Our friends over at GlitterBerri have recently put together an article discussing how Ura Zelda became Majora’s Mask. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, Ura Zelda was a game being designed for the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive expansion disk of the Nintendo 64. Put simply, it was a second quest of sorts for Ocarina of Time. Things got quite blurry in its development cycle as the planned Nintendo 64 Disk Drive never made its way outside of Japan.
So what happened with Ura Zelda? Part of Ura Zelda led to what would become known as Ocarina of Time: Master Quest, while another part was shifted towards Majora’s Mask. In Glitter Berri’s recent article, she picks apart some Iwata Asks articles, discussing this topic in more detail. So How did Ura Zelda become Majora’s Mask? Jump inside to find more details.
Aonuma: Anyway, we’d already gone to the trouble of making 3D models for Ocarina of Time, so we asked ourselves whether we could create a new experience by changing up the scenario and adding a new sense of drama.
Iwata: That’s when you decided to make Majora’s Mask, right?
Aonuma: No, we didn’t begin work on Majora’s Mask all of a sudden. At first, the idea was to make Ura Zelda.
Iwata: Ura Zelda was being developed on the 64DD, and was ultimately released on a limited-edition compilation disk that came with pre-orders of The Wind Waker, no?
Aonuma: Ultimately, It was other staff that ended up working on Ura Zelda, but for me, the person in charge of the dungeon design, making alternate versions of the game’s dungeons didn’t seem very progressive. I didn’t think we’d be able to call the finished result a new Zelda game. However, I couldn’t just say no to the idea of making a new one. To that end, I made a bargain with Miyamoto: if I could make a new Zelda game within a year, we wouldn’t have to do Ura Zelda.
GlitterBerri continued here research on the topic and found a couple of other interviews discussing Ura Zelda. To check out the full context of the interview be sure to check the article at her website.
So what are your thoughts on Ura Zelda? Are you satisfied with what we ended up getting with Master Quest? Some folks think there is more to Ura Zelda that we don’t really know of, but it was scrapped as it was never completed. What else would you have liked to come out of the project. Feel free to post your thoughts in the comments below.