Prerelease:The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
This page details prerelease information and/or media for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.
 | This article has just been started and needs the article basics added. Help us out and add them. Notes: Add the game conferences/dates the images are from. |
 | This article is a work in progress. ...Well, all the articles here are, in a way. But this one moreso, and the article may contain incomplete information and editor's notes. |
Contents
Pre-Release Footage
 | To do:
|
At various game conferences, Nintendo showed off footage of the game in various development stages, often exhibiting differences to the final game.
WIP: GDC 2007, Eiji Aonuma Presentation. A Trailer is shown off at that conference, and additional live gameplay is shown, of which a few seconds were captured by nintendoworldreport.com. Journalists were apparently also seeded additional screenshots privately.
| To do: Extract relevant content about Zelda DS from this article and fit it into a rough timeline. |
dngn_fire
There are a few changes in the layout of the Temple of Fire during development builds.
First Floor
On the first floor, the puzzle in the top left corner where you’re introduced to the mechanic of using the boomerang to hit the crystals to make the colored blocks go down was slightly altered to no longer prevent backtracking, and to force the player to draw a longer path for the boomerang, which works to introduce that you can draw the path outside of the currently visible area on the screen. [1]
Second Floor
On the second floor, there are several changes: The room in the top left where you have to light two torches with your boomerang has the torches on platforms surrounded by lava in the final version, while the entire room is flat in the earlier build. [1]
The room you get the boomerang in has a puzzle where you have to hit a crystal switch on a platform surrounded by lava in order to proceed. These two platforms (and the lava pit) are arranged alongside the bottom of the room in earlier builds, while they are on the right side of the room in the final version. [2]
The room you find yourself in when you enter this floor has a puzzle where you’re introduced to using the boomerang to lower the colored block barriers to proceed. This puzzle is a lot more drawn out in an earlier build, requiring you to lower and raise them several times, while the final version replaces most of this with a lava pit and some enemies you have to maneuver around, thereby reducing the puzzle. [3]
Third Floor
On the third floor, there are a number of changes.
The room you arrive in when you enter the floor has a hole in the floor in the final version, a few slime enemies, and two candles you have to blow out to progress. In the earlier version, the hole isn’t there yet (presumably because it would not have looked very impressive, since the walls for lava pits weren’t transparent yet in that build). [1]
Secondly, the stone tablet that is located off to the side in the final version is located in an indentation in the middle of the wall section (as can be seen in the minimap). [1]
Additionally, the trapdoor preventing you from accessing the section of the map with the boss key is in a different location as well. [2]
Another change is that in earlier builds the room you get the boss key in has an elevated section where the golden chest is. This was not the case earlier on, where the entire room was flat. [1]
Finally, the key that drops when you hit the switches in the right order doesn’t drop onto the little platform (which was only added later), but instead either spawns a treasure chest or drops it directly in front of you (Can't say which it is, since it's never shown). [2]
dngn_main
| To do: Add screenshots from pre-release footage. |
Phantom Changes:
Once you beat the Dungeon of Wind, you return to find the Phantoms are now a different color/type. This change applies to the Phantoms on previous levels as well as the new ones. At a later point, you’re introduced to Warp Phantoms, however those only appear on those new levels and don’t replace the Phantoms on the previous levels. At one point, this was supposed to be different, and the golden Warp Phantoms were going to be on the previous levels as well, replacing the red ones. [1a]
In earlier builds of the game, alerting one Phantom didn’t automatically alert all of them on the floor. (This behavior can still be toggled in the final game and seen in the player_dngn test map. [1b]
Other Changes:
The logo of the Ocean king is prominently featured in dngn_main_f, but in a previous build these textures featured an hourglass logo instead. [2]
In the 3rd floor in the top right corner of the map where you enter the floor, there’s a puzzle you have to do to make the key appear. This involves hitting two crystal switches. In the final game, the left one is located in a crevice in the top wall to the right of the phantom standing guard instead of being in the middle rectangular section like the right one. This was different in the earlier build, where both were located in the middle rectangular sections each. [1c]
This was changed to force the player to use sound to distract the phantom instead of just being able to blast past it (which was probably too easy, especially once you have the boomerang and bombs).
isle_main
| To do: Add section. |
Sea
| To do: Add section. |
UI Changes
| To do: This is just an outline and not reflective of the final content yet. Need to add sources/screenshots/whole sentences. Like everything here so far, WIP. |
The game's UI underwent several changes in the course of its development.
Player HUD
- Items/Menu color and shape.
- Clear All button in maps.
- Blue arrow to advance text boxes.
Boat
- Health Bars instead of green hearts in Ship mode. [1a]
- Three speed stages for ship. [1b]
- Cannon had to be equipped like an item (same as Wind Waker). [1c]
