The Story Behind Link’s Second Quest, aka Your Childhood Was a Mistake

Life is just one long chain of events that came incredibly close to not happening. From evolution to electricity, many of the most historically important events of our lives were just as close to not happening as they were to happening. More importantly than stuff like human beings evolving from the primordial ooze or some old dude getting his kite hit by lightning is The Legend of Zelda. Brace yourselves for this one, but the legendary Second Quest was just a programming mistake. In a recent “Iwata Asks” entry on Nintendo’s website, Toshihiko Nakago made us all realize just how close our childhoods came to being just a little bit crappier by revealing that the Second Quest of The Legend of Zelda was actually supposed to be integrated into the First Quest. That was until Takashi Tezuka made a mistake and only programmed half of the games dungeons, thus changing the course of human history.

Toshihiko Nakago explains;

I created the data exactly in line with it, but then Tezuka-san made a mistake and only used half of the data. I said, “Tezuka-san, there’s only half here. Where did the other half go?” and he was like, “What?! Oops, I messed up…” But Miyamoto-san said it was fine just like that.

Apparently Miyamoto then played the game with only half the data and decided that it was perfect just like that, because that guy is like the video game Morpheus and knows exactly how to fulfill our dreams. They eventually decided to fill the other half of the memory with the remaining dungeons and added them as the secret Second Quest. So yeah, it almost didn’t happen. It is crazy to think about how different The Legend of Zelda would have been with the Second Quest integrated into the first one. Would it still have become as legendary if it were that much longer and that much more difficult? If the difficulty turned off all of us young and impressionable gamers to the series, how different would the gaming landscape look even today? Would any of us even be the same people we are right now if they never made that mistake and Zelda didn’t capture our imaginations? It is way too early in the morning to start getting philosophical about video games. I need a drink. It isn’t too early in the morning for that.

[Source: Nintendo]