The father of the Zelda franchise, Shigeru Miyamoto, apparently didn’t like the design that Nintendo went with for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. The game went on to be touted as one of the greatest video games of all time and went on to have multiple direct sequels on different platforms.
Miyamoto went ahead and “literally cringed” when he first saw the new style. Someone in the development team decided to draw Link in a completely different style than other games and instead of making it something to pin to their wall, Toon Link captured the hearts of the rest of the team and they went ahead with the new style. This was much to the chagrin of its creator and he was against the new style to the very end.
The news comes from DidYouKnowGaming, who translated a series of old Nintendo Dream articles, on YouTube. Chief among the translations was an article interviewing its director, Eiji Aonuma. In the translated interview, he also recalled how he delayed showing Miyamoto the new style for as long as he could as he felt he wouldn’t like it. Sure enough, when he was forced to do a presentation, he made one last effort to note that it wasn’t too late to turn around and make a more realistic Zelda game.
Wind Waker was initially going to channel a similar style to Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, even going as far as having a prototype for the differing style. This, of course, didn’t go anywhere and we got the version we know today.
The new style really paid off as it wasn’t like the more anime-inspired style that they were going for was beloved at the time, it was rather controversial, actually. This shift paved the way for its mobile games, keeping the Toon Link style for the spin-offs and mobile releases while retaining a more realistic look for the console games.