The images on this page are taken from the Beta of The Legend Of Zelda 3: A Link to the Past, during the second half of 1991, a few months before its official release. The differences from the final version are in fact very small, but very interesting. Nintendo first changed the HEAD-UP DISPLAY of the game: the bar of the magic had a different shape, more similar to a test tube, the icons of object in your inventory were situated on the left of your stock (while in the complete game they are placed on top of your stock), the life meter went from being written as “+ LIFE +” to – “LIFE -“. Nintendo may have changed the symbol to avoid the presence of a symbol similar to a cross (In the 90’s Nintendo often removed religious symbols from games, in order to avoid controversy).
Beta Version:
Final Version:
In the second beta image, the main difference is the presence of 4 enemies, in place of the 2 single ones inserted in the complete game. This greatly lowered the difficulty of the stage.
In the third image, the bridge is pretty much the same, but on the right of the river we notice the lack of the trees. Instead of trees, some stones in a strange formation is found. The strange design perhaps indicated the location of the secret cove, which was removed from the final version of the game. The main difference in the beta is in minor graphic changes. We’re currently still looking through old screenshots and sprites to find more changes.
Beta Version:
Final Version:
[Original intro in italian by monokoma, translation by Sba sb3002]
You can find more info about Zelda: A Link To The Past in the Zelda Wiki!
George S has sent to us these scan from an unknow Taito SNES Game, that could have been unreleased.. we have tried to find more info on it, but no luck yet! If you know something about this, please let us know! “This scan is from an old EGM mag. The page was about upcoming SNES games. Iv tried serching for any info on it but could not fined anything.” – George
Ultraman has translated the japanese text in the first image! It says:
ENG: “Lately, it looks like that the boat that links Hanabii’s Island and Hyuu’s Island has been eaten by a giant shark in this sea”
ITA: “Di recente, sembra che la nave che collega l’isola Hanabii e l’isola Hyuu sia stata inghottita da uno squalo gigante in queste acque”
Update: thanks to Celine, that has sent to us a new scan for this game, we now know that its name was “Don”. With some more researches about Taito and Don through google, we cant still find any information about its existence, so we can speculate that it was really cancelled!
Thanks to Celine and George S for the contribution!
As the inaugural game of The Legend of Zelda series, it was first released in Japan as a launch title for the Famicom’s Disk System peripheral, a year and five months before it was released in the United States. Because the Famicom Disk System was not released outside Japan, the game was published internationally on the Nintendo Entertainment System’s cartridge format in 1987, with an internal battery to facilitate data saving. Nintendo released the game in Japan in 1994 on cartridge format for the Famicom. [Info from wikipedia]
In the beta version of Zelda 1, in the first cave the player had the option to choose between the sword or the boomerang. In the final version you can only find the sword. The image of this beta cave is still in the manual of the final game.
Thanks to one of the “Iwata Ask” interview series, we found out more info on the development of Zelda NES. The game was internally known as “Adventure” or “Adventure Mario”, as wrote by Miyamoto in some early design docs, created in 1985. Some of the items and enemies drawn in the design-doc, were never used in the final game. There’s also an early version of the world map!
The “Second Quest” was created because they had spare memory room:
Iwata: In order to fit in as many dungeons as possible given the limited memory, you were making them like you were doing a puzzle.
Nakago: Right. Tezuka-san said, “I did it!” and brought this to me. I created the data exactly in line with it, but then Tezuka-san made a mistake and only used half of the data. I said, “Tezuka-san, there’s only half here. Where did the other half go?” and he was like, “What?! Oops, I messed up…” But Miyamoto-san said it was fine just like that.
Tezuka: Heh heh heh. (laughs)
Nakago: So, using the half of the memory that was left over, we decided to create the Second Quest
Some more info on the beta and development of Zelda for the NES were shared in the book “Hyrule Historia” and translated by Glitterberri:
The first thing I thought about was a game that made use of the Disk System’s function of rewriting data so that two players could each create their own dungeons and make the other player solve them. We actually created such a game, and when I played it, I felt it was very fun playing in the dungeons themselves. So we put together a game with a series of dungeons underneath mountains distributed around Death Mountain for a single player to solve them. But we also wanted it to feature a world above, so we added forests and lakes, and so Hyrule Field took form gradually.
