The original Legend of Zelda had a sense of ambition and scope that was far beyond any other game when it first hit Japan in 1986. And so it went with just about every Zelda game from that point forward, each🎉 with a long list of features and ideas that blazed new trails for other action/adventure games to emulate in the years to follow.

With each Zelda game swinging for the fences in terms of what actually made it into the final game, it probably isn't a huge surprise that the things that were planned but ultimately cut out for various reasons were even crazier and more potentially groundbreaking. To hear the developers tell it, whenever it is time to make a new Zelda game, the team sits around and basically tries to brainstorm a game so ambitious and with so many different moving parts that they know they couldn't possibly pull it all off—an💙d have to then whittle down that impossible game to one that is actually feasible.

Obviously, the result of that style of game planning is a whole lot of really fascinating scrapped ideas that have either yet to be realized, or were eventually utilized in later installments. The following list culls the best of those, from Zelda's "classic" era which encompasses the period from the original The Legend of Zelda to the dual releases of Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. Well, not all the games released during that time: it should go without saying, but nobody counts either of the CD-i Zelda games as part of the classic era even if they were released during that time frame.

25 🦋 The Legend Of Zelda's Sci-Fi Elements

Although the Zelda series is largely rooted in fantasy, it has plenty of elements of science fiction and futuristic tech. Breath of the Wild, for instance, has laser-shooting robot enemies and lets Link equip weapons that look straight out of Star Wars.

It might seem like those types of things didn't seep into the series until later, they were actually part of planning the original game. TLoZ's Link was almost a time-traveler, and more interesting, the 💟T꧂riforce was going to be made out of microchips!

24 💞 Ocarinaও Of Time Being Entirely In First-Person View

Ocarina of Time was the Zelda franchise's first jump to 3D, literally giving players a new perspective on Hyrule. One of the cool things that 3D allowe♚d was first-person looking as well as aiming of certain weapons, but it turns out that that was just a taste of what the entire game could've been like.

While brainstorming what form Ocarina would take, the developers toyed with the idea of making the ga𝓀me entirely first-person. Basically everyone is thankful they didn't go this route, but it's still an interesting concept to im𝐆agine.

23 🍎 Starting The Legend Of Zelda With The Sword

It's one of the most iconic moments in video game history, and for gamers of a certain age, it marked🦩 the beginning of their first true video gam꧃e adventure.

Remarkably, the famous "It's Dangerous To Go Alone..." screen almost didn't happen.

Early prototypes of TLoZ had Link starting the game w♏ith the sword already in hand—but after Miyamoto saw early play testers ignoring hints and NPC interactions, he decided to force players to visit to the old man at the start to "teach" them the importance of talking ❀to characters and exploring for hints.

22 A 2-Player Mode For Link's Awaඣkening

Zelda games remained solo affairs until Four Swords for the GameCube/Game Boy Advance, but the idea of dabbling in multiplayer was considered as far back as Link's Awakening.

While playtesting the game, a particular boss was giving the team so much trouble that they thought it would require a second player to beat it.

With this in mind, they wondered if they could make some sort of co-op mode work with the game—but ultimately decided to keep it a traditional, single-player Zelda. To this day, no mainline Zelda games have featured multiplayer.

21 Extra Hazards In Zelda 🎃II's Dungeons 💯

Remember playing Zelda II and thinking, "This game is too easy. It needs to be harder?" Of course you don'♐t, because literally nobody had that thought while getting their butt kicked by one of the most unforgiving games on the NES.

Remarkably, though, the game very nearly was more difficult. Website  uncovered unused graphics files in the gam🐓e that showed planned spikes for every dungeon. That's right—those dungeons very nearly had environmental hazards in theꦐm that would've made them that much tougher to work through.

20 Li♋nk To The Past's Third World

One of the most memorable and groundbreaking features of A Link to the Past was its dual-world co꧙nceit, where Link can freely travel baꦦck and forth between light and dark versions of Hyrule.

As boundary-pushing as two worlds already were, LttP almost had a third.

Miyamoto and his team always shoot for the moon when they are first conceptualizing a new Zelda game, and they actually thought they could get three separate worlds/maps working within the confines of an SNES cart. They quickly realized, however,ꦡ that it was just too ambitious as well as too potentially 𒐪confusing for the player.

19 🧸 Navi And Link's Love Story In Ocarina Of Time ܫ

With the jump to 3D, Nintendo knew they had to teac⛎h players a whole new approach to gaming and have them learn new mechani𝕴cs they might not have had to do before.

Super Mario 64 had its camera system be a character, followed by Ocarina of Time having its targeting system be a character.

However, Navi was almost much more than that—there was going to be a whole part of the game's plot where she not only was in loveꦚ with Link, but would tell h💦im so late in the game and have that be a big story moment.

18 Majora's Mask Had A Faceless Moon 𓄧

A lot of people—particularly those who make it their life's mission to rag on Nintendo—like to accuse the company of only making family-friendly, completely saccharine video games. Those that make that claim obviously never played Majora's Mask, with the moon and its spooky face constantly looming over ꦰthem and threatening to cause the end of the world.

An apocalyptic, ever-approaching moon would be scary enough, but it's the face that makes it. And in early screenshots of MM, that face is mis♌sing, not present in early builds of the game and being added later on.

17 Link To The Past's Z𒐪apper Segments

When the plan for a third Zelda game was fi♋rst being put on paper, it was going to be an NES game. Wisely, Nintendo decided to redirect the team to develop it for the upcoming SNES.

Among the ideas for "Zelda 3" when it was still going to be an NES game was having segments that utilized the NES Zapper.

Nintendo is famous for never forgetting an idea and eventually putting it to use years later. In this case, that came in the form of Link's Crossbow Training for the Wii, which came b🦋undled with the Wii Zapper.

16 The Game Boy Port Of Link To The Past 💝

Typically, games weren't directly "ported" from the NES and SNES to the Game Boy. In most cases, a Game Boy entry in a console franchise was a completely new game, or at least a heavily reworked version of it. Which makes the idea of porting Link to the Past as-is to the Game Boy a strange one.

But that's how Link's Awakening began development: As a Game Boy version of LttP. It was in the after hours tinkering in the earliest days of that project that made everyone realize Link's ༒GB debut should be something completely different.