Newly uncovered vintage 'Zelda' screenshot reveals a completely different game and it's freaking us out
The original Legend of Zelda looked a whole lot different early on in Nintendo's development process—and now, we've got a glimpse at what could've been, thanks to this newly revealed screenshot from one of the game's old builds.
The screenshot was included in the new Zelda book Hyrule Encyclopedia, released last month in Japan, showing a dungeon selection screen in what looks like a first-person view. The website ZeldaPower shared a picture of the screenshot on Twitter:
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The screenshot looks almost exactly like a sketch that was shared in an earlier "Iwata Asks" interview, about the history of the Zelda series.
Nintendo's Toshihiko Nakago, current president of systems research and development and former programmer of The Legend of Zelda, said in the interview that the first Zelda only had dungeons originally, no overworld.
"This is the planning sheet for the dungeon select screen we drew up back then," he said about the sketch. "The title is 'Adventure Title,' so we hadn’t decided on The Legend of Zelda yet."
Imagine a world where Zelda had no overworld. That's not exactly a reality we'd like to live in, but it would be pretty interesting to see a Zelda game where the sole focus is dungeoneering.
As, like, an experiment.
Maybe.
