Former Rare staffer: "Nintendo were often quite envious of us"

[Mr Khan]

Rare did some good things with N64 tech, though i don't know about that rumor. It's obvious OoT went through a few revisions before the final product, if you look back to the old N64 Zelda tech demo of Link vs Dark Link (where Dark Link looked a lot like Metal Mario), and the fact that originally, OoT was set entirely in Zelda's castle like Mario 64 in Peach's Castle (an artifact which no doubt inspired the layout of OoT's final dungeon). Many revisions were made, whatever Rare was doing with Banjo Kazooie at the time