The Complete Cut and Altered Maps of Zelda Ocarina of Time | Cut Content

The maps of the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time are some of the most memorable maps in gaming, but development around these maps was one that constantly changed and evolved. Producing numerous maps that are entirely different and some that went outright cut. Today we explore every cut and altered map and dungeon.

Note: This is a compilation of the 2 Cut and Altered Locations + Beta Dungeons videos of Zelda 64

#Zelda #Nintendo #retrogaming

[GermanPeter]

Having recently replayed Twilight Princess, it's fascinating how many cut ideas from OoT made it into that game. Castle Town with its massive walls, the bigger Kokiri Forest, and so on. I doubt that these concepts were cut just because of gameplay reasons. I bet if they had had the technology at the time, Ocarina would have been much closer to TP than what it ended up being. They really did want to create a seemingly endless world.

[Talzuz]

I sometimes wonder if Miyamoto and the OoT devs of the time ever watch these videos and laugh at the incorrect guesses. "They shall never know the truth."

[Yushe_]

The craziest part about all these cut and altered maps is that we had the gigaleak and then only a few months later an F-Zero prototype cartridge somehow had an early version of Zelda OoT on it so it contained a lot of early content in the dump.

[chickbowdrie]

Just when I thought I'd literally seen it all, suddenly I see 45 minutes of all uncut data I have NEVER seen!!! Truly unbelievable.

[EltaleLibrarian]

It's crazy seeing references to Team Beta Triforce. I was part of that team nearing 2 decades ago. Absolutely amazing era of beta Ocarina of Time discovery.

[Nikori]

The reason all the fences block off specific areas was because the maps from that build were what Nintendo used as a playable demo prior to release in order to showcase gameplay. Nintendo didn’t want players to wander off too far and see areas too early on.

[Birdsflight]

2:02 The N64 was actually more powerful than folks give it credit for- but as indicated by the fact that the gigaleak shows that almost maps are shrunk down in their final forms, bigger maps *just weren't as good.*

Just playing through the retooled beta maps, like the fairly polished beta Deku Tree shows that there's a lot of traversal without much to do.

6:42 And I think they're cut for both games in this form because it was most likely just weak content.
The OoT form of the Lost Woods especially- just look at it.

You bring up later that you struggled to run it, but we don't know your emulation setup- and we don't know theirs, but presumably there were reasons they had gotten that far with that map, and it may have run better on real hardware. But they DEFINITELY could have streamlined the mechanics and system to work if they actually thought it would have been worthwhile, because we would have seen the *gameplay* system implemented- that's the part they cared about.

Nintendo have OoT an ungodly amount of development time by the standards of this era of video games, more than enough to explore the limits of where and how they could push coding and hardware. (And it shows in how they executed the Actor handling system, which is really THE reason they were able to create Majora's Mask on the technical side of things)

They weren't just taking away content, they were curating, editing and refining what they had, both on the front end and back end of the game.

Most N64 gamrs focus on the simpler models, spaces and textures because development time was too short to troubleshoot and streamline the environments and assets. 1/4-1/2 the console's power was a general guideline, unless you were, say, making a rail-based game like a Fighter, Crash-like, or Panzer Dragoon-Like, where the polygons and player behavior was EXTREMELY predictable. And cartridges were extremely expensive.
But Nintendo were making a special exception for Zelda 64, and were living up to it, even moreso than Mario 64, which had HAD to come out so early.

The sad thing to me is that I don't think any OoT developer will EVER admit to the totally reasonable explanation that they shrunk most of the OoT maps in development (and probably most Twilight Princess maps after the WW feedback) to make the game a stronger experience, because folks in general just have it in their head that Bigger = Better, no matter what.

7:11
I'm more inclined to think this was about the UI being tailored to represent the Elemental/Spell Arrow system they had been planning. Perhaps the plain white around the bow would take a different hue for each element? It seems a little strange to me for it to be so pale otherwise

10:54 To me, this feels like the place where an antagonist would exposit some stuff, before having you fight the Iron Knuckle, possibly while they watch.

You run to catch them, but they're gone.

If this were Ganon's Castle, then perhaps it would be a place to bait you with a captured Zelda? And the lit up area would probably be some pre-Rooftop Showdown safety/rest/item-get spot, judging by general video game logic.

14:14
I never understood why people insist that these are the same dungeon, and not a test dungeon being repurposed, with the different wall textures. I'm thinking Early Ice Temple, repurposed from the test/beta/eyecatcher they made with the Triforce in it.

16:52 Turtle Rock instead of a dead Dodongo. For some reason, OoT decided that the child dungeons didn't involve enough being eaten by actual beings, so they had to make it a real head, I guess? Its the only reason I can figure that they made the change, and its a strange theme.

21:39
IIRC there's unused text about a secret entrance. It both likely explains this, and how there's that rather conspicuous unused area to the West of the Castle gates in the Final game. A later, less Gravestone-ish version also reflects the ALTTP secret entrance you use at the start of the game, in a way.

