Twin Peaks co-creator recalls talking with Nintendo about Zelda: Link’s Awakening

Nintendo has previously spoken about the influence Twin Peaks had on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening during development. Speaking in 2010, director Takashi Tezuka said the show “was all about a small number of characters in a small town” and how he “wanted to make something like that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics.”

Then last year, the Twin Peaks x Zelda: Link’s Awakening connection came up again after Twin Peaks co-creator Mark Frost said on social media that he “met with them about it and gave them some ideas”.

Frost has now offered some additional insight into what happened behind the scenes all of those years ago. Despite it being just “a single conversation,” he told The Verge that “it was fun.”

Frost also said the following about his discussions with Nintendo, which happened between Twin Peaks’ first and second seasons:

“I remember meeting someone who was kind of their resident engineering genius. He had hyperhidrosis, so his hands were really sweaty, and he was continually wiping his palms all through the meeting.”

“They were talking to me about a Twin Peaks game, and they mentioned Zelda at the time. They said, ‘One of the things we love about your show is how there’s all sorts of sideways associations that can drive the story forward.’ They asked me about that as they were thinking about expanding the Zelda universe.”

Having grown up with Dungeons & Dragons, Frost said he “was familiar with the kind of story they were thinking about. I think I said, ‘Don’t be afraid to use dreamlike, Jungian symbolism. Things can connect thematically without having to connect concretely.’ It was things like that that I was urging them [to consider].”

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening first arrived on the Game Boy in 1993 with a DX version for the Game Boy Color following in 1998. A remake was released for Switch in 2019.