It does NOT take 3 years to remake a game that took roughly 2 years to make in the first place. It took WWHD only 6 months to be complted and that game was in hd (a feat Nintendo themselves has proved is harder to master than standard definition by a long shot). The fact that they've been saying "they want to do it" even though they already had started shows Nintendo is fine with misleading it's customers in favor of surprising us closer to release.There is definently something fishy going on that Nintendo is not revealing yet about this game. Here are my theories of what could explain this:

1) This isn't just a remake/remaster. It is going to have built it additional content (maybe expansionary set of dungeons/new end boss? or maybe a bunch of side quests in the game that you could do). Maybe they built in an online coop campaign and had to rework everything in the camera angles and whatnot.

2) They put a ridiculously small team on it for 2.5 years and only REALLY put a bunch of developers on it within the last 6 months - 1 year. I don't think this is realistic because they say WWHD only took 6 months of development (when it was probably toyed around with for longer than that in early development phases) so the fact that they didn't bother mentioning any super early developments as part of WWHD's development suggests they wouldn't do the same with MM3d which suggests that it really has taken 3 years of HARD development to create which kind of throws this theory out (imo) but it could still be the case.

3) They are secretly waiting to announce that (after this game releases on the 3ds for a month or two) that most of the development time was spent making the WIi U remastered version. 2 games being remastered (1 in 3d and another a 64 game in hd) I could EASILY see taking 3 years to make. That makes a lot of sense, and I really TRULY suspect this. The game is dark in setting and tone which would make it both look beautiful on the Wii U as well as fit in with it's more "hardcore" audience than the wii had.

4) It's been done for a while (years maybe), but they intentionally didn't want to release it until either a) the install base was larger for the 3ds (due to MM appealing to more of a 'hardcore' type player and not necessarily being a kid friendly game, they may have been concerned about its sales performance capability) or b) they wanted to wait until there was a big gap to fill to put it on. What better gap to fill than first half 2015? There isn't hardly anything coming out for the 3ds (quantity, not quality).

So which of my four do you think is the most logical reasoning? Or maybe you have one of your own?

I say it 2. Plus a weird porting problem.

Yeah, option 2. Most of the team have probably been helping with LOZ Wii U. Judging by the content I wouldn't be surprised if most of Nintendo's teams working on something so small as handheld content would be moved to help. Zelda U is probably at a good spot in development, smaller teams can go back to their projects. MM was not on their priority of things to get out the door.

Why would there be a weird porting problem? It's basically the same thing (from a technical standpoint) as the OoT3d game.

The RAM expansion pack requirement could of caused compatibity issues with the 3DS.

I also say number two, although not exactly.

I think Nintendo is saying has been in development since 2011 because of the idea, as that's when they came up with the idea to develop it, but they didn't want to release the game in such a close proximity to Ocarina of Time and steal away the interest of Wind Waker HD, so they held off on actually developing the game until later.

I highly doubt it took three years considering it has the same textures as Ocarina of Time. Either they had the idea of the game since 2011, or they finished it up already and they're releasing it now because they wanted to make sure Wind Waker HD got all the sales it could.

Resources and coding aren't the same on N64 as they are on 3DS. Meanwhile, for 3DS's introduction on the market, they had a medium/big team working on OoT 3D, so it seems that porting is easy, when it is not.

I believe the term is "something fishy".

Anyways, it doesn't really matter to me. I'm just happy they re-made the game.

I just quote myself from the other thread.

The town is probably not the only place that is seamlessly connected now.

and porting a GC game to WiiU (which basically is the same architecture.W ich is also the reason why you can play GC games on WiiU without emulator) is easier than porting a N64 game to 3DS so therefore its not going to take the same amount of time (its not just an emulator running the game like the GC Version of Majoras Mask was)

Also they remade character models and alot of other objects and made new textures etc. WWHD did not have that. They just added some shaders/bloom and made it widescreen (and added some minor changes  like fast sail etc)

And development also does not start with a huge team  probably with a lonely guy and since its a side-project now compared to being the next huge AAA Zelda back in 2000 the team is obviously smaller.

Do we know how long OOT3d was in development? Would be interesting to compare dev times.

What if the Majora's Mask engine is specially coded, with the intention of making a new 3D Zelda title for the New 3DS in much the same way that Majora's Mask itself was made following OoT?

If they've spent the time creating the new engine, it would explain why they've required so much time.

Alternatively, I'd expect significantly-expanded content. I like the idea I've seen suggested elsewhere that perhaps the game will have Amiibo support, allowing players to wear special masks representing the amiibos, with each one unlocking some extra scenes/items/etc. It could work kind of like the way that certain Pokemon games had the capability (via various means) of reading in extra data that would modify certain locations or items.

Add to this the possibility of a second Quest that actually changes up the daily schedule and the secondary storylines, and the slight chance of new dungeons entirely (I'd like to see the events at Romani Ranch extended to have a step where you have to actually stop the invaders at the source), and I could definitely see it all taking 3 years.