Last month I moved to a new home and as with all cases of moving, this went hand in hand with a big clearance of my stuff. Much was thrown away, much of which I didn't even remember I still owned, while some things I took extra care that I wouldn't lose or damage them. Boxes upon boxes of things, it was a mess. When you move, is when you know how much exactly you own.
Boxes of game related stuff as well. Consoles, games, strategy guides, memorabilia, you name it, it was there. Regarding games I had everything pretty well organised, so I knew what I had. One thing however, or rather, one stack of things however, I thought I had lost some time ago, but there it was buried behind piles of what was in effect, garbage. It pays to search through everything, as it became apparent, because I'm very happy to have found this, being of great personal nostalgia, stack of papers.
They are drawings. About a hundred of them. Game related drawings and in particular, Zelda and Mario Kart related drawings. I remember when I was just a kid going into my early teens, I was always drawing. My parents were divorced and my father didn't have a computer at the time. Yes, this was still in an age when not everybody had a computer. So I drew pages upon pages of game related things. I drew cities and regions for SimCity, theme parks for Rollercoaster Tycoon and I even remember drawing hospitals for Theme Hospital. Sadly I haven't found many of those anymore, but I do have all my Zelda and Mario Kart drawings because luckily I kept those in a neat folder.
I liked to design concepts for entire games back then. I drew dungeons and fields for Zelda, and race courses for Mario Kart. Pretty elaborate mostly as well, coming up with plots and puzzles, new enemies and even location of each of the famous jars you can smash in every Zelda game. Because I like you guys, I took the time to photograph them all, and show you the best of them. Please excuse the 'stone-coal-English' in these drawings ('Steenkolenengels' is a Dutch expression meaning the use of translations of Dutch words and phrases in the most literal manner, often making little sense in proper English, football-manager Louis van Gaal is a perfect example of a user of 'Steenkolenengels'), as the oldest of these drawings is almost 15 years old.
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I'll start at the beginning, with a design for a Zelda game. The images are all clickable for the full size. This is it's title-screen/cover-art;
"The Curse of Hyrule". Doesn't that sound ominous? I'm not entirely sure anymore, but I remember the original name being something with the word 'Oracle', until the real Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages released, when I changed it. The plot has something to do with Ganon cursing the land of Hyrule and people died. It didn't make much sense, but I was 13! Back then, I apparently didn't know the 'i' is usually an 'e' in English, probably because the 'i' in Dutch sounds like an English 'e'. I did figure I would do the text on these drawings in English, which now a decade-and-a-half later, is lucky for you guys, because I thought Dutch would look so weird in a Zelda game.
Majora's Mask was the newest game at this point in time, so this game of mine was for the N64 and it borrows much from it and Ocarina of Time, that's how old this is. You can see the paper itself has yellowed and is almost falling apart. I remember the oldest of these drawings being made on printer paper with those holes on the sides you could peel off. I also never realised that the Zelda logo, is supposed to be all capitals apparently.
But let's move on:
So this is it. The land of Hyrule. It's basically Ocarina of Time's Hyrule with some stuff moved around. For some reason, the Temple of Time and Hyrule Castle are outside of the town, the Mountain Range came down from Majora's Mask and Richard's Villa of all things, from Link's Awakening.
Don't ask. Next up;
And Castle Town, even though there's no castle. A bit of an open plan it seems, but everything's there. In fact, there's even a restaurant and a health spa. It seems I was more concerned with the well-being of the Hylians than Nintendo is. The 'Curse Tower' in the middle, is the final dungeon, which Ganon conveniently placed right in the center of the main town of Hyrule.
I'll be skipping some stuff, because otherwise I need three threads for this, and I assume you guys have lives (although...). In fact, the player doesn't start off in Castle Town at all, there's stuff before it and I'll also skip the first dungeon. On towards the second;
Death Mountain. It's there in this game too. Complete with Darunia, yes the Darunia, because why not. Apparently, Darunia here likes so-called 'ore-pieces' and you have to get some for him from inside the crater. It seems as a 13-year-old, I never minded the fetch quests in Zelda games.
Doing some stuff here obviously leads you at one point to;
The "Ice Temple". Yes, I did this in my spare time, and I'm giving you the short version. Anyway, maybe I inspired it off the rumoured Ice Temple that was cut in Ocarina of Time, but I'm not sure anymore. I never drew all this chronologically, unlike how I am presenting it right now, as you'll see in other drawings. This one is actually one of the later ones I drew. The paper isn't as yellow. Still, even though there's clear progress in my thinking skills, the puzzles here are still pretty basic and simple compared to what's in the real games.
