work into any of them (understandable as it would add a lot of friction). Here a came up with some glyphs which are a combination of various systems. The glyphs are loosely based on the ones from A Link Between Worlds... which frankly wasn't well thought out as J=T, F=R, Z=O. When the norse truncated the FUTHARK they at least combined similar sounds. My modified variant here can do the alphabet and a kind of hiragana but with the han/dakutens instead being small vowels under squished consonants. Languages would probably be era specific as the Zelda timeline stretches over many thousands of years and is full of calamities.

Story theme: The Headless Machine

Usually for these kind of projects I think about game design, but perhaps I'm more interested in world design nowadays. I had a vague initial idea to set a comic/manga story in an interim period where there is no Ganon, or Link & Zelda incarnations. This way I can explore other conflicts. Eventually I came up with a theme - The Headless Machine.

I want to divide the comic into two segments, one focusing on the normal life in a world filled with monsters (Man-vs-Nature), and the other more on a greater conflict (Man-vs-Man) and the ascension of a hero.

The theme of a Headless Machine is repeated many times. There's no Ganon so but monsters are still out there doing something. The protagonists are the blue soldiers, who still carry on with their patrols, perhaps protecting something out of tradition. The Triforce of wisdom is lost (though fragments of the other might be present).

It has to be noted that, unlike Link, regular people aren't that powerful (plus they only have one life) so it makes sense that they don't try to solo dungeons and take on bosses. I'm going to say that a random sword hit (not always a precise killing strike) is 1 heart of damage and a normal person has 1-3 hearts, mostly 1.5. With partial plate armour, damage is halved. I fudged these values from aLttP where the blue soldier deals half a heart of damage, and dies on 3 hits from Link's basic sword. The lore is a bit fuzzy on whether normal people can fully utilise the powerups and Triforces, but I'm thinking this type of story would be more about the life of a normal person who knows of these magical items only by rumour.

I have some ideas for a title besides "The Headless Machine". Zelda 1 is called ゼルダの伝説 in Japanese. The kanji 伝説 (densetsu) means "legend" but can possibly also mean "tradition" or "going along with (old) doctrine", which is sort of "headless". Hyrule is called ハイラル (high or hairaru?), but rule (as in govern) is spelled ルール... Perhaps something like アソルールの伝説 (Asorule no densetsu). Aso means simpleton/fool. Tradition of foolish rule?

I also discovered the colloquialism バカが移る (bakagautsuru), "to catch 'the stupid' (e.g. from talking to stupid people, watching mindless TV, etc.)​". Can I just smack rule on that to make it a form of government? バカが移るルール? I don't really know enough Japanese. Baka means idiot, Utsu in this context is about catching something infectious. Ga points to the subject (that stupid person). Ru makes it "to catch". Rurule at the end sounds a bit like hyrule.

Part 1 : Man vs Nature

Location sketches for patrol. Judging by the map in the encyclopedia book, it seems the (aLttP) northern river road leads roughly to the (Z1) wooden sword cave. I've removed the grass and added some ageing. My timeline is SS-OoT-(branch)-aLttP-OoS/A-Z1-Z2-(1-2 centuries)-Present. Because Zelda 1 has no large trees other than the dead ones (level-1 entry), and no grass, I think there was a disaster in this region (south-west) which killed off vegetation, though the trees have been replanted (very structurally). There is grass and trees in Z2, but even on that map the Z1 sub-region is wasteland/desert. My story might be set quite some time after Z2 though. I never liked the Goron design (or know where and when they are) but those breast'y looking cliffs just reminded me of them.

Oh... Maybe the Oocca built the dungeons (it's said they made Hyrule) and because of Z1's tile graphics, maybe the dungeons are modular in some way and were repurposed by the time my story takes place (by a rogue Oocca or automated system?). However, the Oocca are gone and now the dungeons are just running by themselves (and there's the headless theme again).

Part 2 : Man vs Man

I think I'm gonna have to add details to the items so they fit with the style, but I'll keep the colour identities. I don't quite know which items the characters might end up with though. The blue soldier sword is probably a slightly oversized short sword (like a viking sword or gladius) judging by the diminutive guard. Some of the Z1 treasures like the bow/raft/ladder probably have some extra magical properties to justify them being dungeon prizes. For example, maybe the ladder can stretch like the Monkey King's staff (only when held horizontally?). The raft might have some kind of propulsion system and be quite small out of the water. Water boots might make more sense, but a non-steerable self-propelled raft makes more sense for the Z1 map. The bow can make arrows from rupees. Then there's the bomb limit, probably explained by a bag-of-holding of some sort.

Character roughs for the story. #4 is based on a Z2 NPC and #6 is an analytic scholar who can do some or the exposition/explanation in the story. Bulldog moblin is from Z2, and the Captain from Warriors, featuring banded arms from Z1 manual. However, I'll do most moblins kinda fish-orky, like my old concepts a bit up (have to de-chibi though). I was lucky on those, placing the nipple and hump-back spikes not knowing/remembering they're on the old manual art moblin versions. I don't much like the moblins from the newer Zelda games. Actually, I only actually like the Z1 sprite... actually. Perhaps they vary by region, so the fishy ones are south-western (region of Z1 map).

Thinking about the soldier aspect of my story, I could see myself enjoying a more mindless Zelda game like Hyrule Warriors. I guess what I like about that is the focus on action rather than puzzles... which I always feel are a bit artificial in Zelda games. Afaik, Breath of the Wild's puzzle shrine tutorial dungeons were supposedly "trials", but to me it feels "off" that someone built such immense places for such a purpose.

The first Zelda game is perhaps more action oriented, with enemy toughness and map knowledge putting limits on the player. Perhaps I'd like a Zelda like Diablo 1, because it's mostly about defeating the enemies and getting neat stuff. When grinding, mapping and burning bushes is a thing you force yourself to do... I think that makes it /your/ adventure. Puzzles are someone else's adventure.

I've already mentioned that I think they based the loftwing design off the Z1 statue but here's some comparisons. Ramrock might be a dead monument. I wanted to draw a Guardian Armos but it won't fit in my story as they were built during the BotW timeline.

Here's an attempt to reconcile these Tektite designs by giving them shared but morphable/scalable physical traits. The Z2 Tektite are armoured, can shoot, have six legs... so I'm thinking they should be a Gohma-Tektite hybrid. I drew one on the Moldorm sheet but didn't include here. Six or eight legs gets too busy for my taste so I've avoided it on the related "spider" designs (Deeler/Skulltula, also seen elsewhere).

I've been trying to draw the Lynel for many years, without getting close to the sprite chunky doggo feel... but perhaps this? It has the face, the stocky legs, and it's not the typical muscle thing... feels like its own design/species. I took hooves and horns from the BotW Lynel which was based on the Z1 manual art centaur, but I felt that design is a bit generic... I want to see fantasy creatures.

This red Zelda book (Art & Artifacts) has good scans of the Zelda 1 & 2 art.

LONG AGO:

Dad, what the hell are you wearing??

...Huh? What are YOU wearing? Oh it's the same outfit wow what a
coincidence you're not embarrassed about your dad are you becau-

ARF ARF!

