





Nintendo of America



Original report, March 3: Before its retail launch in two days, Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild received the spotlight treatment in a Wednesday panel at the annual Game Developers Conference. While explaining the high-level concepts driving new ideas in the highly anticipated sequel, Nintendo developers also revealed a unique prototyping system: a fully playable 8-bit Zelda game.

Three key developers on the game (Hidemaro Fujibayashi, Satoru Takizawa, Takuhiro Dohta) kicked off the presentation by showing an apparent alternate version of the original Legend of Zelda game and asked the crowd to "study" the image, which they said would explain the various elements of its session, dubbed "Change and Constant: Breaking Conventions with Breath of the Wild." It included slight sprite tweaks to the original game, with a thinner, lighter-looking tree, a log on a river's shore, and a clear bottle-shaped icon.

The developers explained that the eventual game was built with a modified Havok physics engine that made room for "clever lies" in terms of how physics and chemistry were represented. Before building that fully 3D system, however, a basic 2D engine was used to spell out the kinds of freer experiences players can expect in Breath of the Wild. The result is the prototype, pictured above, which still allows players to push objects (for the physics-based puzzles) and combine and destroy other objects (for the chemistry-based puzzles). Developers showed this prototype in action, and it looked slick. (It would certainly pop nicely on the Nintendo Switch's bright 6.2" screen, but there was no confirmation that this prototype was specifically designed to run on the Switch.)

However, having played a lot of the new Zelda, we think it's fair to say that some of the details revealed in the comprehensive panel border on spoiler territory. That makes sense at a developer event like GDC, where game makers want to break down a game system's nuts and bolts to learn ideas for their own projects, but we won't reveal these details here. Instead, we'll use this space to plead with Nintendo. This 8-bit Zelda prototype sure looks like Super Mario Maker, complete with 3D shadows being cast by its 2D sprite objects. How about releasing Zelda Maker at some point?

Nintendo did not use the panel as an opportunity to announce such a game. Maybe the company is just waiting until Breath of the Wild fever dies down. That's what we're telling ourselves, at any rate.

Update, March 10: GDC has now posted a video of its Breath of the Wild panel in its entirety, and we have inserted it below. Again, be warned: This contains some puzzle-solving spoilers, and much of BotW's fun comes from its refreshing sense of discovery and surprise. Still, the 8-bit Zelda demo is a blast to watch. Our tip: consider watching this video on mute to see that part!

Listing image by Nintendo of America