After this, you have to go to the desert, which is almost a carbon copy of the Gerudo Desert in Ocarina of Time so I'll spare you those pages;
In the desert, the third dungeon is located. As far as I recall, this was the very first page I ever drew on this. Even before the title-screen drawing, but I could be wrong. Not much to say except that it borrows heavily from Dodongo's Cavern and somewhat from the Spirit Temple in again, Ocarina of Time. It's a pretty linear dungeon, and I figured it would be a good idea to have fairy fountains in every dungeon, as if it wasn't already easy enough.
Later on though, I got more creative;
This is a mini-dungeon where you find the song that opens the Lava Temple, which I'll skip. Lava, because that's hotter than Fire, was my childish reasoning I guess. The funny thing is you can skip the bottom-arm in this if you don't use the key you get in the first room on the door to the dead-end corridor.
With this drawing, I came up with the idea that there could be more floors, as innovative as that is, so this one has two pages;
And the song at the end of the basement floor, after fighting the Iron Knuckle that's neatly sitting in a chair. I just drew some random N64-buttons, I don't think I ever knew what it sounds like when you actually play this in any of the real games.
So that's that for my musical career;
After that it's the Lost Woods, which just can't be absent in any good Zelda game. So it also wasn't in mine. I came up with a song that would give you hints, like here in the Lost Woods, but it isn't much of a hint when it's not very useful from a third-person, 3D perspective, isn't it. The Pegasus Boots made it's comeback, which wouldn't really be used judging from my other drawings I'm afraid.
The Lost Woods drawing is the perfect example of how I never drew these things in chronological order, because this is obviously drawn on newer paper and is in color, while the dungeon it leads to looks like this;
The "Wind Temple", judging by the smudged paper and the grey pencil this one was the second one I ever drew. If I said it was Ocarina's Shadow Temple I think most would believe that. Because I made this dungeon early on, it never really utilises some features and items I injected later on, but that didn't matter to me.
This was the second to last regular dungeon, but I'll skip the last dungeon in Lake Hylia to head back to Castle Town immediately;
I wasn't very good at circles yet, as is evident. Just know that what looks kind of like an egg, is actually supposed to be perfectly round. Also, Iron Knuckles can, naturally, be "freezed" [sic] and I wasn't stingy with the carpeting for sure.
This is one of the others that's multi-floored, though I wouldn't really call four floors a 'tower';
The free-roaming walls in the floor plan is also very interesting. Luckily though, I got better at floor plan development during my architecture studies.
I didn't dare to show you any of the previous bosses, because they are just too bad, but of course, and I did draw them all, at the end of any dungeon, there's is a boss;
Bongo-Bongo clone if you ever saw one. At least Nintendo themselves did it too afterwards with the boss in the Tower of the Gods in Wind Waker so I guess I can't be too ashamed of it. At least it's "easy to hit but hard to defeat", which is good to know, but it really isn't that hard judging from the rest of the text.
So then it's near the end of the game, and a surprise final dungeon appears as the tower collapses;
A final dungeon appears underneath the tower, where totally out of the blue, Agahnim, yes, none other than A Link to the Past's Agahnim, is the boss. And Ganon after him. This dungeon actually isn't that bad of an idea, besides the boss, as it has a collection of two rooms representing each previous dungeon.
Because I got more elaborate in these drawings, this dungeon also has multiple floors. I even thought of starting at 'B1' because it's underneath the tower!
It ends in another A Link to the Past feature, where the player must use the Magic Mirror to return to the start. It doesn't really have another purpose and apparently you must get it at some random point in the Temple of Time. What, I never said there wouldn't be any plot-holes in this!
So after that you fight Agahnim and Ganon and the game ends. But not really, because there's a secret dungeon. I just wanted to draw another dungeon I guess so I shoe-horned in the "Secret Grotto Dungeon";
It's probably the best one regardless, and I obviously drew it last, maybe even sometime after the rest. It's accessible through a hole in the ground in Hyrule Field it seems, and you must unlock a series of doors with 'gems' you find in each dungeon. These gems are placed on pedestals which also need to be activated in each respective dungeon. Why it couldn't be one or the other I don't know, but there it is. I might have been a year or two older since I started all this, but most of my choices were still pretty questionable. I don't know why it would be "wise to complete this dungeon before the Curse Tower" either, but look! My circles improved!