Not now Demise! Go out and play or something.

oukayy... *waddles out through crack in reality*

Devil World, like Clu Clu Land, has some interesting proto-zelda stuff. Gal Debiru's outfit here is a combo of Debiru's (Devil's) skimpy red speedos and the unused sci-fi Zelda concept with the vest/top. Keese in BotW are somewhat Z1 sprite accurate, because of the elongated pupil dividing the white of the eye into what can look like two eyes. Also, horn/ears. Ganon ends up looking a bit like Debiru.

2023 stuff

Been thinking some more about lineages, evolutions and remnants for my Zelda project. I only really care about Z1 and Z2 and maybe Z3 but it helps to be aware of the other stuff, like SS. I might also put Clu Clu Land and Devil World in my Zelda timeline. These Skyward Sword guys might be long dead by the time of Z2, but remembered as statues. There's some strange evolution stuff going on with the Zoras so I added an intermediate state. Changed the ancient robot to look more like the Ramrock design that I like more. Iron Knuckles in OoT may or may not be Gerudo women.

Sketching on a more realistic set of proportions for some of the designs which were previously chibi. I kinda loathe the overly wacky style that's present in so many Zelda games – it's even in the realistic-scale-Link ones. I do however prefer a simplified/stylistic texturing/detailing style over what e.g. TP had.

Hinox... looking at the Z3 art, it... could be female? Speaking of gender, Elven warriors in media are usually more homogenous than humans. 50-50 m/f warriors, generally quite slender etc. I might keep mine less distorted, again, mostly avoiding the wacky proportions for bodies and faces because it's not my jazz. Hylians are pretty much human analogs in terms of age so I guess they're mostly elves in form. The Moblin I do feel need to be kinda Zelda 1 chonky though, but I tried to make them feel like they work with the more realistic Sheikah here. Blue trunk tree!

The Z2 Zora seems more primitive, like a bestial bear. Goriya... this uses the Moblin body type and I tried to get the moustache whiskers right. The Daira looks more menacing than the Geru lizard, but is apparently less powerful. In the case of a 3D game enemies might need to be quite large to show up on screen, so I made the Geru rather tall. in BotW enemies are often massive... maybe for effect.

Fokkeru is a breasty fire phoenix. I gave it 4 wings to alien it up a bit. Wosu... is another animal-people race it appears... maybe some sort of jackal-like? I think they use the Iron Knuckle leg sprite, giving them armour which doesn't match their single hit weakness. I thought the OoT Octorok was designed for periscope sneak, but it submerges completely? They have this bony protrusion shielding/shading their eyes that I ignored here. I'd like to explain the general lack of visual consistency (creatures, maps, lore) in the Zelda games as the games being "Unreliable Narrators". The horse head knight... uh, Mazura was drawn right over the sprite. Unsure if

the Fokka should be an armoured guy or a birdman (might want to not overload the game with one-off races). Big chonky Gumas (I based mine on the "Futabasha guide artwork" where they're kinda this big red lump). Doomknocker might be an armoured Guma – it's called Hellguma in jp. I really liked the armoured skeletons in Z2 (don't like the later 3D wacky ones).

Quick cover mockup. Never liked that shield thing. Maybe a statue of the legend herself would work...? Yeah, it's straight-up the goddess statue from Skyward Sword. The Swedish PAL version of Z1 that I had didn't come with map/guide blurb on the cover – a weird thing to include with a game I think – and the box was blackbox square format (but gold). I remember eventually buying the Zelda Map (for 10 kronor?) separately from Bergsala (the distributor here). Apparently the NA almost got the usual awful pseudo-pixel art jobbie but ended up getting a tall gold box. I remember the gold cartridge being quite exciting when I got it back then. Felt very exclusive.

Megmat and Subrosian. The Oracle games are apart of the Z1&2 timeline brach I suppose. They're atmospheric, but the puzzle dungeons were not my cup of tea.

---

Moving on to a spicy topic now: Some games are built specifically for speedrunning, but I wonder if it's even possible do the reverse and add any isolation against the outside world with its hyper-accessible puzzle/quest-solution temptations, meta discussions, spoiler influences, e-sportification, and other buzz that's hard to avoid now but barely existed in the '80s. I can't be the only old fart missing the feeling of that kind of private intimacy with a game, right?

Speedrun videos are quite visible but I don't think the actual playerbase is that large, and the videos certainly don't represent how games are played by most people, but rather work as offshoot entertainment (which is fine and I watch them too when bored). But when looking for gameplay it's kind of like with computer hardware reviews where most or all reviews use video editing as a benchmark because reviewers do video editing.

Anyways, I came up with some ideas for Syobon-style thwarting game-sportification, initially just as a thought experiment and exercise, but it escalated into the equivalent of drawing a character mostly using "negative space" (the air that's not the figure). To be honest I only like a few of the ideas listed here and put them at the top.

