Development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Development of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time commenced during the same time when Nintendo was developing Super Mario 64. They presented the game originally at the Nintendo Space World of 1995 in December. Back then the game looked entirely different from what it looks like today. Perhaps the biggest change was Nintendo releasing the game as a cartridge rather than the planned Nintendo 64DD. Upon release, Nintendo confirmed that it was the biggest game ever to release on a Nintendo console in terms of megabytes, though Sony had far surpassed them with their PlayStation and their disk drives.

Super Mario 64 was the last game that Shigeru Miyamoto directed, and gave the rights to direct Ocarina of Time to various people, each focusing on various points of the game. All of the directors of the game, especially Eiji Aonuma and Koizumi Yoshiaki, went on to become prominent figures at Nintendo, the two spearheading the way for the Zelda and Mario franchise, respectively. Things went awry under the direction of the multiple designers, and thus Miyamoto stepped in to straighten things out, pretty much becoming a director himself according to designers at EAD. His passion for creating a fantastic game was unparalleled in the industry, and his role as producer gave him the ability to send the series in new and interesting directions, while giving younger employees the chance to prove their worthiness.