Summary
Cancelled games and forgotten media whip gamers up into a fervour. It’s understandable. It’s exciting when you hear rumour that your favourite studio had a cool project in the works, no matter how much or little work was done on it. Or perhaps your favourite series nearly had another entry. The potentials, the maybes, the what-could-have-beens are arguably more exciting than any real games that made it to release because you may fill in the blanks yourself, crafting hearsay into your perfect game.
ForZeldafans, this opportunity to project their fantasies onto the series came four years ago. In 2020, Metroid fansiteShineSparkersuncovered a host of concept artworks from an employee at Retro Studios. Artist Sammy Hall had posted all manner of media to his personal blog, including his work on a Mario spin-off with Boo as the protagonist and a Zelda game set after the bad ending ofOcarina of Time. It’s the latter that sparked the most interest online.
Unfortunately, Hall deleted his entire social media presence shortly after it was found, scrubbing the internet of any trace of his work. This is just a guess on my part, but it’s probably a big no-no to share top secret concept artwork on your personal blog.
However, the internet never forgets. And Hall’s concepts were intriguing. As well as a race of Rhino people and a petrified Deku Tree, his work was twisted and disturbing, taking as much inspiration from Majora’s Mask as Ocarina of Time. From the early illustrations to the more realised mixed-media creations, there’s a lot to take in.
According to internet historiansDidYouKnowGaming, Hall described the gallery as coming from a “cancelled Zelda project [we worked on from] 2005-2008… Applying different mediums (as well as combinations) to explore a wide range of styles… [It was a] fun pre-pre-pre-production origin story of the Master Sword. Within the bad ending of Ocarina of Time [we were] exploring the last male Sheik’s (after a genocidal ethnic-cleansing) journey transforming into the Master Sword. All while the Dark Gerudo are giving their 100 year birth to Ganon.”
However, there’s a slight error in this description. We can’t have a male Sheik, as Sheik is Zelda in disguise. What Hall presumably meant was the last male Sheikah. DYKG clarified that this game would have had Sheik as a protagonist, and the Sheikah who would eventually become the Master Sword would feature heavily in the game’s plot.
Any Zelda fan worth their salt will recognise the similarities to Skyward Sword’s plot here, with Fi becoming the Master Sword. Nintendo clearly recycled the idea.
However, Hall toldIGNat the time that it was unlikely any of this stuff ever made it to Nintendo. “I doubt many at Nintendo proper saw much of any of this stuff,” he explained. “I was mostly put into a room like Milton from Office Space and tasked to brainstorm between other projects.”
DYKG uncovered yet more of the story by speaking with Paul Tozour, a programmer at Retro Studios during the period it was working on the game. He describes their methods as, “Throwing whatever crap at the wall and [seeing] what sticks,” as is often the case in pre-production. The good was the art direction. The bad was the gameplay.
“It was not actually a Zelda game,” Tozour tells DYKG cynically. “At no point was it really anything like Zelda. It was an experiment gone wrong that happened to be set in the Zelda universe.”
His exaggerations mask a kernel of truth. While this was pitched to (and shot down by)Nintendo, the combat that Tozour was programming was derivative and boring. Players swing the Wii remote at wolves which jump at your static character one at a time. It’s a question of timing rather than skill.
Tozour had other ideas, he says he suggested turning the game into aShadow of the Colossus-likewhere Sheik clambers on giant monsters (the game had many fans at Retro, including Andy O’Neil and Marco Thrush who left to form Bluepoint Games, which produced the 2018 remake of the game for PS4).
Retro’s Zelda game was officially cancelled in April 2008, but its ideas have permeated the series ever since. Look at the Divine Beasts ofBreath of the Wild– a Team Ico colossus by any other name. Look at the Master Sword story – pulled straight into Skyward Sword. There was clearly mileage in Retro Studio’s idea, and the concept art alone sells that. But it didn’t work out.
Perhaps it was the focus on Wii-exclusive mechanics with the slashing whack-a-mole combat (something which Skyward Sword struggled with too) that spelled Retro’s Zelda doom? Because the ideas are clearly solid. And if Hall’s concept art is anything to go by, the vibe and Zelda-ness of this title would have been spot on. I’d love the studio to return to the idea once Metroid Prime 4 has finally been released, but it’s practically an impossibility. We’ll have to make do with relishing the game we imagine in our heads.
