Z-Targeting In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Was Inspired By Ninjas

By Ishaan . June 16, 2011 . 8:28am

One of the biggest contributions made by The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time to the world of video games is the Z-targeting — or lock on, if you prefer — system it introduced. Since its advent, the concept has been used in one form or another in a number of games, ranging from Metroid Prime to Kingdom Hearts.

Curious as to what inspired Z-targeting in the first place?  Ninjas, that’s what. In a new Iwata Asks interview with the development staff of the original Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 64, general director, Toru Osawa, reveals that the team attended a period drama set in Japan, hoping it would provide them with inspiration for Ocarina’s combat.

“As we went along looking at everything, it was so hot that we ducked into a playhouse to cool off. They were doing a ninja show,” Osawa related. “A number of ninja were surrounding the main samurai and one lashed out with a kusarigama (sickle-and-chain). The lead samurai caught it with his left arm, the chain stretched tight, and the ninja moved in a circle around him.”

This led to the concept of creating an “invisible” chain between Link and his opponent while in Z-targeting mode that would allow him to circle around enemies in a similar fashion. The ninjas were only part of the inspiration, however.

Super Mario Galaxy director, Yoshiaki Koizumi, worked on Ocarina of Time as well. In attendance at a similar show, Koizumi noticed how the fight was choreographed so that only one opponent would attack the hero at a time, allowing him to seem like he was able to take on several opponents at once. In Koizumi’s mind, this inspired the idea of highlighting one opponent at a time, effectively putting the others “on hold”.

How does this make the Japanese devs awesome for some reason? It makes nintendo awesome if anything.

Besides things Japanese devs did 15 years ago won't erase the fact that most of them are wayyy behind now, sorry.

awww someones mad, when one has no good retort, they go down to insulting the oppositions liked products.

Anyway your thread title is pretty much hyperbole-ish....nothing in this proves Japanese devs are awesome now..or back then...in fact your point 2 is downright insulting to Western Devs....Japanese brains don't have some special brain cells that means only they can create "genre changing" ideas from "simple" events...loool.

.....Most Japanese devs are wayyy behind now. From not only this thread but other posts of yours regarding Western Devs vs Japanese ones on the forums it seems you have created a brick wall of pretense that Japanese devs are still at the top, they are not, the Western devs are far better now, even Japanese devs admit this.

Good day.

lol of course you are mad, you get hyper when anyone even slightly insults Japanese devs, everyone on this site knows this. Why else would go into gross generalizations that are almost down right racist (Only a Japanese could Create a Genre changing Idea from something so simple) ......that is still cracking me up. You have many other such quotes I should've saved!

As far as I'm concerned FFXIII, SO4 and WKC are just more proof of how backwards Japanese devs are this gen (and those games are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of me seeing that and others)....each of those three games are regressive for different reasons that have been seen enough in media reviews and reception....sure I might like those games more than many WRPG's but that doesn't mean they are more progressive, all three look like a laughing stock in front of Elder Scrolls V Skyrim (and other western games), quite frankly on a technical level and other levels.

Step 1...accept (Japanese devs have done this including one from your beloved Capcom don't forget). Step 2....improve.

I'm not saying all Japanese devs have regressed now, but using some cool thing made 15 years ago by Nintendo and turning it into a "JP DEVS ARE AAWESOME" circle jerk thread won't have me joining in I'm afraid, they aren't awesome anymore on the whole, they as an industry on the whole are at a pathetic level as we saw at E3 just now..their presence is shockingly low and bordering on irrelevancy on some fronts....and many other media sites have picked up on this recently.

***All of the above comments don't include handheld games quality...Japanese devs pwn on handhelds.

Why don't you two get a room?

I want to remain a Virgin until marriage.

Well this got derailed quickly, but when you think about it it makes a lot of sense: in a lot of Japanese media you see combat, even in a large situation like a battle, largely reduced to one-on-one affairs, so it would make sense that when they moved into 3D they developed a combat system around that idea of completely zoning in on one foe at a time

Granted, a bit of that stems from Japanese samurai tradition, where ground troops were more peripheral and the focus of the fight was pitting your side's samurai against the other guys'. It was really a style of fighting completely out of step with the outside world, which you saw whenever Japan ran into China, Korea, or Mongolia before the Meiji Restoration

Let him do you in your ass instea...

Oh, right! Sorry for intruding.