Home > Aonuma Had A Year Deadline For Majora's Mask!
The most difficult part was when Mr Miyamoto told me: 'you've got to finish it within one year'! And at first I was quite at a loss what to do: what we could do with the Zelda franchise within just one year? And then there came help from the Ocarina team and we were able to use the same team members who already had experience of working on the same engine, and also Mr Miyamoto advised us to think about anything that was left undone during the development of Ocarina.
So we focused on the time mechanism already included in the Ocarina engine and decided that we should focus on the three-day system. And by adapting it so that everything would reset if the game cannot be completed within three days, I think that we were able to come up with one idea after another which made for a very fast-paced, excited game.
As I really wanted to surprise people in a very meaningful way that was something which suited my own desire. And even though we had to tackle the challenge of completing the game in one year, it was actually an exciting challenge and I felt the team could make it." - Eiji Aonuma
