@@Robert-tl2vg The Unicorn Fountain was shown off in previews of "Zelda 64", and as a result dozens of rumors bounced around the early internet and playgrounds at schools across the nation. Indeed, this entire generation of gaming had some of the most famous myths, and Ocarina's three big ones were the "Sky Temple", the Triforce, and the Unicorn Fountain.
@@shiftfire4511 it's definitely a generational thing, the internet is just too ingrained and people investigate games too deeply so rumours like that now have a lifespan, a usually short one too
Imagine being the person just getting a cart that you think is FZero and then you see all unreleased zelda content. This content is 20 years old and NEVER seen or been used till 2021. Crazy
It really looks like a lot of the cut or changed content was simply due to unfortunate hardware limitations, and nothing more. I really would have loved to have seen some of these areas in the game, perhaps in a true remake, but alas, Nintendo will never do that.
Truly. 64DD was really gonna give it the boost it needed. Even the Expansion Pass might have done enough to run some of it if it was out at the time. I do hope for a true remake one day that puts it on the scale or BOTW but with all the OOT conventions there but expanded
@@TheObsessiveGamer Funny you should mention that. I was just flipping through an old Iwata Ask interview and saw this: Iwata:ROM cartridges don’t have any moving mechanical parts, so they can read motion data in an instant, no matter where it’s stored. However, with a magnetic disk, it takes time for the mechanical parts to move around meaning you have loading time while it’s locating the data. As a result, we couldn’t get Link’s motions to work. If there hadn’t been as many motions, we could’ve gotten the game to read them to memory from the disk in advance, but we had around 500 motion patterns. Ozawa:That’s right. That’s the reason that Koizumi was saying “My Link won’t work on the 64DD,” at the time.
@@TheObsessiveGamer If Nintendo really does love their fans, they'll do a true remake of it for the anniversary this year. Now that the hardware allows it, why not add wild horses and the gigantic lost woods? Might not be able to add all the magic arrows or effects, but they could re do the areas and work the game as a true love letter to the Zelda fans. They could even include the original with all of the glitches it's famous for. That would be something that would truly thrill all the fans. Sadly, if Super Mario 3d all stars is anything to go by, they'll only pretty it up a bit and fix undesirable glitches. At least we'll get Skyward Sword on the switch. That'll be fun.
@@ZeldaMaster285 I've gotta fill you in on something, no company does anything because they love you lol. But yea it'd be cool, probably won't cost much time or money to develop, and would have a sizeable enough amount of people wanting to play it.. Though at this time it'd just be a less impressive version of newer zelda games
@@TheObsessiveGamer im glad this community of nerds exists who also share my love and passion for oot, everyone here im sure is overwhelmed with joy at these recent discoveries . Oh yeah brother, i have hope that the full fledged ura is out there somewhere!!🙏🏻
Ura zelda exists, it is master quest. Miyamoto wanted to incorporate features of the DD into Ocarina, but all that came out of that planning were remixed dungeons. Ura zelda became master quest
@@Bung-ms9jc URA ZELDA IS NOT MASTER QUEST. Ura Zelda was so much more than Master Quest, you really need to look it up and see what Uta Zelda was supposed to be! ❤
@@magoria1382 it's not, Ura Zelda is literally Master Quest, another journey. Yes, the Ura Zelda Miyamoto planned was much different than simply remixed dungeons, but we have no evidence Ura Zelda ever made it past the planning stage thanks to the 64DD's failure. Whatever was planned for Ura Zelda was either taken and implemented into Majora's mask, or was included in a later zelda game. If you want a playable Ura Zelda, its Master Quest, that's it. Its disappointing, but Master Quest is literally called Ura in Japan.
The grave on the side of the castle sounds like the Royal Family's grave, if that makes sense? The game teased a lot about the grave having a secret passage from the castle to the fields-- so perhaps that was why Impa can take you back out of the courtyard and you end up at around that spot? And how Zelda escapes from Ganondorf's pursuit? (It's interesting, because real-world castles HAD these features-- especially smaller castles surrounded by a town, they would have a hidden passage to evacuate in case of an attack on the town inside a holy place (usually the local church or the lord's chapel).
