A recap of how a cancelled Koizumi project influenced Zelda: Majora’s Mask
German website Nintendo-Online published a new report about The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask today. The site took a look back on the game’s creation and how it came to be.
One interesting aspect about Majora’s Mask is that it was partially inspired by a cancelled project from Yoshiaki Koizumi, who went on to work on the Ocarina of Time sequel. If you haven’t heard about this before, you may want to check out the information summary passed along by Nintendo-Online – it’s definitely interesting!
– Yoshiaki Koizumi, current producer of the 3D Super Mario games at EAD Tokyo, co-directed Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time
– After Ocarina of Time, Koizumi started working on a new game (late 1998?)
– The project was likely a completely new game; Koizumi described it as “a board game, based around the theme of cops and robbers”
– The player was supposed to catch a robber within a week, which in reality should take about a hour
– Takumi Kawagoe, cut scene director of OoT, was also involved with this project
– Shortly after the beginning of the project, Miyamoto and Aonuma transferred Koizumi as a co-director to Majora’s Mask
– Because of that, Koizumi’s new project was cancelled (early 1999?); there is no more information available on the game
– The Three-Day-System of Majora’s Mask has been heavily influenced by Koizumi’s cancelled project
– Accordingly, Majora’s Mask was originally supposed to take seven days to complete, but the concept had to be scaled down to three days as Majora’s Mask had to be developed within only one year