1. Generally designing for slow playthoughs, where the joy of the game more consists of being inside the game world (a comfort zone). Not having a clear end goal or a player defined one (like DF or Rimworld) offers the greatest immunity, but might be hard to implement in a traditional Zelda game. Well, thinking about it, I don't really care about defeating Ganon again; maybe I just want to fool around in Hyrule, finding stuff, hoarding? I know people who never bothered going to the boss in Minecraft and that game would kind of works without a clear end? Actually I kinda stopped playing MC once I beat the Ender Dragon, so it somehow affected the sandbox play – the game felt "over". Perhaps it would just be fun to run around and go good deeds in a Zelda game, gradually improving people's lives, like a visual novel game or Dragon Quest Builders where you increase heart meters, but at a community scale. You're not the Hero, just a nice person, and there are more people than you could ever attend, kinda like real life, or one of those isekais where the transfer character decides to focus on mayonnaise production or something in a land of medieval misery.
2. No built-in counters like completion % or time putting pressure on the vanilla player by introducing linear performance metering and official task lists. Omniscient metering kind of breaks 4th wall a bit.
3. Random elements (e.g. item placement). This method is more about combating walkthroughs and spoilers. When I watch let's plays and speedruns, I very much prefer the randomized ones because of the element of surprise and ensuing adaptation. I also like the combination of me getting better at controls (e.g. combat, movement), leveling up my character, and utilizing that in a new "problem landscape" to improvise solutions.
4. Nondeterministic. The player comes out of doors and NPC conversations with a slight random delay and angle, making preprogrammed inputs less feasible. Barely noticeable normally, and it can help to make areas feel subtly more organic and not like "state resets" (e.g. exiting a house and getting the exact same camera sweep down and music restart).
5. To take randomness further... Remember the Z1 style unadvertised secrets? Now, if those bombable and burnable spots were randomly placed, a fresh game would feel even more like a first playthrough. Burning and bombing every spot might be a bit of a chore, but also kind of... real, right? When a game advertises a secret with e.g. a blatant marker, that just taunts me to remember it and return later and do-the-thing-with-the-thing... and that's kind of a chore and burden too. Minecraft sort of gets away with not advertising where ores are (with e.g. cracked blocks on cliff faces). As for treasures, I'm not against stuff like treasure maps to help out, as long as they're optional and the treasure is still there.
6. AFK fishing in a naturally slow area or areas where the player can just leave the game on and chill, listen to some jukebox music. Oh, what's that- you instead rushed to the boss? Hah, he's only vulnerable to being slapped by the S rare trout! Now, fishing is a divisive mechanic, but I think I'd only be bothered by non-afk (attentive) fishing myself. I did build an AFK fishing machine in MC and never fished normally. I guess an ingame unattended fishing machine could work too – Elite Frontier had mining machines that you could deploy on various planets... so something like that (deployable pet mining skeleton?). Maybe a smith who keeps making random items out of the materials they're given (and levels up), and they start making magical rings and stuff eventually. The player can periodically return to check in... getting a pleasant surprise perhaps. It would be fun to level up a community.
7. When playing games with some kind of crafting (like Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress or Dragon Quest IX) I often feel the need to interrupt play just to look up the wiki (or a shady web page / frustrating video). The urge can also arise whenever I run into a situation where I feel that I might irreparably self-sabotage. The wiki-urge could mostly be avoided by not steering towards that kind of complex game design, or by having information related to recipes, spells, builds, bestiaries and such available from a reputable go-to NPC or bulletin board in home town, perhaps at a small fee (which eventually also upgrades the NPC). "Huh – what's this mystery thing? I should ask Uncle Deckard Cain near the town well". If unidentified spells and solution clues are randomly generated then those can't easily be put in an external game guide of course. Even ores and herbs could be given names on a whim by "Gimli" or "Carl Linneaus", lamp shading why they are random each time. "Arr, back in me hometown we called this ore 'glitter lump'. We used it mainly for blade repairs"., "I've never seen this before... let's call it 'Blort-wort' *sniff* Aah – it could probably be used to increase the potency of healing potions". Something like that. Personally I don't think crafting should compete with random drops. Perhaps it's better off used just for upgrading (i.e. adding effects to Diablo-like items). It rhymes with the idea of power boosting selected NPCs. One could make the ultimate wooden club.
8. Compulsory Panties. Not only do they greatly improve the game, uhm uhum, *sagely nodding* they also make streaming and video sharing more difficult, as additional video editing / filter friction is introduced. I don't mind the game being less seen and documented in videos. I've seen eroge let's-plays and runs, but often they're done with the H turned off in the settings. Youtube is fine with violence, but nudity is kind of a big no-no. Inappropriate for a Zelda title though. Or is it.......?
9. Frequent patches and updates which changes how the game works in small and big ways. For most games this can only happen during the 3-24 month lifetime of the game though.
10. Scheduled events and content trickle-in, like daily quests and rewards in an MMO can actually be a fun offline mechanic to keep the game alive after support ends. Pokémon B/W and Dragon Quest IX had this kind of feature. If needed, events and deliveries could probably be kept fuzzy because in a magical fantasy world without a clock culture, stuff like mail, work hours, and organic regrowth is would not be done with minute precision. There can also be magical effects in play, like being able to power up when the ingame moon is out and the fengshui is right.

Now to the wild and possibly deliberately mean ideas:

• Subtly unique and personal game install seeds. This could use various samples like game-serial, MAC, Hardware polling other RNG sources, making different installs subtly "unfair" to compare, e.g. a 0.5% difference in bomb drop rates and some NPCs appearing in different locations, so nothing annoying. Can eventually be circumvented by cracks or memory edits, though that's true for everything.
• If there's an un-skippable in-game model scene (e.g. presenting a new town environment with a fly-over), there could be a random addition revealing additional bits of lore, or showing off easter eggs. That fainted guy in the alley? He was mugged and the thief/enemy scurried down a street and hid in a noticeable place? This could be a thing to look forward to during replays – an interesting novelty for casual players, but random length unskippable cutscenes (perhaps with a clue at the end) are probably annoying if you obsess over milliseconds and want a game designed around that for whatever reason.
• Speedrun detection system triggering delayed payloads (like in the sneaky Dungeon Master/Spyro/Exile copy protection). The payloads could subtly mess with the inventory, RNG and player location. This is trolling and doesn't contribute anything directly to the game.
• Rubber banding is a more natural and honest way to do the above. Mario Kart does this perhaps less honestly with enemy racers magically catching up and getting first place killer shells. In my imagined implementation the rubber banding wouldn't kick in at all during casual play though. It could instead be an Evil Otto but inverted – a difficult enemy which appears or is hard to kill for legit and interesting lore reason (a seal or curse) if the player has made it unnaturally far ahead via some unintended bug/exploit. Detection could be difficult to implement though, especially if game balance changes during the game's development.
•  Protection via obscurity (a game can be deliberately niche and homely/underground). Not a good idea if you want to earn development costs back which is usually a major concern.
• Linear segments like timed survival rooms or auto scrolling segments. I don't much like these sort of on-rails mechanics though.
• A bit contrived: Scheduled boss-room "keys". These could be made by a smith, who needs a time component plus something like generic drops, ensuring player roaming movement. This enforces a minimum time (normally unnoticeable) between (say 8) bosses (which could still be done out of order depending on key mechanic). A speedrunner could perhaps pause between waits, but that doesn't work well when streaming.
• I don't like this solution but thought I'd mention: Skip-to-the-end cheats that demotivate and mootify ("are these legal?"). Maybe also a way to make cheats hard to detect, e.g. they can be camouflaged so "no one can be trusted".
• Making the game trivial to complete quickly without cheats is another approach, though runners might set other goals to get around this (e.g. 100%, boss runs). I don't quite like this solution either.

Zelda 5 – Ocarina of Time

A lot of people who make retrospectives often talk about how groundbreaking certain console 3D adventure and shooter games were. My memory is that I had either played similar better games elsewhere earlier, or just imagined something more interesting while tinkering with 3D Construction Kit in 1991 (it was basically a sort of fully featured FPS game engine... which ran at 1 about frame per second).

N64 games in particular have seemingly aged a bit worse graphically than older flat poly games (the untextured look is a stylish aesthetic). Beside the N64 we had the playstation titles which often featured impressive texture artwork. Graphics can be updated though right? Well, often remakes of old 3D titles tend to turn into the "HD cat" meme rather than providing interesting updates. I suppose the target demographic for remakes is generally conservative, as am I – but in a different way. I would prefer to see remakes treated as a big official patch. A patch can change the game; fix bugs, lore and dialog; tidy up a few enemy designs; add a boss. All of that is kind of a big no-no with old fans.

But I don't really think the graphical resolution is all that important. My issue with sequels back then was that they didn't really push the boundaries of gameplay but continued the trend of putting the player in a role subservient to planned out obstacle courses excused by a flimsy narrative (generally some NPCs at the start and the end, feeling a bit unlikely and forced in there). An exception to all this might be Megaman Legends 1, perhaps because each story segments were so interesting (Tron Bonne really wrecked a living town and you had to pay to get it fixed). Zelda's lore very much feels like the afterthought it apparently is according to statements by Nintendo themselves. They design directly towards novel fun, but only pay the faintest of regards to what happened in the previous games or what the enemies looked like. And that's where I'm very conservative – I don't want to read a book series or watch a movie sequel where continuity is treated with such a sloppy manner.

On a tangent: I guess Warhammer 40K is a kind of inversion of the Zelda franchise. People care about the Zelda games but not so much about the lore. Many 40K fans don't even play the game.

