- development was rough, as the dev team was split to work on Wii U projects
- Miyamoto is very impressed with the game, telling Iwata that 'This Zelda game is good!'
- Aonuma mentioned that Miyamoto never told the dev team those comments!
- the project first was discussed after completion of Spirit Tracks
- there were 3 people on the dev team for a whole year
- this is when the idea for the wall-merge mechanic came up
- the original idea wasn't to follow A Link to the Past
- Miyamoto wasn't keen on the game idea at first
- Miyamoto said it felt like an idea that was 20 years old, but not as a compliment
- Shikata came up with the wall-merge idea
- Shikata was extremely determined to include this idea in the game
- a prototype for the idea was thrown together in just one day
- the prototype paved the way for all sorts of unique gameplay/puzzle ideas
- as already discussed, the prototype used an overhead angle view and Spirit Tracks' Link
- the team then disbanded to work on Wii U games, with Shikata fearing the project would never see the light of day
- the departing dev team members left notes to tell other devs how great the idea was
- Aonuma wanted to release a new 3DS Zelda by 2013's end to make fans happy
- Aonuma quietly revived work on A Link Between Worlds without the core dev team
- Nov. 2011 is when development really started, which was just after Skyward Sword's dev came to an end
- Tominaga put together some ideas for a dungeon with the wall mechanic
- he was so confident in the idea that he told Miyamoto he could make 50 more dungeons that used the mechanic
- Miyamoto wasn't impressed again, but finally offered a hint to base the game off of A Link to the Past
- Aonuma also had the same suggestion
- the idea to switch the camera to a side-view from the overhead view when in wall-merge mode came earlier in development
- the team was skeptical of taking a remake approach with A Link to the Past
- Aonuma decided to show what he meant by doing a prototype in 3 days
- Miyamoto saw all these ideas together and finally gave the game the go-ahead
- the top-down view took a lot of trial and eror
- the dev team faked the look by angling everything in the game to make it look intereting from above
- Mouri wanted to do the game in 60fps and insisted on it
- they decided at the true start of the project to do 60fps
- the team believes this makes for much smoother music
- the item touch screen management was something Aonuma wanted to do with Ocarina of Time 3D
- the fact that that game was 30FPS meant they couldn't implement that idea
- the team used ideas of height to factor in 3D visuals
- development of the Tower of Hera took a long time
- the team wanted to really show off the 3D visuals with this dungeon
- the dev team felt the idea of hitting springs with hammers to launch up floors in the dungeon was really something special
- the design of dungeons also allowed for more activity to take place outside dungeon walls
- Iwata was originally unsure of the idea, but was convinced when he saw the E3 demo
- the topic of how Link looked when merged with walls was a big topic of discussion
- the team wanted to express that Link was being painted on walls, rather than entering them
- this merging idea gave birth to Yuga, who was used as an explanation as to how Link could accomplish this
- Takahashi-san drew an avant-garde Link at first
- this idea was tossed aside when the team took a more mural approach
- Link could originally jump when wall-merged, but the team took that out to keep from confusing gamers
- There was talk of naming the game The New Legend of Zelda
- the team was afraid that the name would have people thinking the game was a remake
- a game concept was rethinking Zelda conventions, but it wasn't always like that
- Shikata hears from friends that play Zelda and get stuck, which he feels is a big problem for the series
- Shikata worried about allowing players to tackle dungeons in any order
- this also caused problems during development
- talk first went to discussing the ability to buy all sorts of items at the shop
- Aonuma says a personal hobby lead to the rental/purchase system
- the team wanted players to rent items cheap, but want to keep collecting rupees to buy items outright
- the team mulled over ideas for how rentals should work, even thinking that items might have to be returned the next day in-game
- the system they came up with adds tension, because you don't want to lose your rental items when fighting
- the team also wanted to make it very easy for players to get around the game world, which lead to warps/portals
- the team worked very hard on implementing the contrasting worlds with this game
- you can use play coins to pay a ghost for in-game hints
- the team really hopes new players come in with the series' changes
- some younger devs were very taken aback by changes this game made to the Zelda series, wondering if Nintendo could actually get away with these ideas
- there are baseball and cucco mini-games
- the cucco mini-game is so tough in advanced mode that no one in the Mario Club test team could beat it