Concept and production In late 2009, following the completion of
Spirit Tracks for the
Nintendo DS, the majority of its development team were assigned to work on
Skyward Sword for the
Wii. Three members of the
Spirit Tracks team began working on a new handheld
Zelda game for the upcoming
Nintendo 3DS console. Two of the three members working on the new game were Hiromasa Shikata and Shiro Mouri. During this early phase, they had not considered developing a sequel to
A Link to the Past; instead they were building a game around the theme of "communication". Around six months into the project, they presented their concept for the game to series creator
Shigeru Miyamoto, who called the idea outdated. The three then decided to rethink the concept. Shikata proposed the idea of Link having the ability to enter and merge onto walls; this feature would eventually become one of the unique gameplay aspects. Within a day, Mouri had created an initial prototype to demonstrate the feature, and seeing it in action led to an influx of ideas. Link was able to transform from a 3D character to a 2D character by entering walls, and then move smoothly around corners to reach places he previously could not. This ability opened up possibilities for creating new puzzles and using new mechanics. At this stage in the project, they still considered the game an extension of the DS
Zelda games and used the same viewpoint and design of Link from
Spirit Tracks. Around October 2010, the prototype was presented to Miyamoto, who approved of the new concept. However, within two weeks of entering production, core members of the development team were reassigned to work on
launch games for Nintendo's
Wii U console which was scheduled for release in 2012. With the team disbanded, development ceased. In November 2011,
Skyward Sword was released for the Wii, and
Zelda series producer
Eiji Aonuma began thinking about the next project in the series. While Nintendo had released a
remake of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS, demand for an original
Zelda game on the 3DS was growing. Aonuma chose to revisit the idea of Link entering walls. With Shikata and Mouri still engaged in the development of Wii U launch games, Aonuma decided to revive the project without its core members, 13 months after it was shelved. Kentaro Tominaga was brought onto the team to continue where Shikata had left off. He refined the system of entering walls and designed some small dungeons, which he presented to Miyamoto in May 2012. Tominaga planned to create 50 more small dungeons that would use the wall-entering mechanic, but Miyamoto criticised this approach and suggested basing the new game on
A Link to the Past. Aonuma proposed combining the wall-entering mechanic with the top-down perspective and
landforms of
A Link to the Past. He felt that the shift in perspective when entering a wall would be complemented by the stereoscopic 3D capabilities of the 3DS. Aonuma converted the two-dimensional landforms of
A Link to the Past into three-dimensional space and the team placed Link into the setting with the wall-entering mechanic to test the feature. After several more presentations to Miyamoto, development of the project was allowed to progress in July. The development team began expanding before the end of 2012, with people joining from finished projects; Shikata rejoined as director and Mouri returned as assistant director and lead programmer. Development was completed in October 2013.
Technical and design Implementing the top-down perspective became a particular problem and resulted in a lot of
trial and error. With a true top-down view, players would be unable to see characters' faces and bodies. To circumvent this issue, objects in the world were slanted at an angle so they were more visible. Mouri requested that the game run at 60
frames per second instead of 30 to stabilize the stereoscopic 3D and smoothen movement animations. While doubling the frame rate increased the processing load, it allowed the developers to implement a feature where players could select items by dragging and dropping them from their inventory using the Nintendo 3DS's
touchscreen and
stylus; at 30 frames per second, this feature felt too sluggish for the stylus's movement. Rethinking the conventions of
Zelda became an important theme as development progressed. In previous
Zelda games, the player would go into a dungeon, obtain a new item, and then move onto the next dungeon in a specific order. The development team felt that this formula was flawed as a player could get stuck on a dungeon and be unable to progress. They wanted to give the player more freedom in the ways they could advance, allowing them to tackle dungeons in any order and clear multiple dungeons in parallel, but this meant that the method for acquiring items had to be changed. They opted for a system where players could rent or purchase items using rupees. In the final game, rented items are returned to the merchant when the player is defeated, but the team had considered other ideas for returning rented items, such as setting a timer on the rental period and imposing fees if they were returned late. The development team found out about the
Nintendo 2DS during production. As the Nintendo 2DS lacked 3D capabilities, the team decided to revise some of the dungeon designs to be certain that they could be completed without the 3D effect. The designers thought that Link's appearance should change when Link entered a wall and the perspective switched from a top-down view to side view. They chose to make Link a mural while he was on a wall; this led to the creation of the antagonist Yuga, a sorcerer that can transform himself and others into paintings. Aonuma mentioned that the idea of Link turning into a mural was inspired by Phantom Ganon jumping into paintings during his encounter in
Ocarina of Time. As the story takes place long after the events of a
A Link to the Past and the player travels between the two worlds of Hyrule and Lorule, the development team chose
A Link Between Worlds instead of
A Link to the Past 2 for the English-language title.
Audio A Link Between Worlds features original music along with tracks from
A Link to the Past. Ryo Nagamatsu composed and orchestrated new music for
A Link Between Worlds, and played the flute music featured in the
milk bar. He also composed arrangements and adapted
Koji Kondo's original music from
A Link to the Past. Nagamatsu wanted to balance arrangements of past music with new music to please both old and new players. He began by revisiting old tracks and thinking how he could best adapt them for
A Link Between Worlds. He was eager to include choral performances as a way to add tension to the eerie and unpleasant scenes. Nagamatsu performed the vocals and made use of
multitrack recording to layer the different vocals tracks. The audio team decided not to use a live orchestra; the primary reason for this was to create optimal sound for the 3DS. The reverberations and low-pitch sounds created by a live orchestra were not suitable for the 3DS speakers. The majority of the music was created digitally, but with the intent of making it sound live recorded. Most strings were made using a
synthesizer, and various guitar and flute renditions of tracks found elsewhere in the game were performed live, with Nagamatsu playing the flute and
Toru Minegishi playing guitar. ==Release==