Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker began development as a small tech demo starring The Legend of Zelda's Link.

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In a Game Informer interview , Captain Toad director Shinya Hiratake said that Link made the most sense for the puzzle game since he can't jump — one of the twists to the Wii U platformer. In fact, when originally pitched to Nintendo executives, Link was in the lead, not Captain Toad."We must have done too good of a job with our demo because during our presentation, Mr. [Shigeru] Miyamoto asked us how we were planning on bringing these dioramas into production," Hiratake said. "He thought we were pitching him an actual physical product design."While the tech demo's design got the green light — leading to the Captain Toad levels in Super Mario 3D World and now a full-blown title — the use of Link was denied. That meant Hiratake needed to come up with a new star for the puzzle game who couldn't jump.He recalled a Toad character in the Super Mario Galaxy games who wore a backpack and reasoned that the weight may hold him down. This idea obviously worked.For more on Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, be sure to check out IGN's recent in-depth preview with the Wii U puzzle platformer

Evan Campbell is a freelance news writer who streams games on his Twitch channel , talks about Nintendo weekly on the NF Show , and chats about movies and TV series on Twitter