Another tangent: Despite more powerful hardware, 3D graphics was a regression for quite some time. You'd have fewer enemies on screen, less detail (in e.g. fighting games), very short object/corpse persistence, and stuff like destructible SMB blocks were pretty much a no-go, so worlds became more immutable and static. In 1988 I thought games in the far future (of 1998) would be an accumulation of features and complexity, sort of like Dwarf Fortress, so I can't say I Ocarina of Time was something for me.

Still, the game does have some qualities that I like. Hyrule field seems like with some tweaks it could be a nice playground (miniature garden?). Hyrule Field would make as good hub area where you can do combat with enemies of various types and difficulties, or just fool around. Impa, Sheik, the Gerudo glaive gals are also interesting designs. The dungeons each have a theme and contributes to the world building, sometimes in spooky ways.... though I do like the sterile alien nature of the Zelda 1 dungeons. When Zelda 3 and Zelda 4 came around they lost that by breaking fourth wall, giving off a strong "level-designer's puzzles" odour. I'm not sure if I would call OoT's dungeons... dungeons... they're more like... relevant places? I could see the game benefitting from having some mysterious traditional Zelda 1 -type dungeons as well. In my headcanon the Oocca built these before Skyward Sword.

This got me thinking about what I'd do with Zelda 5 OoT (fantasy football style)... and I'd probably change so much I'd actually prefer a new game, keeping just the map and some of the character designs. The main appeal of such a project in two points:

1. The player could get to (re)experience the old OoT map and its most iconic locations. However, it's aged due to some disaster. Childhood memories beneath mist and earthen moss. It's pretty rare for Zelda games to revisit old and clearly identifiable locations. To keep things simple some superfluous locations could be collapsed. Some holes/caves on Hyrule field could become spooky sink holes for example. At the ending climax a series of natural disasters (super weapons, earth shifts, mud floods) could be shown altering the terrain, lampshading why future Hyrule looks a bit different. I suppose Echoes of Wisdom has planted another explanation for this though...
2. Link is missing since this is the downfall timeline. Instead the player can collect up to 7 sages (one active as the player avatar at a time, like in Pokémon). Almost any NPC can be chosen. The Pokéballs in this case could be some kind of soul gems encountered over the course of the game. This 7 character mechanic is purely for variation of play and not a puzzle element with developer appointed special characters! But maybe the soul gems do have some kind of power the corresponding sages can use. The player can have fun picking unlikely heroes.

Expanded:

• Pay attention to texture alignment and scenic storytelling. Less goofy enemies, instead looking more like... designs I like.
• Set it in the timeline where Link died and Zelda & the Seven Sages had to step in (Imprisonment War) to start the aLttP-Z1-Z2 timeline.
• Playable Sheik in more open OoT map that is high density in terms of location polish and possible player criss-cross pathing. Part of the map is aLttP, since this is the missing link between the games.
• Call it Zelda – The Missing Link. Cheesy, but he probably died (u._.)
• Not set in a lively world, contrasting OoT/Majora. A lot of the old stuff is in ruin. There is mostly enemies around and not a lot of NPCs, just like in Zelda 1. Chronologically it is set maybe 20 years after OoT, so Zelda might be 33 elf-years old.
• A mix of repurposed OoT and Zelda 1 type dungeons. The Castle was turned into a dark castle, and the towns/cities lie in ruin.
• Zelda, who is hiding from Ganon as Shiek, crafts a protective amulet after many years so she can look for clues (the missing Link?) in a "cursed forest".
• Here she finds a dead Deku tree and a bunch of lethargic faint fairies. They're sadly mute/non-responsive, as if being mere environment effects. The people they knew are perhaps all dead and Zelda would be an outsider. Link is dead so Zelda has to step up, gather the sages, etc.
• Troll game trailer showing Link as playable, suggesting Zelda just has to find Link early-game. Players try to find Link but he's indeed missing.
• The fairies are later fused to make a stronger fairy in Z1-3 style. It becomes Partner or source of healing, maybe rejuvenating the forest. Oh, wait, Majora did this already?
• Bunny hood.
• In the ending sequence an artist paints a portrait of the seven sages, but messes it up, drawing some old guys (explaining the inconsistency in the aLttP depiction iirc).

Zelda/Sheik visits the region of the Eastern Palace, but here it's still buried and inaccessible.

Peahat lifecycle concepts, bringing in the various versions.

Peahats seeding on Hyrule Field, reminiscent of huge conifer cone dandelions. The side cliffs borrow some texturally from Z3 (striations). A sinkhole where the rock hole was. Ranch is now more of a mound. Fenced cliff has collapsed. More dirt than grass?

Something old, something new, something blue – it's the TotK Gibdo in old wrappings. I had an idea that the weird TP peahats are victims of that nasty fungal parasite (or whatever parasite wasps inject into plants to make them grow their nests). They could have little spore carriers living in their cancerous beards. The Redead could have different masks I guess... kinda dark. Big breasted fairy (wow there's an idea huh?). Some other TP enemy anatomy adjustments.

The 3DS version is greatly improved, but I think I prefer the original textures on the trees. More gnarly with greater value dips suggesting shapes. 3DS version is more of a flat noisy surface, giving me "HD texture-pack cat" vibes. Ground patches also seem more natural in the original. Though the tint makes the place seem putrid. This might fit my scenario with the decline and corruption of the land. I did this line-over, picking out the details suggested in the trunks.

Redesigns of the enemies... well, just matching with other representations that I prefer, really. The Stalfos are supposedly people/NPCs who wandered into Kokiri forest and died, so they might be the skeletal remains of adventurers and not a species of creatures. The game does feature some more spooky realistic skeleton corpses so I'm not sure what's up. Footage of early versions of the game does show a more basic Stalfos. Zelda 1 Gibdos are rather chonky, and also blue and I favour Zelda 1 over all else. I tend to think of Gibdos less as standard proportioned mummies (which could be in any franchise) and more as blue monsters in wrappings. I think Stalfos should be more than just generic undeads too. It makes the designs unique to Zelda. The original Like-Like texture kinda makes the Z5 OoT one look like a Quake 1 monster and might be the look younger-than-me players prefer (i.e. Z5 was their first game).

For reference. The Z1 Keese could be interpreted as having one eye, like in BotW. It's unclear from this sprite whether the Z2 Stalfos armour covers the arm or not. I never noticed ingame!

Zelda 1 styled OoT Moblin. Mori means forest in Japanese so the name is likely a combination of mori and goblin I learned. In Zelda 1 they do hang out in the forests. This one has a huge stone club which causes a quake effect, so probably I scaled that down a bit too much. The original models for the OoT Moblins are pretty rough. Oh, I found out about the beta Stalfos and much prefer that model. I think Stalfos should glow a bit because it kinda did on an old TV, being full white.

New Sages?

The descendants of the sages in Z3 aLttP are young women (the maiden sprites), and some artwork depict their ancestors as old bearded wise men (the Z3 intro slide is a bit vague and likely some old monk's guess). The sages we meet in Z5 (OoT) are different – a Goron, Zora, etc.. Echoes of Wisdom places these races outside of the old Z3 map afaik so they're not exctinct. Anyways, what does the Z3 intro text actually say? I don't think the Z5 extro addresses it since the downfall timeline was thought of later and is basically just the "game over" text.

