Skip to content

Home
Preservation
Articles / Video
- Articles
- Videos
Frontend Project
About Us

Legend of Zelda Development Files

July 24, 2019July 24, 2019 Ethan Johnson 1 Comment

Share on facebook Tweet on twitter

Game Development Documents

Design Documents

Untitled "Dungeon Room", 1984-12-20 (Shigeru Miyamoto). A portrayal of a typical dungeon room in The Legend of Zelda with a placeholder HUD. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Untitled "Overworld Sections #1", 1984-12-20 (Shigeru Miyamoto). Several sections of the Legend of Zelda overworld. It features mountain and lakeside locations. An overlay with the HUD and relative exit locations has been placed over each image for reference. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Untitled "Overworld Sections #2", 1984-12-20 (Shigeru Miyamoto). Several sections of the Legend of Zelda overworld. It features forest and island locations as well as a a dungeon design in the top right corner with Wallmasters and others. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Adventure, 1985-02-01 (Shigeru Miyamoto). A conceptual design layout for dungeons and other things in The Legend of Zelda, at this point called “Adventure”. Some design aspects are still uncertain, as denoted by the question marks, and some elements are kept intentionally vague. A drawing of one of the boss dragons also graces the top of the page. (Source: Iwata Asks)

"Graveyard", c. 1985 (Unknown author). The layout for one of the graveyard sections in The Legend of Zelda. Constructed on an official Nintendo planning sheet, the designers could layout their designs within technical boundaries and officiate final designs. (Source: Nintendo UK)

“Rogues Gallery #1”, 1985 (Unknown author). A tiered list of enemies in The Legend of Zelda. The rightmost box appears to be space for information on how the enemies would be ordered in memory. (Source: Hyrule Historia)

“Item Drop List”, 1985 (Unknown author). An elaborated explanation on how items would drop off of enemies in The Legend of Zelda. The complicated ordering is based on the method use to kill enemies, whether a player has been hit, and on the percentage of health the player has. The drop list might not quite be the final version found in the game. (Source: Hyrule Historia)

“Rogues Gallery #2”, 1985 (Unknown author). The consolidated list of tiered monsters in The Legend of Zelda. The enemies are now more accurately grouped in levels rather than split into difficulty tiers. Ganon is purposefully drawn only in silhoutte in this image. At the bottom of the page, erratic circles around pairs of monsters as well as a mysterious eye are left. (Source: Hyrule Historia)

Triforce Room, 1985 (Unknown author). A depiction of one of the Triforce rooms in The Legend of Zelda. In this image the Triforce is glowing, though this may just be artistic interpretation. (Source: History of Hyrule)

Untitled “Overworld Map”, 1985 (Unknown author). A black and white rendition of the entire world map from The Legend of Zelda. Many locations differ from their finalized form, most notably in the bottom portion of the map. (Source: Iwata Asks)

Untitled “Overworld Placement”, 1985 (Unknown author). This tile based map of The Legend of Zelda depicts notable items, secrets, and characters of interest in each map section on the overworld. Every element is hand drawn on an overlay of the map, but only a few different enemy types are used to denote areas with enemies. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Adventure Title, 1985-02-05 (Unknown author). This layout represents the dungeon select screen of The Legend of Zelda, still titled “Adventure”. The sheet seems to display a remnant of design from the first-person concept of the game, showing the character’s perspective on entering a dungeon with a message of purpose. The differently tiered mountains seem to represent different potential options for the player to select. (Source: Iwata Asks)

“Old Man Staircase Room”, 1985-09-13 (Author Unknown). One of the secret rooms in The Legend of Zelda featuring three staircases and the old man character giving advice. This portrayal of the speech text in the game shows the original intention of using comic-style bubbles as opposed to ominous suspended text in the environment. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Ganon Room, 1985-12-18 (Takashi Tezuka). The layout for the game’s final boss fight, Ganon. Takashi Tezuka signed this artwork with his nickname, Ten. (Source: Nintendo UK)

Concept Art

“First-Person Dungeon Select” (Untitled), c. 1984 (Author Unknown). An in-engine concept for The Legend of Zelda in it’s earliest stages where a first person perspective was being considered. This mock-up was made with the use of Hudson’s Family BASIC cartridge for a quick visual layout of what this game could potentially look like. This screen would have enabled the players to select their dungeon rather than wandering on the overworld. (Source: Hyrule Encyclopedia)

Technical Documents

Untitled “Main Dungeon Memory Locations”, c. 1985 (Toshihiko Nakago). This sheet shows the relative memory address space used for dungeons in the Main Quest of The Legend of Zelda. All of the dungeons, including secret spaces and blank locations, fit onto two 16x8 chunks of memory, sandwiched together in a jigsaw-like manner. An arrow at the bottom of each piece indicates where the player enters and what dungeon number it is. (Source: Iwata Asks)

Untitled “Second Quest Dungeon Memory Locations”, c. 1985 (Toshihiko Nakago). This sheet portrays the address space for the dungeons in the Second Quest, the alternative version of the original Legend of Zelda. In this revamped version, all secret areas are stored on the second memory chunk, leaving all the blank spaces on the first chunk. (Source: Iwata Asks)

Untitled “Sprite Memory Allocation”, 1985-02-13 (Unknown author). A visual portrayal of how all the items, scenery, and enemies in The Legend of Zelda are related in memory space. Several unused enemies and items can be seen, as well as the top portion of the memory area not being assigned. (Source: Iwata Asks)

Sources

Iwata Asks, Bonus 1: Ancient Documents from 1985. December 3, 2009.

Nintendo UK, Take a look behind-the-scenes with design documents from The Legend of Zelda! December 21, 2016

Hyrule Historia. Nintendo. ISBN-10 4-09-227159-X. December 21, 2011.

Posted Under

Art Assets Concept Art Design Docs Game Assets Technical Docs

Tagged

1986 Concept art Design Docs Famicom Disk System Nintendo Shigeru Miyamoto Takashi Tezuka Technical Docs the legend of zelda

Share on facebook Tweet on twitter

About Ethan Johnson

Ethan Johnson researches all ends of gaming out of Chicago, IL. He is the creator of The History of How We Play, the blog and video series.

View all posts by Ethan Johnson →

Post navigation

The Lost Sunsoft Games

Gaia Gensouki (Illusion of Gaia)

You may like these posts

Magnavox Odyssey – Development Files

Doomwalkers (Arcade) Concept Art

Pac-Man Ghost Zone (PSX) Art Assets

Breach (SEGA Genesis, Unreleased) Soundtrack Analysis

Green Lantern Art Assets (SNES)

One thought on “Legend of Zelda Development Files”

Pingback: The Course of the Industry: PlayStation State of Play February 2021, Sony Japan Studio Reorganization | Black Box

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment *

Name *

Email *

Website

Δ

Table of contents

Game Development Documents

Copyright Gaming Alexandria LLC 2022. All rights reserved.