Legend of Zelda gigaleak reveals Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask cut content
Boss rush dungeon? Archery mini-game? More!
Last weekend's so-called gigaleak of Nintendo data continues to turn up treasure - and now fans have been poring over cut content from N64 Legend of Zelda games Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.
As rounded up by Switcher, the leaked source code for Ocarina of Time apparently includes a set of unused dungeon rooms which appear to be from a kind of boss rush mode.
For the last 24 hours, we've made massive progress.
— Dianya 🏳️🌈 ⟦ Catgirl Enjoyer ⟧ (@Psi_Hate) July 27, 2020
Yesterday, I found what I interpret as boss rush dungeon scenes in OoT's source. These scenes are micro-dungeons that have between 2-4 rooms, each ending with the boss chamber. Files have DD in their names, perhaps 64DD tests? pic.twitter.com/ecRPDw1qvi
The code also includes bits of map which ended up in Majora's Mask, labelled as "64DD". This likely refers to Ocarina's planned expansion for Nintendo's disc-based 64DD expansion unit, which only released in Japan and was scrapped after a year.
Early versions of the spider houses and beneath the well/redead rooms from Majoras Mask are present in the DD files found by @SageOfMirrors and @xdanieldzd as well.
— AeroArtwork✰ (@AeroArtwork) July 26, 2020
Likely meaning they were initially made for MasterQuest/DD URA EXPANSION but then used for MM later on. pic.twitter.com/6eGjtIjv0n
Scrapped enemies have also been unearthed, including what looks like an unused Iron Knuckle:
Another incredible long-lost enemy from Ocarina of Time's development is revealed in 7/25's leak! This mysterious knight (iron knuckle?) has been found! pic.twitter.com/vd8yDi6cVY
— MrTalida (@MrTalida) July 26, 2020
Moving onto Majora's Mask, fans have found the first in-game evidence of its story originally having been set over a week instead of three days.
This is something Zelda head honcho Eiji Aonuma previously revealed to the late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata in one of the latter's legendary Iwata Asks interviews.
"At first, it was one week," Aonuma revealed at the time. "But when you returned to the first day it was like 'Do I have to go through an entire week again...', so we thought three days would be just right.
"In this game the townspeople do different things each day and many different things happen, but when the timespan becomes a week, that's just too much to remember. You can't simply remember who's where doing what on which day.
"We felt it would be best to make it a three-step process, and we compressed all sorts of things we had planned for over a week into three days."
Elsewhere, a scrapped archery game set in the Great Bay has been discovered. The series often features these, although this one did not make the final game:
https://twitter.com/zel640/status/1287613670495838208Yesterday, the Nintendo gigaleak revealed our first look at Luigi in Super Mario 64 after nearly 25 years of fans searching. It feels like there's plenty more development secrets to come.