Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has described how Shigeru Miyamoto originally wanted to make The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a first person game. Initially Miyamoto wanted to remove the Link character model from the screen altogether and just have the game playable as a FPS. Later into the games development Miyamoto decided against the idea, as he claims it “wasn’t interesting visually”.

“I talked with Miyamoto-san about how we should make The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo 64 system, and he asked, ‘How about making it so that Link will not show up?’,” Yoshiaki Koizumi remembers. “He wanted to make it a first-person game.”

“He wanted to make an FPS (first-person shooter),” Iwata added.

“Right. In the beginning, he had the image that you are at first walking around in first-person, and when an enemy appeared, the screen would switch, Link would appear, and the battle would unfold from a side perspective.”