User:GlitterBerri/Prerelease:The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

=Introduction=

As the flagship Zelda title for the Nintendo 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is famous for its drawn-out, multiple year development period. This article will take you through a month-by-month analysis of its design process, giving an overview of all the information that has ever been publicly released.

=The Shoshinkai Tech Demo=

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The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time first premiered at Spaceworld, a video game trade show hosted by Nintendo, in December, 1995. At that time, the game was known only as Zelda 64. The trailer's debut marked the first time that Link had appeared in 3D. The month after the trailer's release, Nintendo Power published a short article with a description and some notes on the state of the game.

The video demo of The Legend of Zelda 64 surprised everyone at Shoshinkai. The surprise came not from the quality of the animation, which was excellent, but from the announcement that The Legend of Zelda 64 would be one of the first disk-based games for the Nintendo 64.

No release date was given for Zelda 64, but the game will be shown at next year’s Shoshinkai along with the 64DD disk drive accessory.

At this point, Zelda exists only as a few animation files, but all of that will change once development on Super Mario 64 is completed. At that time, Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of previous Zelda games, and Takashi Tezuka (of Yoshi’s Island fame) will step into the director’s and producer’s chairs.

Nintendo’s creative giants wouldn’t comment specifically on how the 64DD would be used in Zelda, but they mentioned several disk uses in general terms, including the ability to save many games and customize many game elements.

For now, all we can do is admire the graphics of the demo. In the ten seconds or so of video footage, Link battles a knight in a shiny, metal suit of armour. Both Link and the knight slash at each other with their swords, and the camera moves around the fuelers. In the end, Link follows a feint with a roundhouse swing of his mighty, shining sword.

It would be nearly a year before the game would be seen again, this time in a trailer that premiered at Shoshinkai.

=The Eight Phases of Development=

Screenshots and trailers leaked prior to the release of the game showed four different interface configurations, which are used here to demarcate the primary periods of the game’s development.

A + B - October 1996 to April 1997

A + C - May 1997 to July 1997

Early Sword on A - August 1997 to September 1997

Sword on A (Part 1) - October 1997 to December 1997

Sword on A (Part 2) - January 1998 to March 1998

Sword on A (Part 3) - April 1998 to June 1998

Sword on A (Part 4) - July 1998 to August 1998

Sword on B - September 1998 to November 1998.