Zelda 3 - A Link to the Past intro: "Long ago, in the beautiful kingdom of Hyrule surrounded by mountains and forests... legends told of an omnipotent and omniscient Golden Power that resided in a hidden land. Many people aggressively sought to enter the hidden Golden Land... But no one ever returned. One day evil power began to flow from the Golden Land... So the King commanded seven wise men to seal the gate to the Land of the Golden Power. That seal should have remained for all time... But, when these events were obscured by the mists of time and became legend... A mysterious wizard known as Agahnim came to Hyrule to release the seal. He eliminated the good King of Hyrule... Through evil magic, he began to make descendants of the seven wise men vanish, one after another. And the time of destiny for Princess Zelda is drawing near."

Huh, so, just reading this with only vague Z1 and Z2 lore in mind, it sounds like the Triforce at the time of Z3 (a prequel) was mostly unknown and just seen as some mysterious power hidden away in a place hard to get to. Why are Hyrule's "surroundings" mentioned if the hidden land was a parallel world? I think they meant "a beautiful kingdom of mountains and forests". Also, it sounds like maybe someone either put the Triforce in there or it was somehow native, then and eventually a bad piggy found it and fouled up the place. Then the region was sealed up by the sages best they could. The descendants of these sages (maiden sprites) function as keys (which another baddie uses, because Ganon can't from the inside).

In Z3's ending the Triforce appears to be some kind of Dragonball wishing thing. Ganon used his wish to turn the Golden Land into the Dark World – a place to build up is power... eeeh? Not breaking out then? Wasn't he already powerful? And how long was he trapped?

In Z5 the Golden Land is called the Sacred Realm and it's the natural resting place of the Triforce. Here the Sacred Realm seemingly takes on the form of the the Triforce owner's heart... kind of automatically? Didn't Ganon use his wish to change the place up in Z3? Ganon did touch the full Triforce early in Z5's story but since he was mentally unstable it scattered (like the Dragonballs?) and only Power remained with him. Then he tried to get Wisdom and Courage back, eventually finding them within Zelda and Link (the hand tattoos gave them away?!)

In Hyrule Historia we learn about the downfall timeline that Ganondorf defeated Link and Zelda, taking back the two Triforce prices which had previously fled him. Now fully Triforced up he used the power to go demon king (the familiar pig form of Z3, Z1 & Z2). Zelda was still around though as she and the other sages managed to seal up Ganon and the Triforce in the Sacred Realm which would turn into Z3's Dark World.

Now it gets a bit confusing as there's a second sealing not too long after (decades tops I'd guess), perhaps as a way to explain the different looking sages in Z3. The old seal apparently wasn't that strong in either direction, so various raiders managed to enter the Sacred Realm where they hoped to find the Triforce but instead found Ganon and the corrupted land transformed by his dark heart. So Ganon wasn't one of the raiders as perhaps suggested by Z3. Then some presumably new king gathered seven other sages (the old men?), attempting to reinforce the seal as nasties were spilling out causing trouble. There was a destructive imprisoning war which set Hyrule and old royal bloodlines on a path of decline.

Enough time apparently passed between Z5 and Z3 to warrant the use of words like "ancient" and "legend". Perhaps in a tumultuous medieval setting without meticulous documentation and time keeping this can happen a bit quicker, but I'm guessing 333-1000 years or so. Ganon along with the full Triforce was ultimately sealed in the Sacred Realm / Dark World until Z3.

A game introducing this confusing yet pivotal timeline event would of course need an intro. Mysteries have great value in storytelling, but there's being mysterious and and then there's being messy, contradictory and confusing. Warhammer 40K has a long timeline with many mysteries, but the main points of its story are quite well defined and easy to grasp.

1. Location: Ganondorf's boss room (probably the version with the organ). After a moment of darkness we very hazily see Ganondorf's back (or the swelling back of his demon form... which doesn't need to look like the one he artificially forced in the other timeline). He disposes of a limp body by dropping it into an abyss. The view is tinted crystal pink because we see it from Zelda's perspective (establishing that she's now the main character). She's still trapped in the crystal and just coming to, perhaps having fainted earlier when the Triforce of Wisdom was taken. Ganon power-laughs and stomps off to cause trouble...
2. Zelda is depressed and sad inside the crystal, bowing her head. Some time passes. Then the six other sages suddenly arrive on the scene and free Zelda from the crystal (this was of course hard to do when Ganon was present). There's some panic because Ganon is apparently on a rampage, what to do? The sages don't have the power to deal with Ganon... or do they? Since Link dying anywhere in any game doesn't seem to spawn new timelines, something might be special about how the sages finally seal Ganon...
3. The seven head to the temple of time, attempting to borrow its power (along with Zelda's time stone power?) to seal Ganon. Ganon anticipated this or sensed it, so he shows up. The sages (with a help of a grand formation of cannon fodder clerics forming an outer circle) manage to forcefully draw the Triforce into the Sacred Realm, a desperate Ganon jumping in after. Then they seal the realm up. I like this idea of not directly attacking Ganon but instead yoinking the Triforce into the Sacred Realm because it leaves things a bit open and matches the Z3 intro better. And some people may just plot to go in and get it for themselves...
4. The sages at this point might have had limited power outside of the chamber of the sages. Regardless, the attempt cost so much power that the sages essentially dissolve, leaving only their Secret Stones behind (these stones amplify the respective sage powers somehow – TotK lore). Only Zelda survives (Secret Stone of Time?). Perhaps a bunch of towns were founded in their honour as by the time of Z3 the intro doesn't even acknowledge the names of these first-seal-attempt sages.
5. Years later, outdoors at an unknown location (maybe on that typical Zelda outlook cliff): An older Zelda stands contemplative (upper body shot, white hair due to trauma?). Soon she is interrupted by some cleric carrying news. The seal is continuing to slowly weaken and raiders have continually been breaking into the Sacred Realm due to circulating rumours about the Triforce. Additinallly, something bad is clearly happening in the Sacred Realm due to Ganon. Dark forces have slipped out and invaded here and there, and it's only a matter of time before Ganon himself might be able to push through. 5 years? 50 years? Who knows? This part matches the Z3 intro somewhat. Anyways, Zelda is needed at a meeting of the Sages and the pair walks off. As the camera pulls back we see that Zelda stood at a grave... The current king appointed new sages a while back but they're a bunch of old aristocrat farts who unfortunately don't carry great affinity with their respective stones. Zelda might be still be weak from her old injuries and is not in charge.
6. In spite of Zelda's reservations, a large army and the seven sages are brought to some location to reinforce the seal. But some shady wizrobe guy had sold them out and there's an ambush by Ganon's forces. The other six sages are killed and the Secret Stones lost. Zelda falls into a coma. The whole thing turns into a cataclysmic battle and Hyrule is eventually overrun after years of fighting.
7. 80 years later Hyrule is in ruins. The Secret Stone of Time has now fully healed Zelda but it apparently needed quite some time. Zelda awakens in a cave and the player has to figure out the situation from the local community of Hylian elves and maybe other gathered races. Zelda's sleeping body was kept a secret because she is the last sage and the hope of the future, so she does not necessarily have a strong community reputation from the get go (if needed for gameplay reasons). Now she has to go out, find the six Secret Stones, appoint some sages, finish the seal and conclude the imprisoning war. The seal now leaks so much enemies are kind of spawning everywhere (the Dark world doesn't have a single specific single entry-exit point in Z3 maybe that could explain how monsters can appear here and there.)

