Part I - A Legendary Evolution
In 1995 during the Shoshinkai Nintendo convention, legendary Shigeru Miyamoto gave gamers a taste of the future of gaming: Super Mario 64, the first 3-D Mario game ever made was practically finished and was available for demo plays; Mario Kart R (what we know now as Mario Kart 64), a 3-D racing game unlike any other, was previewed for the fans; and a very short clip was shown to fans of a young, brown-haired youth with a gleaming metallic sword and shield fighting against a metal knight, lightning flashing in the sky as sparks flew from the clash of their blades.
After the convention, Miyamoto
conceded that while they were working on making a Zelda title, they had
yet to really work on it beyond the short video clip they had
presented. But it was a taste of things to come, and Miyamoto
promised it would be a game unlike any other.
Unfortunately, Nintendo's gamble with the N64 was not paying off as well as they had hoped. Sticking to cartridges had hurt their relations with developers, who felt that despite the N64's far superior hardware compared to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, they were too confined in how detailed they could make their games. Indeed, Nintendo only offered cartridges that could store 8MB, 16MB, or 32MB of data, whereas Sony PlayStation's CDs could store more than 700MB. There were reasons why Nintendo didn't feel the need to upgrade, though the biggest one was that they were planning to use the N64 Disk Drive as a suitable alternative. Each disk could store more than 64MB of data, which at that time was more than enough for most video games.
But the Disk Drive was still in development, and each month it wasn't there, Nintendo lost more fans. Fortunate for them, Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64 had pulled in a record number of sales, but they needed something that could prove to developers that one could make incredibly gorgeous games for the N64 without needing huge CDs. What better game to prove this than the Legend of Zelda?
It wasn't until late 1996 that Nintendo announced that the new Legend of Zelda title was underway. It was planned to be released within three years for the N64 Disk Drive, though not much else was known at the time. There were hints that it would utilize Nintendo's online service to download new content, such as new dungeons, minigames, and items, but no promises were made at the time. It wasn't until 1997 that the screenshots began to roll in.
Unfortunately, Nintendo's gamble with the N64 was not paying off as well as they had hoped. Sticking to cartridges had hurt their relations with developers, who felt that despite the N64's far superior hardware compared to the Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation, they were too confined in how detailed they could make their games. Indeed, Nintendo only offered cartridges that could store 8MB, 16MB, or 32MB of data, whereas Sony PlayStation's CDs could store more than 700MB. There were reasons why Nintendo didn't feel the need to upgrade, though the biggest one was that they were planning to use the N64 Disk Drive as a suitable alternative. Each disk could store more than 64MB of data, which at that time was more than enough for most video games.
But the Disk Drive was still in development, and each month it wasn't there, Nintendo lost more fans. Fortunate for them, Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64 had pulled in a record number of sales, but they needed something that could prove to developers that one could make incredibly gorgeous games for the N64 without needing huge CDs. What better game to prove this than the Legend of Zelda?
It wasn't until late 1996 that Nintendo announced that the new Legend of Zelda title was underway. It was planned to be released within three years for the N64 Disk Drive, though not much else was known at the time. There were hints that it would utilize Nintendo's online service to download new content, such as new dungeons, minigames, and items, but no promises were made at the time. It wasn't until 1997 that the screenshots began to roll in.