Aonuma Says Zelda A Link Between Worlds Is Inspired By Super Mario 3D Land

Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma says that the forthcoming sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has been inspired by the critically acclaimed Super Mario 3D Land. Wired said to Aonuma, I think people are ready for this because of that one level in Super Mario 3D Land where it looked like a top-down Zelda-style game, but in 3-D. It looked pretty cool, that type of top-down gameplay with a 3-D display. Aonuma replied with the following.

“That was all Mr. Miyamoto (laughs). Those are Miyamoto’s ideas; he came up with the top-down 3-D in Super Mario 3D Land, and he actually gave me a mission: To work on a 3-D Link to the Past. But I didn’t want to make a remake. I wanted to make a new title but I wasn’t exactly sure how I could incorporate this world into my new project. One of my designers was working on this concept of having Link go into the walls, and being able to access places that he couldn’t get past. If you think about this idea of top down, walking around on the ground and all of a sudden merging with the wall and then the camera angle kind of shifts into this 3-D perspective — if you think about it, maybe Mario Kart is doing something kind of similar to that — but the 3-D representation really matches when you think about shifting between those two perspectives. So that’s when it kind of clicked. And when I looked at how Super Mario 3D Land was also doing the same thing, and the positive reaction it was getting from the users, it did, it reinforced what I was doing and it told me I was on the right track.”

Thanks, Silent and Mike S