10 Features You Didn't Know Were Cut From Classic Video Games
3. The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening Had A Two-Player Co-Op Mode
Of all the games set within the nightmares of a flying whale-god, The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening is easily one of the best. It took the conventions of the first and third Zelda games and condensed them into a handheld Game Boy title. But rather than following the established Zelda formula, early versions of Link's Awakening very nearly introduced a major shift in gameplay.
Nintendo's 2011 Zelda compendium, Hyrule Historia, included design documents from the development of several Zelda games. One of these was a sketch from the early design stages of Link's Awakening and showed a massive "stone golem"-type boss... being fought by two Links.
A handwritten note on the sketch, translated as "Problem: what're we gonna do about 1P mode?", suggests that this boss was specifically intended to be handled by two players, using the Game Boy link cable. Apparently at this point in development, co-op play was so fundamental to the game's design that they hadn't considered what to do with this boss if somebody were playing solo.
Because the feature was scrapped, players had to wait until 2002's Four Swords to experience co-op Zelda with a friend who can't even figure out the freaking boomerang.