With Link being out of the picture being such a big thing about this series of events, a playable more mature Zelda seems very appropriate. The story mentions that a king gathered the sages... I suppose it could it be the reclusive King "Sheik" or "Adlez". She was a princess, so shouldn't she be a ruler later in some way? "The masked king". At any rate, not much is known about all this by the time of Z3 and Hyrule Historia is a bit vague.

So, let's say an older Zelda goes on a journey, finding and using "awakening stones" to make sages. I like the idea of being able to switch between characters like in C21-online, Turtles and Little Samson on the NES. Basically you could have a gimmick amulet which can contains the collected sages, and only one is out fighting at a time. Zelda functions as a type of administrative sage and "main", being located at the center (the time axis of a clock) of the hexagonal amulet I drew below. The player can swap character in and out on death or with a cooldown mechanic.

Multiple characters offers more variation in play, and it's fun to outfit them with suitable thematic treasures. I don't think I like the idea of "use this gimmick character here" puzzles though, being a bit of an anti-puzzle guy. What I think I'd like the most is being able to pick six NPC arbitrarily (canonically 6 elves are picked I guess), and they become part of the party. I like the idea of being able to power up people selected on a whim, as done in some isekai stories. This is also easier development-wise as their body and move-set and armour could be similar to Zelda's. Their base stats and skill scalers could vary, so picking certain weak characters would make the game harder if the player wants to impose self restrictions (e.g. beating Pokémon with a Rattata). Maxing out each sage should be impossible – maybe there aren't enough resources for it. As the game progresses, more and more sages can be stored in the gimmick amulet. These effectively act as extra health, probably useful in the boss battles. Downed characters are revived at a temple, at some cost.

The Secret Stones / crystals are reused in Zelda 2, where Link places them into the statues of the six palaces. It's to bringing down some protective barrier around the final palace were the Triforce of courage awaits. Ganon is "dead" at this point but his minions still lurk about, out for Link's blood. Z1 Link didn't have the Triforce of Courage, but found the 8 pieces of the Triforce of Wisdom and then took Ganon's Triforce of Power.

There's also the question of princess Zelda the First, and when she occurred. We learn in Z2 that several generations of kings (a peaceful period?) happened after the "crushing" of Ganon (who first appeared in OoT, but wasn't crushed if Link failed). Generations perhaps imply a few hundred years. Is this after Zelda 3 and the Oracle games? Seems so according to Historia. Consistently naming princesses Zelda was not tradition until Zelda the First was put to sleep. Zelda however was likely a name used by people in general (including the goddess Zeldas). The string of Zeldas that followed after Zelda the First were not then necessarily goddess Zelda incarnations, but also random princesses keeping up the tradition. So anyways, Zelda the First was seemingly not OoT Zelda, or SS Zelda.

Map Stuff

I'm a fan of the city hub in the first Megaman Legends so I'd like to see a similar setup. With too many remote towns the community cohesion is sort of diluted and lost. The town would need to be a sort of safe haven – out of the way since Ganon's forces are on the hunt. A town hidden in a cave might work (it foreshadows what Zelda 1 did things). The hub is a place for the player to get know a variety of NPCs and maybe recruit some. I don't think the recruitable NPCs should be vital to the plot but they should still be interesting/relevant enough warrant interaction.

I have never liked quests about "catching 20 geese in under 1 minute to get the only shovel in Hyrule, otherwise it's doomed". Like I have mentioned earlier, I think helping people should sort of be the reward, and you find key items elsewhere sort of... haphazardly. It seems a bit less likely that a small community trying to survive the end of the world would get greedy about some key item they own, (or run a key item gameshow). A smaller community would probably engage in communal trade and sharing property, whereas Moblins (and eccentrics) would be the ones running shops here and there as they could part of some sort of larger black market.

As for my map solution with overlaps... One can either pretend that each game is not literal but instead an abstract representation of places – the "unreliable narrator" concept – or I can try to partly overlap the maps. Since many hundred of years must have passed between some of the games, the softer malleable parts of the landscape might have changed a bit though (could also be the Tris/Null from Echoes of Wisdom I guess).

The Z3 Eastern Palace is buried but could later have been excavated. The graveyard area was expanded after Ganon won due to the amount of people that died, but might have been used and reshaped several times after that too, before Z1's six screen arrangement (which might be just a small part of it). Somehow the Magical Sword was buried there (a hero's grave?). With my map arrangement, Death mountain becomes a stretch of mountains in the north. But it's actually in the south-west in the Zelda 2 map, which by the way Hyrule Historia seemingly suggests is not all of Hyrule but a bunch of continents.

After the addition of 2024's Echoes of Wisdom my (non canonical) map overlap makes a bit less sense since that game expanded the aLttP map east beyond the palace grounds. Afaik that game is set right before Z2 and many centuries might have passed.

The Z5 OoT Stalfos should perhaps actually look like the Z2 Palace Guards/Soldiers in rusted armour, but horns instead of the plume. Z5 Dodongo have a sort of amphibian looking age stage. Kodongo... I suspect the name refers to a child (子 = ko) version. Related, there's an Ultraman monster/toy called Dodongo, but it looks like Aquamentus... and the child version of that is refered to as Kodongo. Anyways, the Helmasaurs could be a species related to the Dodongos. The Leevers in both Z3 aLttP and Z5 OoT have some sort of leafs around the mouth, which might be curled back lips. Hardhat could be a Tektite offshoot. I'm tempted to draw a tree of life with all the different relations. However, in modern Zelda canon the monsters are actually magical evil entities that materialise and dematerialise with poofs so a biological approach might not fit.

The Temple of Time area supposedly turned into the forest where the Master Sword is later found in Z3, but when you overlay the maps as suggested by Historia, the locations don't match. Perhaps the entire pedestal was dug up and moved. Regardless, Zelda can't use it so it wouldn't be in this game. According to Historia, Link died/lost during the Ganon fight... but for my purposes it's left unclear when. According to a fan theory, the end of Z2 is the original timeline, and then Zelda the First (the sleepy) used the Triforce to reverse time to thwart Ganon (or just inform then-Zelda), but just ends up creating the other two timelines.

In my lore the Z1 dungeons were built in ancient times, and were guarded by Beamos pillars. By the time of Z1 however, these are no longer functional and link can waltz right in. OoT beamos is kinda strange. Z3 one is neat.

Eyegore's appearance varies a bit... it might be some kind of Armos, so I used Armos colours here. Collectible bugs?

More Intro Stuff

Camera dollies across an expanded graveyard (with cursed stones erected by malicious forces we later learn). This shows that many people died.

Ah, a village in ruin. Hyrule is in trouble then?

Hyrule field shows traces of a large battle.

Some figures sneaking across the plain, then into a hidden cave on the western side.

