Zelda: Tri Force Heroes – Cheer Outfit’s idol origins, how the Timeless Tunic came to be

Last month’s issue of Nintendo Dream contains an interview centered around The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes. The Japanese magazine spoke with director Hiromasa Shikata, designer Keisuke Umeda, and producer Eiji Aonuma. There were some interesting comments shared, not to mention valuable concept art for Zelda fans.

Costumes are naturally a big part of Tri Force Heroes. During the interview, Umeda talked about what elements were taken into consideration when designing these for Link:

“The first thing is to make the effect [of the costume] easy to understand. Then comes making it look interesting and easily recognizable with colors. Designs were made while keeping these three things in mind.”

One piece of concept art included in the interview is of the Cheer Outfit. Here’s a look at that:

As far as how the Cheer Outfit came to be, Umeda noted:

“This is a draft of the Cheer Outfit. At first we discussed to go with an idol costume. The ability increases partners’ Energy Gauge, as everyone would be more energetic when getting cheering from an idol. But it seems like the image of an idol is greatly different in Japan than other countries. It turned into a cheerleader when thinking about what has easily understandable image of “giving support” in any country.”

Another costume discussed during the interview was the Timeless Tunic. According to Shikata, it was made based on the idea of “let’s create a costume that changes the music”. He explained, “the reason was that we had created NES like music, so we created a costume that allowed to listen to it.”

Here’s the rest of the exchange between Nintendo Dream, Shikata, and Aonuma about the costume:

ND: You created NES versions [of music]?

Shikata: That’s right. This is related to the technical limitations of Download Play. Tri Force Heroes supports Download Play, which allows people to play the game even if they don’t own it by receiving data to Nintendo 3DS.

Shikata: There is a memory limit for Download Play, so music couldn’t be transmitted normally. At first we removed the BGM, but as one would except it feels desolate without music.

Shikata: Therefore staff that was responsible of sound said: “If we created NES-like music, the data would become smaller.”

ND: You rearranged all music tracks, right?

Aonuma: Exactly. It didn’t turn into NES music with a button press. We redid everything. Sound staff were incredibly passionate of this.

Shikata: The original plan was to do course BGM, but in the end we were able to do two versions of all music. As we had created NES-like music under these circumstances, you’d want to listen to it when you like to and not just when using Download Play, and thus Timeless Tunic was born.

Let’s close things out with some concept art. In the image below, costumes on the right were supposed to draw the attention of enemies. The left one has has costumes that go well together while having differences in color. As we saw in a Miiverse Miiting, the Pikmin-looking one is concept art of Princess Styla.

Lastly, here’s some concept art of Madame Couture:

Thanks for making it to the end of this post! If you use any of this translation, please be sure to properly source Nintendo Everything. Please avoid copying its full contents if possible.