In the latest Iwata Asks roundtable segment, Nintendo game director Shigeru Miyamoto revealed that he intended to make Zelda:  Ocarina of Time entirely in first-person.

I talked with Miyamoto-san about how we should make The Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo 64 system, and he asked, ‘How about making it so that Link will not show up?’,” said Yoshiaki Koizumi. “He wanted to make it a first-person game.”

“He wanted to make an FPS (first-person shooter),” Iwata added.

“Right. In the beginning, he had the image that you are at first walking around in first-person, and when an enemy appeared, the screen would switch, Link would appear, and the battle would unfold from a side perspective,” Koizumi added.

The development team eventually backpedaled on the decision, deeming the perspective not “interesting visually” for a Zelda title. Makes you wonder about all the crazy Miyamoto ideas that never saw the light of day.

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