10 Things You Never Knew About The Original Legend Of Zelda
7. The Story Could Have Been Very Different
The Legend of Zelda's storylines usually revolve around Link travelling to new worlds, parallel dimensions, or different time periods. By comparison, the original game's plot was pretty straight-forward; Find the Triforce, kill Ganon, save Zelda, be home for tea (or whatever the equivalent of tea is in Hyrule).
But according to Satoru Iwata, the mechanics and structure for The LoZ were going to be used for a Super Mario game called Adventure Mario. Although this was retooled into The LoZ, it had little resemblance to the finished product.
First off, the story took place in modern day. Halfway through the game, Link would travel to the future to track down electronic chips to form the Triforce, which was originally called The Power Triangle. According to Shigeru Miyamoto, this original storyline is why Link is so-called; he is "linked" to different timelines.
This wasn't the first time Miyamoto tried to insert this idea into a game but it was ultimately rejected by the other developers (probably because it was too complex). Miyamoto didn't get the chance to implement the time-travel mechanic until he worked on a little obscure game called The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 13 years later.