I imagine multiple versions must exist since each demo station would have one of these carts in for people to play. Hopefully not all of them were rewritten after
@@TheObsessiveGamer I'm sure there's probably like one or two versions where they put all the data on them as backups of the stuff but those ones are probably at Nintendo for ya know safe keeping cause I'd image they'd wanna keep all the stuff just in case so reserving extra cartridges for the specific games just makes seems like a Nintendo like thing to do.
Well it's not that it got cut they just changed it honestly the dragon's hanging in the boss room are just place holders for the zora version of the dragon you see the water temple was always meant too be this way but while they were making they planned to combine there culture with the zora like in final game so the dragon's are the placeholder for the zora version of that dragon and honestly I'm sure they wanted too keep all 4 floors but they probably realized that they themselves kept getting lost in the massiveness of it so they probably reluctantly decided to get rid of the 4th floor and keep 3 floors instead and I believe at one point they considered putting the bridge on the third floor as a result of this but them realized that'd make it too easy too fight the boss but if you at the room in here and look at the final games you'll see they salvaged as many rooms as possible while keeping organized enough not to get extremely lost in the temple so it's the same temple just one less floor and less confusing to navigate.
Thank you for watching everyone! and thank you all for making us finally hit the big 5K mark! We'll plan to keep making more Cut Content videos as we go forward so make sure to subscribe and stay tuned!
I have used a certain emulator that allowed to allocate more ram than intended. If you used this emulator do you think it would be possible to load the beta lost woods with the trees?
9:40 they should have kept that skylight in the temple's main room, it looks beautiful, through probably they had to do away with it because of the whole Poe Sisters' mechanic and the showdown against Meg.
It's amazing that this cartridge was leaked at all but it really makes me wish it wasn't overwritten. I guess we just have to be grateful for what we have. Keep up the good work. You are the best in the cut Zelda content community.
Beta Lake Hylia ran perfectly fine on my everdrive, so the n64 can handle it fine. I think it was changed because all that empty space may have been thought of as boring to traverse. Also, it may have been worth noting that the famous sunset scene was very likely taken place in the forest building map, as someone on Twitter has discovered. Lastly, I don’t think that beta lost woods matches the screenshot. I think that screenshot takes place along the castle walls, as it can be seen in the background.
Also the Famous Sunset scene I can 100% confirm wasn't in the Forest Building area as the sky was never meant to be seen and the person on Twitter who showed it off showed it without realizing there is supposed to be a large forest surround the entire thing all along that the N64 just couldn't handle loading all at once. As for the Lost Woods, the ones in the screenshots are of stage 1/2 so it would be very different vs this one which is stage 3/4. However, since we now got the Stage 1/2 of Hyrule Field which shows the Castle Walls and it not having any forest near it, we can confirm that structure behind the lost woods in the screenshot is definitely not hyrule castle walls. It's very possible there were other ruins or something back then in the Lost Woods which would fit the whole build up to the Sacred Forest Meadow I say
Well the lost woods here is the version of that lost wood but in stage 4 development but if you load it up you can clearly see the same exact fog and when z64me played around in this lost woods the fog was even denser as dense as the fog from that screen shot of the stage 1/2 lost woods so it's definitely that same forest from the stage 1/2 build but in a later stage of development where they probably cut back a lot of it but it was still too many trees so that's why we ended up with the one in the final game instead.
@@Supersonicblue1027 Oh good call on the fog. I wasn't sure at first if it was just the N64 messing up rendering something or what but yeah now that you mention it, it makes sense
I was thinking the same thing: once the initial thrill of having such large areas wore off, how quickly would tedium set in? People did complain about WW and TP overworlds being too "empty", despite being designed for more powerful consoles.
