If you are not immediately sold on the art style in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind WakerDon’t feel too bad. A new ‘Do you know how to play games?‘translation of a Nintendo Dream magazine from the mid-2000s revealed how Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t a fan of Toon Link or the rest of Wind Waker’s cel and anime-like aesthetic.
According to Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma, who was then the director of Wind Waker, Miyamoto struggled to get rid of the idea of a realistic art style, until the end of the game’s development cycle. And when he first saw Link in Wind Waker, he seemed to “cringe”, claiming it wouldn’t sell.
Here’s Aonuma’s side of the story – revealing how the team had to hide the whole thing from Miyamoto in order to get the project going:
Aonuma: “If I had come and talked to him in the first place, I think he would have said ‘What’s wrong Zelda?’ … Miyamoto had a hard time letting go of the Reality Link art style until the very end.
“At some point, he [Miyamoto] had to speak against his will. That’s when he said something [to me] like “You know, it’s not too late to change course and be a real Zelda.”
Miyamoto wasn’t really satisfied with the result but had no choice but to accept this new look due to time constraints and the fact that the team reportedly took “10 years” to create a game. Zelda like reality.
The more realistic “next generation” in the GameCube life cycle series has ended Sunset princess, was also released on the Wii as a launch title. Before this game and Wind Waker, the earliest memories of Zelda on the GameCube can be linked back to the popular game. Tech demo of Space World since 2000.
It is also noted in the same video (below), that Nintendo’s original plan for The Legend of Zelda series on the GameCube was to simply improve the graphics in the game. Ocarina of Time and Majora’s mask – leads to a prototype (with the same visual style as these games).
In the end, Toon Link was born, and although Miyamoto wasn’t a fan of him at first – the rest of the group loved the new, anime-inspired look “they had seen”. as a child”, especially the 1971 film Animal Treasure Island.
Your own thoughts on Wind Waker’s art style? Are you a fan of it? Let us know below.
