Link is known for his taste in unusual musical instruments, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker almost had the green-clad hero play the theremin to tame the seas. While The Wind Waker had a divisive early reception among Legend Of Zelda fans when it first launched on the Nintendo GameCube in 2002 due to its more cartoon-like graphics and a radically different setting, it would later be regarded as one of the best entries in the long-running series, and fans are still calling on Nintendo to re-release The Wind Waker on the Nintendo Switch to this day.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker gets its name from the Wind Waker item, a mystically empowered conductor’s baton that Link uses to call upon the power of the Sages to perform all kinds of tasks in his quest to rescue his sister from the wicked sorcerer Ganon. With the Wind Waker, Link can change the direction of the wind to help make navigating the Great Sea atop his boat easier, open the doors to ancient temples, change the time from day to night, and much more. This mechanic is very similar to the titular Ocarina from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Link’s wolf-form howls in the later Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, but players could have utilized a different instrument altogether to unleash Link’s musical abilities in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
The popular gaming YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming recently set out to uncover hidden secrets and details surrounding The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker by researching and translating several gaming-based magazines for interviews and anecdotes from the game’s development team. One of the first facts uncovered was that the devs behind The Wind Waker originally wanted Link to use a theremin, a box-like electronic instrument that was invented by Soviet radio engineer Leon Theremin and is commonly associated with the classic UFO sounds heard in many old sci-fi movies. The development team was inspired to include a theremin in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker after watching a movie about Theremin’s life, and planned to have players control the instrument by holding their GameCube controllers down on a surface - with the grey analog joystick and yellow C-stick each representing one of Link’s hands playing the theremin.
The team at DidYouKnowGaming unearthed many other hidden tidbits surrounding The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, including how the development team wanted players to feel like they were an outside entity guiding Link rather than the hero himself, which was achieved by having Link’s eyes move around of their own accord instead of focusing along with the in-game camera. Additionally, Link's eyes were originally going to be a solid black, but this was nixed after a European fan wrote in explaining how this made players uncomfortable. Lastly, the game’s difficulty was originally going to be much higher, only for Shigeru Miyamoto to have it changed due to Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask players reportedly getting stuck on bosses and never completing them.
There are plenty more stories and secrets surrounding the production of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and how it transformed from what the developers originally intended to the finished product, but one of the most noteworthy is how the titular instrument could have been completely different. Of course, Link could always take up the theremin in a later Legend of Zelda game, such as the currently untitled Breath of the Wild sequel that is set to launch sometime next year.
Source: DidYouKnowGaming/YouTube