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Aonuma - The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds inspired by Super Mario 3D Land
A portion of a Wired interview with Eiji Aonuma...
Wired: I think people are ready for this because of that one level in Super Mario 3D Land where it looked like a top-down Zelda-style game, but in 3-D. It looked pretty cool, that type of top-down gameplay with a 3-D display. I’m assuming you were already well into production on this game before that level came out, but I’m wondering if the reception to that level made you more confident.
Aonuma: That was all Mr. Miyamoto (laughs). Those are Miyamoto’s ideas; he came up with the top-down 3-D in Super Mario 3D Land, and he actually gave me a mission: To work on a 3-D Link to the Past. But I didn’t want to make a remake. I wanted to make a new title but I wasn’t exactly sure how I could incorporate this world into my new project. One of my designers was working on this concept of having Link go into the walls, and being able to access places that he couldn’t get past. If you think about this idea of top down, walking around on the ground and all of a sudden merging with the wall and then the camera angle kind of shifts into this 3-D perspective — if you think about it, maybe Mario Kart is doing something kind of similar to that — but the 3-D representation really matches when you think about shifting between those two perspectives. So that’s when it kind of clicked. And when I looked at how Super Mario 3D Land was also doing the same thing, and the positive reaction it was getting from the users, it did, it reinforced what I was doing and it told me I was on the right track.
Full interview here
Wired: I think people are ready for this because of that one level in Super Mario 3D Land where it looked like a top-down Zelda-style game, but in 3-D. It looked pretty cool, that type of top-down gameplay with a 3-D display. I’m assuming you were already well into production on this game before that level came out, but I’m wondering if the reception to that level made you more confident.
Aonuma: That was all Mr. Miyamoto (laughs). Those are Miyamoto’s ideas; he came up with the top-down 3-D in Super Mario 3D Land, and he actually gave me a mission: To work on a 3-D Link to the Past. But I didn’t want to make a remake. I wanted to make a new title but I wasn’t exactly sure how I could incorporate this world into my new project. One of my designers was working on this concept of having Link go into the walls, and being able to access places that he couldn’t get past. If you think about this idea of top down, walking around on the ground and all of a sudden merging with the wall and then the camera angle kind of shifts into this 3-D perspective — if you think about it, maybe Mario Kart is doing something kind of similar to that — but the 3-D representation really matches when you think about shifting between those two perspectives. So that’s when it kind of clicked. And when I looked at how Super Mario 3D Land was also doing the same thing, and the positive reaction it was getting from the users, it did, it reinforced what I was doing and it told me I was on the right track.