We follow the figures as they move into the safe haven (hub town). Here they meet Zelda, who's got a limp or came out of a coma. No one was spared during this conflict. The scout party has located some important item which starts the story and sets Zelda/Sheik on her journey.

Ancient / Elder Stuff

The Elder Gods (グルッピー & タマゴン).

Evolution ideas, WIP. The Unira from CluCluLand are quite similar to the Octorok and Digdogger (and the Zoomer from Metroid). The tubular Like-Like is kind of eldritch in general. Timeline idea:

• 4.6 MYA: The Unira and Barrelmen both establish underwater colonies in the shallow seas of a primitive world. Some sort of conflict breaks out and a mind plague is let loose, causing insanity and mindlessness. The descendant remnants of the two races branch out, forming the foundation of new life on the planet, displacing the nearly all of the original life in the process.
• 3.8 MYA: 800.000 years later, an Ooccan research ship arrives, but its crew falls victim to the still ongoing plague.
• 60 KYA: An advanced younger race of humanoids arrive on three research ships to investigate the mysterious decline of the Ancient/Elder races. At this point, erosion and geological activity has destroyed much of the evidence, but after raising large portions of the ocean floor to the surface, an Ooccan stasis vault is discovered. The younger race (apparently immune to the effects of the plague) help the afflicted and rapidly deteriorating Ooccans released from the vault to take on a safer humanoid form. Together the two races build research facilities and undertake various terraforming projects. The three research ships eventually leave, but a small autonomous colony is left behind (along with some livestock).
• 55 KYA: Devil family's puppy emerges, destroying the colony and causing demonic chaos. The colonists regress to barbarism. Without technology such as the mind harness and genetic therapy, the Ooccans begin to deteriorate, though they do ultimately manage to retain a fraction of their former wits by taking on a new stable form and secluding to the skies.
• 15~0 KYA: SS   ------   OoT   --(split)--   Z3&LA, OoA/S, EoW, Z1&Z2

What's Link's powerlevel?

I saw a video discussing which Link is the most powerful, and I think the Zelda 2 endgame Link is a strong contender. Zelda 1 Link is already quite powerful, being able to deal with lots of enemies swarming and attacking all at once. Some of the bosses go down really fast too. Other Links have to wait for openings and the battles really drag out. Z1 Link can also shoot sword beams right from the start. In the second game he acquires several powerful spells. Fairy can for example be used to completely circumvent most obstacles. According to the Encyclopaedia, Link actually starts Z2 with the Magical Sword, which might mean that he wasn't "reset", like e.g. Samus in Metroid. At his final attack level of 8, he does 12x the damage, which is multiplied by 4x by the magical sword, becoming 48x! It's not unreasonable that he grows since he's 12 in Z1 and 16+ in Z2 iirc.

The four bars of health in Z2 might then represent Link's full 16 hearts, and each collectible heart container then equates to 4 hearts each because they're so rare in Z2 (this was before the heart piece nonsense started). This would give him 32 hearts. The Life level stat in Z2 works more like a Defence stat, with about a 22% max reduction. If Link kept his old red ring, and casts Shield, then he only takes 2.75% damage at Life level 8. This equates to 1163.6 unprotected hearts of health (he starts with three in Zelda 1). He also kept the Magical Shield, and gets Reflect on top of that.

However, some items were apparently lost between the games, or needed to be upgraded. It's unclear how Link made it up to the starting location in Z2 (probably not through the death-mountain cave system). The old Raft perhaps wasn't ocean worthy, the Magical Key could be regional, and the flute might differ from the recorder. The Candle however is harder to explain, but maybe he left it behind in lesser Hyrule. The Magical Rod, Bow and Boomerang are nowhere to be seen in Z2 though enemies can wield similar weapons. Oh, right, I almost forgot – I guess Link found the Triforce of Power and Wisdom at the end of Z1 (not sure what happened to that rescued Zelda). It appears the Master Sword and other legendary armaments went missing before these games though, so that's a negative.

Size of lesser Hyrule?

How big is lesser Hyrule? It's 16 x 8 screens, 16 x 11 tiles each.

x1 = 256 x 88 Meters (possibly 100 due to perspective)
   About game scale, scaling by characters.

x5 = 1280 x 440 Meters 
   This is perhaps starting to feel right,
   scaling more by tree size. Walking all
   16 screens ought to be over a kilometer.
   Might be the size with aLttP graphics.

x10 = 2.56 x 0.88 KM

x100 = 25.6 x 8.8 KM
   This makes more sense in terms of it being
   a minor region or a county, but still too
   small to be a country.

Older art

Some old isometric test with depreciated designs.

Even older 2004+ art for reference. Aquamentus is alright but this is mostly junk.

Game thoughts (older text)

In a top down game like Zelda 1 you have symmetry to the up-down and left-right directions, enabling you to walk around stuff. Manoeuvring in Zelda 1 is pretty clumsy. The movement is locked onto a grid of sorts, perhaps a legacy from maze games like Druaga. In a sidescroller like Zelda 2 you have gravity linked to the up-down axis. You can still explore a 2D plane (world), but you have the added benefits of deeper combat and jumping puzzles.

The story in the Zelda games never sat well with me, so I decided to rewrite it. Hyrule almost has a garden-like terrain in the first game, and there are these strange rocks and statues standing around in formations. The dungeons feel technological and otherworldly with their smooth clean walls, though that was changed in BS Zelda and later games. I hadn't heard of Lovecraft in the 80's, but that's sort of the feel that I got. What strange ancient race had built the dungeons, and perhaps also the overworld? The Great Race of Yith? The Elder things? The... Like-Likes (whom have since then regressed to a more primitive state)? That's something I'd like to play around with.

I always wanted to make art for an isometric "topdown" version of Zelda 1, but since this turned into a Zelda 2 project, it'd have to be a sidescroller with a topdown worldmap. I wonder how that would play if combined with Roguelike? It's sort of unusual to see, and I like unusual.

So, a random world map, with palaces/dungeons, towns and NPCs who generate quests (e.g. a fetch quest NPC would create a cave/dungeon on the world map and toss a kidnapped kid into it). The dungeons should probably be generated from finished rooms though, to ensure enemy placement is fun and suitably challenging.

The weapons, armour, spells and items could be random, and before you drink that potion, you might want to identify it...

And then there's permadeath. I don't like it, but it does fix some problems. For example, without anything at stake, it sometimes feels like the opposition put up by the game is futile (especially if one spawns close to the point of death). If too much progress or XP is lost, then it's frustrating as a player to redo the same thing again.

But wait, isn't permadeath even more frustrating since you have to start over from the beginning? Perhaps not, since you won't have to replay the same area over and over. It does take a certain mentality to play permadeath games though, as you have to accept that you may not ever finish the game (*eyeballs Nethack*). It's of course harder to build a solid, story based universe when doing random generation too, so this game would cater to a different demographic.

Alternatively, a well crafted, Z2 style game with Z1 openness would work for me too. Could be a hybrid, similar to how you get different bosses every time you play Diablo 1.