Now, we didn’t decide the game’s title from the very beginning either. Originally, I wanted it to be “The Legend of X,” but I couldn’t find the appropriate word for the “X.” Then, the planner to whom we assigned the PR project suggested we did a story book of the game.
Also, a prototype version of Zelda 1 was somehow leaked, and thaks to the Cutting Room Floor we can see all the little differences that were made before the game was relased:
The prologue and item list are not in the prototype.
When a candle is used in a dark room, the game does not pause while the room lights up.
It’s not possible to hit the old men in the prototype.
The Magical Sword requires 8 hearts in the prototype and 12 in the final build.
Armos Knights take much longer to come to life in the prototype. The waiting time was reduced from 128 frames to 60 frames.
Moldorm has 1 HP per segment in the prototype, but 2 in the final version. Likewise, the Blue Wizzrobe got its health buffed from 8 HP to 10 HP.
Both Wizzrobes’ beams do less damage in the prototype. The Blue Wizzrobe’s beams went from 1 Heart to 2 Hearts of damage, and the Orange Wizzrobe from 2 Hearts to 4(!) Hearts.
There are a few sprite changes in the prototype. Three of them are used in-game, while the other two are earlier designs left in the ROM.
In another interview with Miyamoto, we learn that originally Zelda was meant to have a futuristic setting:
Link’s name come from the fact that originally, the fragments of the Triforce were supposed to be electronic chips. The game was to be set in both the past and the future and as the main character would travel between both and be the link between them, they called him Link.
You can find more info about Zelda NES in the Zelda Wiki! Thanks to kek8 for the contribution!
Bio Force Ape is a cancelled action game that was in development by Seta for the NES! We’ll try to have a better description in here as soon as someone has time to write it :P In the meantime, have fun with all these screens and videos! It really looked fun, why it was not released? :(
ICO is a Puzzle/Action-Adventure game for the Playstation 2, directed by Fumito Ueda. The game’s concept began in 1997 on Playstation 1, when Ueda and a handful of other artists put together a “pilot movie” as a proof of concept using the program Lightwave 3D on a Commodore Amiga computer. The full pilot movie footage sadly no longer exists, but pieces of it can be found combined with clips from the PS1 prototype of the game in the following video. This video was released on a Japanese-only bonus DVD that acted as a pre-order bonus for copies of Shadow of the Colossus in 2005 (known as the NICO DVD, presumably a play on the title of ICO and the Japanese 二, or the number two).
However, while the pilot movie itself is lost to time, multiple test videos that Ueda made in Lightwave 3D are still preserved at the following YouTube link. Based on the content in the PS1 version trailer and Ueda’s own recounting of events, it is fairly obvious that this test footage was for his pilot movie.
Some things to note in this test footage video:
The debug (?) clips of sunlight in the castle courtyard present in the NICO bonus DVD trailer are not included in this first video ripped from Ueda’s website. Otherwise, the two PS1 videos are the same.
The test clip of the stork flying across the sea at sunset is strikingly similar to the opening shots of the PS1 video, where a bird is seen flying away from the castle while the sun sets over the ocean in the background.
The test clip of the old sofa also has an explicit connection to ICO and the NICO PS1 video:
In the PS1 video, there is a clip at 1:06 which shows the pilot movie version of Yorda walking towards an old sofa (which looks alike to the one in the UEQ test clip) and examining her tattooed arm.
In the final PS2 game, the player can save their game using stone couches where Ico and Yorda sit and rest.
As we can read on Wikipedia, in this animation Yorda was the one to have horns rather than Ico and looked rather different.
Development switched to the PlayStation 2 in late 1999, which gave the team a more powerful platform to better achieve their original goals. Elements present around this time included a storyline trying to get Yorda back to her room, rather than an all-out escape from the castle and enemies that resembled the horned warriors seen at the beginning of the final game, rather than the shadowy wraiths.
Thanks to cyborgpluviophile for the contribution to this article!
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