22:01 Exactly what I was talking about with the Map shrinking.
But the farm inclusion makes sense- Malon/Link was the intended OTP by the developers. They even wanted to include a Lon Lon ranch fire, where you would have Malon on Epona with you as you jumped the fence and galloped away, saving her heroically.

23:41 Looks like one of the public maps, like for E3 or Spaceworld-type events. Iirc they even have a sign that says something to that effect (In Japanese)

25:23
Using more recent textures doesn't necessarily mean anything, if the textures were replaced in the same directory before the map editing was discontinued. I'd look at the metadata instead. Even then, that's not 100% reliable.

28:43 Just to clarify, the Forest Temple is one of the earliest development settings in OoT- the rumors of them initially going for a Mario 64 setup about being set in Ganondorf's castle and going into paintings started development with the Forest Temple AS the castle. You can see early ~'96 footage from Giles Goddard playing with Portal-esque tech in the Forest Temple for some funzies.

31:47
This area is so bizarre because of the textures to me- it goes to show what the system can theoretically handle, but how janky it looks when you go mixing and matching different fidelity and color scaling levels.

37:19 To me, with the white triangle sitting over the black, I think its visually supposed to read as a grey Triforce with a black center, and a single, smaller white triangle in the middle, but from the ground, it just looks like an inverse triforce, so they had to change it.
They were probably trying to visually represent "Three mcguffins come together to give you the Power in the Temple" but it totally fell flat. Just happens sometimes, and they caught it.

41:29 The Gerudo Training Ground at one point was used as a public demonstration space- giving preview players goals was pretty standard.


Overall though, I hope I don't come off as nitpicky.
We don't actually learn new things if we all just parrot the same ideas- its EXTREMELY important to do independent examinations and come to one's own conclusions on things with the skills we have, like you have and continue to do.
I know that takes a ton of effort to go in and look at all these things by hand, especially when you get stuck in spaces, and things crash, or don't want to record and such. So kudos.

[DarthZelda]

That last part of climbing up the tower really reminds me of walking up the final twisting staircase to fight the boss from Tower of the Gods from Wind Waker.

[Adaruvideos]

The entirety of Oot's beta screenshots give me a very hard vybe of the concept arts of the first 3 zeldas, which had a certain aesthetic to it that I didn't see transformed into any of the 3D zelda games I've played so far (The last "main" Zelda game I played was Twilight Princess and later on A Link Between Worlds.). I have this feeling with the empty hyrule castle town (the one shown in around 1:30ish) which brings the same architectures we see in Zelda II's manual(Pages 6 and 7), and how that portal on death mountain around 17:30 feels like the entrance of a zelda II temple, as well. The larger-than-life maps that were tried and tested in several areas reminds me of certain concept arts from Alttp's manual, specifically the view of Tower of Hera on page 43, and the overview of hyrule in Zelda 1's manual, page 6. The very first Link we saw in that darknut "fmv" demo also followed the original concept arts of Link closely, along with how Hyrule Castle was once on top of a hill (similar to how the North Castle looks like in Zelda II's manual, pages 4 and 12) makes me believe they probably were trying to go for a 3D "sequel" or "spiritual successor" of Zelda 2 or at least bring the first 3D zelda game a faithful recreation of how the Zelda universe was portrayed up to that point in the original manuals.

[weebsquit]

This game's beta looks so fascinating. Sometimes it feels like we're watching something dreamlike.
I hope a full functioning beta is eventually found, if it exists out there somewhere.

[RPG_Guy-fxns]

Large empty levels are not difficult for the N64 to render, they were just bad designs that would get boring.

[jeffd-iq]

wow lazily clicked this not expecting actual new stuff, seeing this beta has been mythical for an age. ty for sharing

[poeswanky]

I like to think that they still kept the "lost woods" and used a section of it for the begining of Majora's mask. That seems to be the only place I've ever seen a huge tree area like that...

[Lucknutxbl]

Pretty good video covering some of the more recent finds, btw the parts where it struggles to load in (28:04, 30:33) are likely just far clipping params (zNear/ zFar) not being setup for the map, making the camera cut off parts of the level (32:46 could play without issue, so the others probably would have been fine too)

[TheDarkFuryKnight]

I think watching videos about cut content is inspiring, watching this video makes me want to make a game

[MelancholyRequiem]

I think the Forest Temple ultimately having a windmill symbol is a reference to woodwind instruments. The ocarina itself is a woodwind; you even get your original cute fairy one from Saria. It's a really clever idea for a forest temple.

[linusignatius]

I believe I've read that the fences in the 1997 build are a remnant of when they made a tester build of the game for fans to play a short sample at an expo. They didn't want fans wandering into unfinished areas, thus, tall fences all around.

[Jotari]

22:50 Zora's River does flow all the way from Zora's Domain to Lake Hylia in the version we got.

[Athesies]

The fact we all have access to such an early and different version of hyrule field is just glorious

I love the stage 1/2 stuff so much

[inevitablemeeting]

A lot of times designers showcase early concept they got from managers, this is just supposed to foster more management conversation. It's not supposed to be fleshed out. So it's not really just an evil castle.