And now some random sprites

The GBC (Capcom) Zelda games were pretty nice. I liked seeing the like-likes looking close to their old selves, but some of the other sprites looked a bit odd. I decided to see if I could make them look more like the Zelda 1 originals, but with black lines... i.e. one color less than the NES versions, because there's a 4 (3) color limit.

The slime has stripes in the manual so I added that to make the design more unique. A lot of games have slimes, and recently it has been popular to suggest transparency by doing an ellipsoid imprint of the ground at the bottom... but I'm thinking the Zelda slimes are more opaque. I like to omit some of the outlines, especially where the ground plane connects to the body.

A black bottom line (under feet, or at the base of a mountain) can make the sprite look like it hovers a little. With only 16 vertical pixels, every pixel is valuable so I'd rather use it for something else. Besides, here I'm using the blacks to create a chiaroscuro type of separation. It's a bit of a trap to start consistently black-lining every detail anyways.

Every time I try to do assets for a Z1 game I run into a dead end - I do not know how to tackle the perspective issues. Z1 had no problems because the graphics were quite abstract, topdown and sideview at the same time. My Octorok here really doesn't like being flipped upside-down... Also, 3 colors + trans per sprite is too tight. I much prefer my Famicube restrictions, which is 4 palettes of 7+1 colors as it stays in the NES era feel and I like the graphical clarity it promotes. Never really liked the SNES era, too much pillow shading and fuzzy AA with all of the extra colors.

Zelda 2 sprites edited to look more like Z1's as I prefer the look of those. Could possibly be patched into game, but I can't be arsed to do a full, animated set.

Also, the map data structure in Z2 makes it difficult to modify. If I could, I'd do something like this, with Z1-style dirt ground and trees. It'd could be a procedural, post-RLE unpack manoeuvre of some sort, which means new ASM. The other approach is dumping RLE for raw data, which is also extra ASM.

The story in the case of this Z2 map could be set in another universe where Link was killed by Ganon's goons, thus resurrecting Ganon (I think they needed his blood). Zelda awakes, covered by cobwebs. Civilisation fell long ago... centuries? People have abandoned their cities and hidden in caves. The many mines, ruined cities and cemeteries, some sunken, suggest that people were worked to death. What was Ganon looking for, and where is he now? It's now up to Zelda to find Ganon and free Link's soul.

Zelda 1 had an unreal feel to it, with many strange monsters and no signs of ordinary life or earthly culture themes. The desolation, with old people hiding in caves suggested that something had gone down, perhaps long ago. The bustling towns in 2&3 undermined my narrative, though Z2 still had an exotic feel to with with the Cambrian(?) monster designs.

The Z3 monster designs come off as kind of knee-jerk goofy and haphazard. I also thought that the Arabian(?) influence felt out of place. This kind of culture theme'ing is common in many of the newer Zeldas and screams "design meeting". Too derivative and earthly - I shout as I jump hysterically in my hermit pit, beard bobbing, clutching a dirty Zelda 1 cartridge with a long dead battery.

So I was thinking... how would Z3 look with Z1&2 enemies? Here's my experiment. I knew the SNES could do 16 colours per sprite, but was surprised to find much less used. Supposedly the devs wanted to save ROM space by storing the graphics in 8 colours instead, meaning only 4-7 colours usable per sprite commonly. That's generally enough to build a proper (colourful) figure in many cases (3 colours like on the NES is too harsh). I think the original terrain is quite a bit better than the original sprites.

Zelda 1 3rd quest ideas

BotW has a large world with items that break often... I think the idea is to make the player use a variety of items. Another method to achieve that goal is using a more compact world like in Zelda 1, and implement random treasures. In this case, it is each (short-ish) "run" of the game which offers variation.

Zelda 1 items sort of come in two categories: "Key items" like the raft and ladder which are needed for progression. There are so few of these that I think they could perhaps be static/non-random. Then there are the "buffing" items like swords, rod, blue ring, shield, hearts, bomb bag, etc. I think these could be divided into three tiers and randomized within.

• 1-3: Brown boomerang, Bow.
• 4-6: Blue boomerang, Red candle.
• 7-9: Rod, Magic book, Almighty key, Silver arrow (more damage on this?), Red ring.

That's rather too few, so I'd take some heart containers from the overworld and move them into the dungeons, and also use the bomb bags as treasures, and maybe big rupees. But that's still not enough, so I'd invent a few buffing items of my own:

• Amulet which shortens stun (from skull "Bubble") period.
• Potion which cures the permanent stun (from the second quest bubbles).
• Steel shield which can't be eaten. Can deflect falling boulders.
• Glove which allows sword shooting if =< 3 hearts from full health.
• Rings like in the Capcom games, e.g. boosting pickups from rupees, hearts, etc. Tons of ideas there which would work in Z1.
• Lantern ring which lights up rooms automatically.
• New charges for the rod (Zora blast? Spread? Teleport?).
• Discovery ring or mallet. Tap stuff to get a sound cue indicating a bombable secret.

Only a few of these would be available each run, so perhaps one run would have strong magic items and a weak sword. This to avoid Link getting overpowered. Some bosses/enemies can only be hurt by certain things so... if there's no silver arrow in a game, then maybe a special blast from the rod or a super bomb (holy bomb of Antioch?) could do the same job.

The store items would never appear in dungeons as they are more mundane. I'd tone down the appearances of money making shops.

I'd move the triforce entry check in level-9 closer to Ganon so that dungeon can be entered and raided earlier for treasures (perhaps instead deploying a very nasty early room to deter/filter intruders). Or remove the check completely and plop in an NPC which warns that if the Triforce of Wisdom is not fully assembled then Ganon will be tougher to deal with. I'm not really a fan of a difficulty settings changing stuff like enemy hitpoints... normally Ganon needs 16, 8, or 4 hits with the respective swords to appear in the red vulnerable state. Without the full Triforce of Wisdom, perhaps Link's attack has a chance of just passing right through Ganon? This would prevent a few stun-lock tricks which trivialises the Ganon fight no matter the hitpoint count.

The Peahats and Zoras are more difficult to deal with early on in the game, and this might be good as it offers some variation to how enemies are approached. However, I think it could be neat if the bow could be used to shoot down flying Peahats. It would make it more useful. Flying Peahats could perhaps even have a shadow when flying, done by alternating the shadow and Peahat sprite for a transparency and altitude effect. To differentiate the bow from the rod, the rod could be changed so it can't hurt Peahats at all because it goes along the ground.

Another idea is playable Linkle (I called my version "Meld" earlier). She starts with an Almighty/universal compass and a bow/crossbow rather than sword (though a sword might still be available somewhere). To reflect her missing sense of direction there's no self-dot on the maps. The bow would have to be cheap to shoot... so maybe there's a ring reducing arrow cost (slowly giving 1 rupee/shot if there's 0?). I just realised it's probably possible to not grab the sword and get locked in with enemies in self-locking dungeon room. I guess it would be neat if you could set the weapon/use items to either B or A, but most of the time you'd like to have the sword available anyways.

The triforce shards ought to be arranged so level 7 and 8 forms a triangular void, as it looks a bit neater when the levels are completed in order.

     /1|2\

 /3|5\7|8/6|4\

Statue experiments.

Link sprite redo.

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Byline: Niklas Jansson, 2004-2011-2012-2019-2024