It might be just me but it feels like the great fairy fountain in the beta version of Hyrule Castle is a lot closer to the one at Ganon's Castle than it did in the final version. Which is funny because I always thought the path to the great fairy fountain in Hyrule Castle did not match up with the path to the one in Ganon's Castle.
@@TheObsessiveGamer I found your channel two days ago, and I was going to comment about your manner of speech, but someone else did so I'll add to this one. I would say that your idiosyncratic manner of speech is charming and nice to listen to. It has a different pattern of intonation which could be described as "sing-songy". It's a breath of fresh air compared to the generic presenter's voice which you hear everywhere, and it'd be a shame if you tried "cultivate" your manner of speech by imitating theirs. So, please don't get rid of your unique voice.
@@radishpineapple74 Thank you very much! well I don't think I can do much about getting rid of my voice, but I do like that you guys like its uniqueness lol
The fences in the stage 3 Hyrule field were actually from a demo of a nearly complete version of the game, it's a stage 4 version of the field and the horse jumping areas were cause the demo allowed people to play around on epona
This has been a theory at least, nothing truly confirmed. The fences have been there even in screenshots outside of the demo so we know it wasn't just for demo purposes. I still do theorize the fact that many horses were roaming the field are why fences are around for them to jump over and for you to play with the horses.
I believe they showed a part of it in a small scene in a old VHS for the gane but they only showed Epona and link in front of a finished part probably trying to hide all the fences and unfinishedness.
This makes sense. I got to play OOT demo at E3 ‘98. You started at a menu where you could pick from (I think) 4 scenes: Phantom Ganon fight, A fight against some lizalphos in a fire cave, the Hyrule Castle stealth section, and a fourth option that I’ve forgotten. The 4th could have been an Epona demo in that archery target practice map.
You are correct. The Cutting Room Floor makes it clear that this version of Hyrule Field was the one playable at SpaceWorld '97, which is why areas were all newly fenced off. This also applies to the alternate Gerudo Training Ground, demo players were challenged to complete a task in each of the three areas. One was to hit targets with a bow, one was to find and defeat 4 hiding poes and the third (and most interesting) was to chase after a fleeing poe. This was the area which was identical to the Dampe area, so they stuck with both the location and idea right into the final. I strongly suggest checking out TCRF for more excellent info! tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda:_Ocarina_of_Time/Late_1997_Overdump/3D_Maps
I wonder if the Great Deku Tree dungeon being way more complex meant that it wasn't originally meant to be the first dungeon? I recall in the first part there being a comment about the possibility of Link starting in the Castle Town early in development, and having to go on a large journey to reach the Deku Tree.
The story of that stage (as presented in the last Zelda video I uplaoded) still does have the Great Deku Tree as the first dungeon. The Castle Town start was theorized as an even earlier stage of 1 and 2.
Lol I thought you’re like a famous RU-vidr because your content is sooo good but man you deserve so much more! Keep it up and stay safe. :) Ps: you got a new sub ✨💅🏻
I stumbled upon this channel looking for this kind of content. I am so happy that I did! I'm looking forward to more of your videos and I hope you cover cut content of Majora's Mask eventually. You do a great job at being thorough, keep it up!
Right. Modders with skills get cracking and unleash your imagination to life. But... finish it completely and release it for download before Nintendo takes it down. Don't show anything less than %99.
This is the holy grail of content. I've dreamed for 20 years of getting to see all of this outside of grainy screenshots, and I really hope someone puts together some emu games using these assets to try and recreate the different versions of the game. So many incomplete concepts can be finished out to be able to work since we're working without the limitations of retail hardware now. We could have a series of Beta World Tour versions that allow different experiences, such as a version dedicated to just exploring maps as well as several versions that try to interpret what the experience may have been like at different stages of development if they hadn't changed direction. I bet the large maps like Lost Woods weren't meant to be ultimately loaded all at once the way we currently load them, and they were abandoned when the dev team failed to find an effective way to implement culling that looked good. With it being an unofficial build, we essentially have unlimited system resources (in terms of 1997 technology) available to build them.
