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Rare, Unreleased Original Legend of Zelda Prototype Unearthed

by VGChartz Staff, posted on 25 December 2010 / 18,905 Views

Well well well, how about this?  An official prototype for the original Famicom/NES Zelda no Densetsu (better known to the world as The Legend of Zelda) has just been discovered somewhere, and the best part is that it's been converted to a .fds file and made available on the internet for free!

It's an official Nintendo prototype of the original game, "complete with different room layouts, sprite changes, new music, and odd glitches."  It's quite rare for first-party prototypes like this to make their way to the public, especially nearly 25 years after the original release date.  Strangely, the original version of the game was far easier than the final build.  Take a look at some of the original prototype's screenshots compared side-by-side with the final version:

Note the fire-breathing statues and how many more Darknuts are in the top right screen (the prototype screens are on the left; the final build's are on the right), and how, in the bottom set, the Pols Voice had no whiskers in the prototype.  Pretty neat, huh?  Also, the maxed-out Rupees indicate that it was a lot easier to acquire money in the original vision for the game.  Imagine a remixed Master's Quest version of the original Zelda released on WiiWare or something...  That'd be pretty swell.

However, we won't have to worry about that, because you can download the .fds file for yourself here, or the .nsf here.  I'm not really sure what programs you need to decode these files (offer some help in the comments!), but here they are.  Enjoy!

Thanks to Lost Levels for all the work they did obtaining this disk and converting it to a usable file for the rest of us.  Thanks for saving the past; we love you guys.


9 Comments

dfhjkyului
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dsghrtjty
dsghrtjty (on 28 December 2010)

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Kasz216
Kasz216 (on 28 December 2010)

I agree with Cheebee... how do we know it's not just a rom hack?

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dfhjrttyj (on 27 December 2010)

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Mr Puggsly
Mr Puggsly (on 27 December 2010)

I read the title wrong. I thought it was saying the studio Rare worked on a unreleased Zelda game. This is much less interesting.

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XanderZane
XanderZane (on 27 December 2010)

Interesting, but not really interested in beta Zelda games. If you picked up the Zelda Collections for the Wii, you really don't need anything else.

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Cheebee
Cheebee (on 26 December 2010)

How do we know these are original, official Nintendo files...? Have Nintendo commented on them?

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mercluke
mercluke (on 26 December 2010)

" I'm not really sure what programs you need to decode these files (offer some help in the comments!)" http://www.zophar.net/nes/fce-ultra.html (you'll also need the "fds bios" (i wont link it here due to legality, google it) enjoy~

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