Former Nintendo developer, Giles Goddard, is known for the fact that in those days, he moved to Tokyo alongside Dylan Cuthbert. There the young programmer would help Nintendo produce games, including Starfox (SNES) and Super Mario 64. In fact, he worked on the iconic, stretchy Mario face in that game, and he was, of course, also involved in the development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Giles Goddard was recently interviewed by MinnMaxShow. He discusses how he found in his archives the source code of a very early Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time portal tech demo he worked on. Goddard says it contained Portal-like tech that allowed Link to see an area through a portal and go through it to travel there. Rather than a portal gun, there were crystals Link could manipulate to control the portals. Below is a clip of the relevant part of the interview, though the full interview is also available on their YouTube channel.
That Ocarina of Time portal tech demo was part of the research and development work being done pretty early on. This involved seeing what they could do with the then cutting-edge Nintendo 64 hardware. Because this tech demo was an R&D project, Goddard said the main development team may never have even seen it. Had it become part of the final game, it would’ve been a very different adventure indeed. To this day, fans still debate which N64 Zelda game is better, and this certainly would’ve affected those discussions quite a bit.
Giles Goddard no longer works for Nintendo, as he has since gone his own way and is now the CEO of Chuhai Labs. There he and his team are currently working on a spiritual successor to 1080° Snowboarding for the Oculus Quest. You may want to keep an eye on this if you’re into both snowboarding and VR gaming.
[wpdiscuz-feedback id=”2r7ao6ki7v” question=”Do you think portals would’ve fit in Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask?” opened=”1″]Do you think portals would’ve really fit in Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask?[/wpdiscuz-feedback]
