Zelda: Wind Waker HD was developed in roughly six months
Posted on October 5, 2013 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Wii U
It didn’t take Nintendo very long at all to develop The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. Series producer Eiji Aonuma revealed in a 4Gamer interview that it took just six months to create, give or take.
Aonuma also pointed out that he “thought it would be a waste to for this to simply be a test of the hardware,” which is one explanation as to how the Wii U release came to be. Wind Waker’s look, as well as other Zelda art styles, had been tested in HD.
Aonuma’s comments in full:
4Gamer: I see. My impression is that there is a good balance between feeling of the original and a fresh feeling at the same time.
Aonuma: Yes. I thought it would be a waste to for this to simply be a test of the hardware. After that, I was told by staff, that this would not take too much time to develop. It takes a long time to develop a brand new game, so I thought it would be a shame to not have a Zelda game on the Wii U for a while. So I felt like it would be best to deliver something that can be done quickly and began work on the HD version.
4Gamer: Ah I see.
Aonuma: With the original release of Wind Waker, the first half of the game was well received, the later portion on the other hand, needed to be re-evaluated. That was my first time in control of the direction of the game and designing a game from scratch, there were some portions that I wanted to expand upon. If a remake were to happen, I believed I could work on some of those portions.
4Gamer: Does that mean the development time was not so long?
Aonuma: It took about 6 months. Development was still difficult. You had to consider the difference in hardware at the time. Additionally there is a technique known as toon shading, which gives the game a very animated look. At that time, the technique was established, but had not be used before by our staff, everyone had to do everything by hand.