This is by far the most underrated channel on RU-vid. Every video you make is filled to the brim with interesting I formation. I hope this channel blows up quick.
you never disappoint with the cut content videos! i was so keen to watch this as ocarina of time is so nostalgic and is definitely one of my favourite games. this was such an interesting and quality video with so much depth. nice work, it’s honestly your best video yet!
I've been binging your videos and you make the best Zelda beta content videos I've seen, most people seem to just read off TCRF but you actually going through the maps is so cool and shows how interested you are in the topic
Thank you! Whenever I have the ability, I try to go and access the map or content itself. TCRF is a good resource to reference, but not the only one that should be imo
@@TheObsessiveGamer Yes you did! I just finished watching the video (Took me so long cos I excitedly spamming a friend bout all the finds) and I HAD NO IDEA that some of these places had been found! When I saw the old Deku Tree dungeon! DUDE! We had only had like one or two screenshots of that!!! That was AMAZING! I personally wanna see old Dodongo's cavern cos they actually scrapped the dungeon and redid the whole thing, and I wanna see the old Hyrule Castle town! Maybe... Maybe one day! Still though! The old lake Hylia! The old Hyrule/Ranch! All of those were things talked about A LOT! So seeing them is amazing!
This has got to be the most interesting thing i have seen in a wihle! I got super into all of these cut locations a couple months ago, and totally thought they would never been seen or found
I liked the Forest Temple with that light coming from the ceiling, it had a very oniric aura, though I love the final design too, it's scarier As always, a very interesting and good video!
@@TheObsessiveGamer I think that too, perhaps also to maintain a darker atmosphere for Phantom Ganon and make the lighting issue less complicated in case of entering the temple at night
@@bastienlafleur5838 Dude post this theory somewhere else! It deserves to be viewed and discussed, not to be found randomly in a reply section (seriously, why you post it here of all places?)
3 minutes in, and my jaw is dropping at how gorgeous hyrule field is. You can totally see how the river system in the final game would have been connected, how Lon Lon Ranch had to be put behind a wall because of load limitations, etc. The castle gates are textured now! Already watched other vids, and it's just so amazing seeing the tiny screenshots I pored over in game magazines were real at some point, but this is just on a whole other level!!!!
You're pretty spot on about the early version of The Great Deku Tree dungeon being similar design to the Bomb-omb battlefield's mountain, I thought the same thing when I had a little playthrough of it.
I was definitely looking forward to you covering the latest beta content! I especially love that early Hyrule Field.. Though, for what it's worth, the final build did keep the interconnected river flow from Zoras River to Lake Hylia.. It just goes from behind the castle off into Gerudo Valley, then to Hylia (I always liked how it all connected). But that grave stone behind the castle is pretty interesting. That's where a big Poe is in the final, I wonder if there is any connection there? Overall, this beta leak has been surreal, both in how drastically different areas looked, but also in showing just how refined the final game was. A good example is the Fairy/Deku Tree, it's basically a tree shaped structure inside a tree, whereas the final felt like a more organic environment inside a tree. Man.. Zelda 64 just keeps on giving after all these years.
Thank you! I did look up the final map and wow I never noticed that way they may it flow through practically every major area space for Death Mountain and the Forest. The final games Deku Tree I feel doesn't take advantage of it being a tree so much like this does as it practically lets us climb a whole tree which feels just more right. Hopefully we get even more like this. Most exciting time since the Debug Rom happened
Keys weren’t used in beta deku tree someone restored all the actors and puzzles available for the dungeon at the top of the tree is theorized to hold Navi as you were supposed to rescue her in the dungeon
I saw that "restoration". Now here's the thing, alot of the actors were guesswork. Opening it myself in a level editor, the actors didn't match anything existing in the final game in many parts, so it was a alot of guess work on his part. That treasure chest might have had a key requiring to open the final door otherwise it be very easy to get to once you activate that platform. But of course it's all a theory here on what may have been there. Also there was another door past the top of the tree that wasn't explore which might have contained Navi all along. It's all our guess at this point.
