A portion of a NerdWorld interview with Sandeep Parikh, creator...

NW: How'd the idea for Legend of Neil happen — what was the moment? I'm assuming you were a huge Zelda fan back in the day?

Sandeep: So, the Legend of The Legend of Neil starts with my roommate getting a care package from his mom containing a bunch of crap that she no longer wanted to house including an NES and the original Legend of Zelda. He and I came home after a night out, a bit tipsy and he claimed that he could beat the game in under an hour, which I just did not believe was possible. I mean, how could someone spend 1 hour on a game that took me my entire childhood to beat? I remember hand drawing maps, spending hours and hours collecting enough rupees to buy the blue ring, etc, how could this be done in an hour.

Well we decided to crack a few beers as he attempted this feat. As I was watching him play I started drunkenly improvising as the characters in the game and making fun of the conventions of the game world. I remember thinking to myself how weird it must for Link to meet this Old Man who gives him a wooden sword to go kill creatures with and wondering what were the Old Man's interests. I literally opened up my lap top then and started writing "The Legend of Link." In the morning, hungover, I read through the script and it was still actually funny. I called up Tony Janning because I knew I wanted him to play Link and we decided to shoot the damn thing.

It wasn't until a week before shooting that I woke up one morning and realized how much funnier it would be if Link was actually just some random dude from our world that got sucked into the game. I modified the script (having to leave in all the major production elements, because the parts were cast, and locations set, etc) and The Legend of Neil was born.

My roommate beat the game in less than 45 minutes that night by the way.

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