Recently, a rare interview with Nintendo Producer Shigeru Miyamoto was rediscovered from a 1992 issue of Electric Brain magazine. In it, he discussed many of the challenges that Nintendo faced while developing the incredibly ambitious Zelda title, A Link to the Past.
It’s a fascinating read that covers many aspects of the design process of the game. There was one detail in particular that caught my eye: At one stage, the game wasn’t “A Link to the Past” at all.
The publication asked Miyamoto why he decided to continue with The Legend of Zelda name, adding that “This is the same name for the game on the 8-bit Famicom.”
Miyamoto responded, “At first we came up with all sorts of titles, like ‘The New Legend of Zelda’ or ‘Gannon Strikes Back’, but basically it’s Zelda on the Super Famicom.”
“The New Legend of Zelda” is interesting as a scrapped title, as Nintendo would later adopt the “New” moniker for Mario with the New Super Mario Bros. series starting in 2006. More recently, we’ve also seen the New Nintendo 3DS, an updated revision of the popular portable system.
Of course, had Miyamoto and his team settled on “Gannon Strikes Back,” I imagine the correct spelling of “Ganon” would likely have been applied instead. Since the mistranslation of “Gannon” was in widespread circulation thanks to the original Legend of Zelda, however, it’s highly plausible (and understandable) that this instance of “Gannon” was just an error printed in the interview.
Source: Zelda Wiki
Another interesting thing about this title is that, from Miyamoto’s phrasing and the way the question was framed, it’s possible that this was considered to be the full title of the game — not a subtitle that would follow “The Legend of Zelda:”. Since every mainline Zelda has religiously followed this naming convention, “Ganon Strikes Back” could have altered this trend drastically if this were the case.
I’m always so intrigued by the ideas and prototypes of games early in their development process, and comparing the final product to what could have been. It’s interesting to note that Miyamoto mentioned the team “came up with all sorts of titles,” and these are just two of the examples that came to his mind that day. Being a Super Famicom game and considering the trends in naming its games at the time, I wonder if “Super Legend of Zelda” was ever considered among those other titles he mentioned?