@@TheObsessiveGamer the majority of the actors of Enemy placement and general layout had matching data for the final game the only thing that he couldn’t make sense were of the chests many of which probably held the fairies you were supposed to save while small keys may have been used all the doors are able to be opened by solving the puzzles while I could be wrong I’m just going off of what I’ve seen and what he has stated in the comments section
@@Midnight_horrors885 Oh I agree and that's the issue, we can't tell what doors were used and if the chest contained a key. I feel that if a door leading to the boss is so easy to get to, it likely would need some key. I could be wrong of course lol just a theory and thank you! :)
It's actually for two reasons. One is what you said, the other is cause it's unfinished and they didn't want people to go there as I showed. The Hyrule Field fence was also there in screenshots outside of the demo, so it definitely had a purpose beyond being part of the demo
@@TheObsessiveGamer I don't disagree with you or anything but I think it's kinda weird how they had to put those fences up then considering that they of all the people would know what's unfinished or not lol. By the way, this was a great video! It's a shame that most of this stuff was overwritten by F-Zero though.
The beta version of the Water Temple looks super familiar. I think they reused that idea in Twilight Princess for that game's water temple? Some aspects of it's design are similar like the center tower thingy. :P (mostly the part with the bridge)
I really like this idea of the Deku Tree. I can see why it was scaled down though. It seems pretty intimidating for a first dungeon to be an enormous spire. The first dungeon should be short and simple.
11:30 the trees are probably objects so the game can load them based on proximity, so if you tried using trees that all load at once the crash definitely makes sense.
The A+B system was later implemented in Minish Cap by Capcom, as I imagine they had some connection to Nintendo's games for reference. In Minish Cap, you had no fixed equipment buttons that could not be changed like the sword being mapped to the B button in OoT. Be it any item, bottle, or your current sword, you could map them to either the A or B button. Your choice.
That old deku tree would be PERFECT for a dungeon used as a transition area between Termina and Hyrule, if one were going back up the liminal log in some kind of fan project combining the games.
The gates are there for the beta demo, to block the player from going to unfinished areas. Also, the jump gates were probably just put there for the demo player to mess around with the horse
The gates and fences were also seen in screenshots outside of the spaceworld demo, so we know there was more of a purpose than just keeping the player out I say. I theorize it was also a good way for them to keep track of what needs to be done, but the horse fences I think were intentional just cause wild forces roamed and gave you more of a purpose to catch on to play around with overall.
What's interesting (and I haven't seen anyone note on this) but oddly enough the beta Deku Tree looks somewhat reminiscent of Wind Waker's Forbidden Woods (I am referring to the room with the big tree in the middle acting as a tower). Maybe it's somewhat of a stretch, but it could've been later reused. I do remember hearing some scrapped OoT dungeons were indeed rehashed into later Zelda games as dungeons/puzzles for dungeons.
The path off to the side of the Lake Hylia map has the same kind of textures as the early Hyrule Field's exit to the Gerudo Desert. The Gerudo Valley is connected to Lake Hylia in the final game, so it probably was connected here too. Just by a path rather than the river.
Well we do have evidence that the Forest Temple may have even been the first dungeon they designed due to what developer Giles Goddard showed off, so it might very well have been a reference.
I think 17:59 Is a beta castle maze section where you first meet zelda, because there was fountains there. But idk where they would use graphics in that part. But also could still be the market
I wonder if that gravestone on the Castletown walls was because the Beta version of Oot had the Royal Family's tomb there rather than in the graveyard? Maybe that was the original entrance?
