First shown as a technical demo at Nintendo's
Space World trade show in December 1995,
[17] Ocarina of Time was developed concurrently with
Super Mario 64 by Nintendo's
EAD division.
[48] Both were the first free-roaming 3D game in their respective series. Nintendo planned to release
Super Mario 64 as a
launch game for the
Nintendo 64 and later release
Ocarina of Time for the
Nintendo 64DD, a disk drive peripheral for the system.
[49] Nintendo eventually decided to release
Ocarina of Time on a cartridge instead and follow it with a 64DD expansion.
[50] At 32
megabytes, it was the largest game Nintendo had created at the time of release.
[51]Shigeru Miyamoto was the principal director of
Super Mario 64, but was a producer and supervisor of
Ocarina of Time, in charge of several directors.
[52][53] Individual parts of
Ocarina of Time were handled by multiple directors—a new strategy for Nintendo EAD. However, when things were progressing slower than expected, Miyamoto returned to the development team with a more hands-on directorial role. The team was new to 3D games, but assistant director Makoto Miyanaga recalls a sense of "passion for creating something new and unprecedented".
[54] Miyamoto initially intended
Ocarina of Time to be played in a first-person perspective, so as to enable the players to take in the vast terrain of Hyrule Field better, as well as being able to focus more on developing enemies and environments. However, the development team did not go through with it once the idea of having a child Link was introduced, and Miyamoto felt it necessary for Link to be visible on screen.
[55] The development crew involved over 120 people, including
stuntmen used to capture the effects of sword fighting and Link's movement.
[56] Some of Miyamoto's ideas for the new
Zelda title were instead used in
Super Mario 64, since it was to be released first.
[48] Other ideas were not used due to time constraints.
[52] Ocarina of Time originally ran on the same
engine as
Super Mario 64, but was so heavily modified that designer
Shigeru Miyamoto considers the final products entirely different engines.
[57] One major difference between the two is camera control. The player has much control over the camera in
Super Mario 64, but the camera in
Ocarina of Time is largely controlled by the game's AI. Miyamoto says the camera controls for
Ocarina of Time are intended to reflect a focus on the game's world, whereas those of
Super Mario 64 are centered on the character of
Mario.
[52] Miyamoto wanted to make a game that was cinematic, but still distinguished from actual films.
[52] Takumi Kawagoe, who creates
cut scenes for Nintendo, says that his top priority is to have the player feel in control of the action.
[58] To promote this feeling, cut scenes in
Ocarina of Time are completely generated with
real-time computing and do not use pre-recorded or
full-motion video.
[52] Toru Osawa, given support by Kensuke Tanabe, wrote the script for the game
[59] based on a story idea by Miyamoto and
Yoshiaki Koizumi.
[5][6][7][8] The dungeons were designed by
Eiji Aonuma.
[4] Customers in North America who
pre-ordered the game received a limited edition box with a golden plastic card affixed, reading "Collector's Edition". This edition contained a gold-colored cartridge,
[60] a tradition for the
Zelda series that began with the
original game for the
Nintendo Entertainment System. Demand was so great that
Electronics Boutique stopped pre-selling the title on November 3, 1998.
[61] Later versions of
Ocarina of Time feature minor changes, such as the removal of the
Islamic chant from the Fire Temple's music,
glitch repairs, and the alteration of Ganondorf's blood from crimson to green.
[62]