Interesting pieces of information about Ura Zelda (64DD) and prerelease Ocarina of Time (N64)

Today is January 13, 2016. Even though 18 years have passed since Zelda: Ocarina of Time's release, we do not know how much content was removed in the game's development. Here are some oddities I found while researching Ura Zelda 64DD and OoT N64.

Order
Spaceworld 2000 cancellation
Glitterberri+Lavacopter
Possible Ura disk location
Nintendomad
u/DevotedToNeurosis's point
64DD cover art for Ura - concept art
German preview cart
Possible prerelease cartridge art
Temple of Time exterior
Link's old animations
Link's one handed block
How the 4 mb RAM extension affects OoT
"Ultimate finisher" Gameshark code
Manual jump Gameshark code
Beautiful Hyrule
reddit.com/r/urazelda

- Rumor: A finalized build of Ura Zelda was supposed to make an appearance at Spaceworld 2000 in the Randnet booth,but ultimately never did.
Source: http://www.nesworld.com/n64system.php

- Glitterberri and Lavacopter organized many of the prerelease Zelda 64 images. Lavacopter provided the images themselves, and Glitterberri provided the translations and descriptions. Thanks to their efforts, we are able to understand and analyze images from OoT's development stages.

https://tcrf.net/User:GlitterBerri/Prerelease:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time

- Kao mentioned that one possible Ura Zelda disk location could be Nintendo's Kyoto Research Center, their headquarters during OoT's development.

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/zelda64.48744/page-3#post-720597

Location the Kyoto Research Center

http://mymapofjapan.com/transit/stations/panoramio/33823858

https://geolocation.ws/v/P/33823858/nintendo-kyoto-research-center-former/en

This thread, "Zelda," was posted in the unreleased games forum on January 13, 2009. That message once read, "The big N's watching "
Reference

- The redditor u/DevotedToNeurosis pointed out that, if a copy of Ura Zelda exists somewhere, it has a countdown timer attached to it (not literally) because all volatile storage will eventually decay. As for Ura Zelda, it is hard to say. If prototypes of Ura Zelda (and OoT) were active from 1998 to 2001, then Ura Zelda might decay around 2020.

- Perhaps Ura Zelda's 64DD disk cover would have looked something similar to this concept art. I do not own this image, I found it in the description of this YouTube video:
Since the link in the description is a bit. ly URL, here is an easier link from imgur.

http://imgur.com/PDMqDAT

- Newfound prerelease cartridge: German preview cart from August 5, 1997

- Possible prerelease cartridge art for OoT from the front cover of Next Generation magazine (June 1998)

- The Temple of Time exterior was three-dimensional at one point in development. Link could walk along two different paths on the left and right sides of the temple. The collision data for both of these paths is still present in the debug ROM. Source

- Prerelease Temple of Time

- Those awesome animations from the early version of Zelda 64 were present when the game was being developed in cartridge format. The 64DD actually disallowed Link to fluidly swing his sword and have other advanced animations.

Smooth VHS dump (at 32:15) of Link's fluid early animations -
- The animations in this prerelease video are great. At 0:07 Link blocks a Stalfos attack one-handed with his sword!


I wonder how the player made Link do that. Maybe R+B had to be pressed right before Link got hit to do a sword block/counter.

- When a 4 mb RAM expansion is attached to the N64, OoT will have more flow because the memory isn't as constricted as the final version (Nintendo did not have an expansion pack at the time). With 8 mb of total RAM, Link's animations such as his spin attack will be smoother, his slingshot will have more effects, flames will appear when enemies die, and other small differences. There is more info about this in the video's comment section.


- These two Gameshark codes, when applied to the debug ROM, will replace Link's default Z-Target+A sword strike.

The code below will make Link sheathe his sword after the default strike. This animation is similar to the one in Twilight Princess where,after defeating an enemy, Link flung his sword around before putting it away. Source

813F4466 2CD0

This code will activate a manual jump. A default sword strike can occur if B is pressed while Link is in midair.
Source:

D13DBFE8 1CC0
813DBFE8 04C1

- The beauty of prerelease Hyrule Field

 

Very cool post, Zant! Thanks for sharing this info dump.

The early versions of Ocarina of Time are bit of an obsession of mine, and I always love digging into archived video footage and screenshots and the like.

Maybe one day, huh?

 

holy shit. finaly some early z64 content in a high quality. thank you