11:00 coming back to this, now i'm thinking maybe they were trying a culling system that could load the trees in and out but it didn't work so they reduced the scope and then made the newer lost woods similar to the LTTP lost woods with the maze. Making the map so big might have still been a "lost woods" because of the fog and not being able to navigate through it, similar to the garudo desert.
I fully agree with you. I believe this was likely still an extension of the old lost woods so the. fog would have been there to mask the culling that happened
*18:49* Wow, I've never seen that full image before. That's... oddly fascinating. Like it was always there, just out of view. The other buildings nearby, those fun reflective objects... It looks a lot more like something from a Final Fantasy game here than it ended up looking in the final. Reminds me of historical reconstructions old cities and settlements, now in ruin, in their heyday
Technically it's actually not there in the final game. What you see is what it is. They cropped it to just that in the final game when it was more this originally and let you explore those extra areas at that. But yeah in the prerenders I say definitely put it closer to FF during the PS1 era more than anything lol
I can imagine with how big the maps are and how complicated the mazes are that heart pieces would have been scattered everywhere inside every nook and cranny. That would explain why it took 8 heart pieces to get a full heart as opposed to just 4.
I'm not sure what you mean about keeping the depth in relation to the river system...the final game DOES contain a river system that runs all the way from Zora's Fountain, down Zora's River, around Hyrule Field to Castle Town's moat, then along to the waterfall near Gerudo Valley, which then flows down into Lake Hylia. I've always thought it was awesome!
Yeah I didn't realize that when I made that video until after as I didn't connect the whole Zora river flowing to Hyrule Field, then to Gerudo valley and then into Lake Hylia. It's neat that they kept that. They just made it more complicated down the road
A thing that I noticed that Nintendo forgot to change for the final release. If you start with the light pedestal in the chamber of secrets and go clockwise, they're all in the same order that you get them except spirit and shadow. They're switched. Probably an oversight they left in after changing the order.
Nintendo could’ve done a lot with all the left over OOT content. They could’ve made expansions of areas not used. They could’ve had Child Link explore the Forest temple and had totally new areas. They could’ve added added in unused enemies. So many possibilities.
Man, so much of the beta Zelda 64 stuff is really interesting. I'm definitely more interested in version 1 and 2 of development myself, and if we can ever find enough to build off the stuff that's there it would be really cool I someone made a playable version of the beta
Yeah it would have been in full playable form. Not every area was done so likely the story and triggers may not have worked as intended but we could at least complete dungeons in full.
@@TheObsessiveGamer You, do not, understand, my sadness! Okay maybe you do XD I'm assuming there is no way to uh, restore it? Aw man... I HATE that with older things, they wiped them to keep costs down. That's why there is so much old lost media! Cos the things they were stored on where expensive, so they just wiped them! Can you imagine if a Beta Zelda 64 rom was leaked! THAT would be a dream come true for me! I actually like the beta more than the actual game.. I know more bout the beta, than the actual game XD And most beta stuff was from before I was born! I was born by the games release tho. So I AM as old as OOT.
@@saffronnie3969 I have a hard time believing that Nintendo doesn't have copies of builds of the game going back to the very beginning in a vault of some kind. And from a development perspective, think of it this way: I find a single rewritable ROM much more convenient and cost effective than burning "coasters" like with CD-Rs. Chips are expensive after all. Remember that these builds were never, ever, *ever* meant to see the light of day in this fashion. It's understandable that they did things like this.
@@sedrosken831 Oh I'm not saying it's not understandable! I know WHY they did it. And I totally believe they probably have the builds or at the very least, the assets somewhere. It's just, for people like us that LOVE beta content, it's kinda sad to think we may have missed out on a playable demo of Zelda 64. Also, the chances of us seeing anything Nintendo have is quite slim. I mean, the giga leaks happened, but, they can't leak everything Nintendo has. I mean I AM very grateful to have what we do have. It is VERY awesome to see these places in action! And not in old grainy pictures and videos. I do hope in the future we get to see more. Zelda 64 is something I am VERY interested in just because of how huge it is!