This might even be the biggest dungeon as well, thought I never really drew to scale (Scale? What's that?);
Though judging by the bottom-left wing compared to the top, I probably should have drawn to scale. I also had some kind of tribal effect going on. Everything finally got more organised though, there's definite progress. Maybe this whole project actually helped me develop my organising, problem solving and planning skills, aside from training my drawing skills. On second thought, I urge every kid to draw their own game ideas!
This dungeon is so large, it actually needed a third page;
But what happens there?!
It's evident that by this drawing, the GameCube had released and I had played Super Mario Sunshine, because how else could I have known about this following boss;
The one and only. Bowser Jr. is in this game. Just look at him, isn't that the best Bowser Jr. drawing you ever saw? Nintendo's artists be jealous. Mario is there too. I thought, if you're going to do an easter egg in a secret dungeon, do it well.
After that I lost interest in my initial idea. By now, Wind Waker had released and my ideas got old. Even when being 14 or 15, I knew. At least I almost completed it, I drew plans and ideas for pretty much every area in my game. I have a note that says what I still needed to do. It's not much. It says: "Place 14 12 8 7 Heart Pieces".
It still didn't end here though. No, I had a new idea, so with that I drew a whole new world map;
This is actually pretty cool. I remember having the idea that Hyrule was under seige by the army of Ganondorf. Hyrule can't fight back, because Ganondorf set up a series of barriers impassable to regular the person, but they could be passed through by the evil forces. Link must deactivate them by deactivating each barrier's power source which is of-course, in a dungeon. Why those dungeons are conveniently on Hyrule's side for Link to access is a good question and an obvious plot-hole, but I was still only about 15 by this time. I was almost there.
I envisioned four dungeons located in the areas underlined in the drawing, each only accessable by a special key you needed to get in mini-dungeons. It's similar to how Majora's Mask has a couple mini-dungeons where you get items to use in the main dungeons. I envisioned there'd be big battles between the evil forces and Hyrule's forces and even thought it would be cool if the game started off during the final battle for Hyrule Castle when much of the land is in ruin. The player travels back in time to when the evil forces haven't advanced as far yet to stop it from ever happening. I even thought of visions Link would have of the future and the past in certain places.
Sadly I didn't get far with this idea though, as I only made one and a half more drawings before my interest shifted once more;
The starter dungeon. It's a testing ground for would-be heroes inside Hyrule Castle. You can see I got older, because my drawings and the legibility of them improved greatly. It's better to scale as well, although it still isn't exactly aligned with the paper, but that's nit-picking.
It's too bad I never completed this Zelda game idea, but by now it was 2004, and my interest shifted away for a final time. I hope you guys are still with me, because we're moving away from Zelda;
And are moving towards Mario Kart. By now I knew the word 'design' was with an 'e', and I wanted to design enough courses for six cups. Double Dash! was the newest game at this time, so by today's standards the courses are a bit basic. No anti-gravity shenanigans here. I figure the title was a place-holder, but it's funny that the 'Shell Cup' and the 'Lightning Cup' would end up being used in real games later.
I also didn't finish this one, but I did come up with ideas and names for each course;
With distances and everything. Those were mainly for me to compare them to distances of courses in the real games. I was quite organised in how I proceeded here, I even had math-formulas to know what the time-trail times would be. A nerd here for sure. Anyway, another idea here actually came to fruition in real games. I had a course that was a line from a start to end and as we know, today we have a couple of those in more recent games!
Like in real life, courses started off simple;
A nice little country house. Daisy's apparently. I just went on using English, even though real Mario Kart can be in Dutch here. I guess I knew deep down that someday far into the future, I would show it all to you guys on this forum. Every drawing included a perspective view, a true map showing every feature, the on-screen map design, some stats and a section showing the relative height.
Then, because Double Dash! was on the mind;
I vividly remember drawing this, even if it was, say, 11 years ago. Contrary to the Zelda ideas, I did draw all this in the right order. Should be a funny course, especially when you can endlessly drive on the highway part of it in the middle, reappearing at the bottom every time.
Courses get more complicated as the cups progress though;
Well maybe not yet this one. The best course you'll ever see, it's just a long, straight line. Even it's elevation is. I'm not sure the scale of the drawing would add up to "1200 meters", but it's a genius idea for a course, if I say so myself. And I must, I'm probably the only person I could possibly persuade on this notion.
It does get better though;
For real this time, I like this one. Basically like the DS's Luigi's Mansion course, but mine precedes it. Har, har, har. I like my idea of the mirror, where you race up to it and your mirror image pops out of when you're near it to race alongside you until it vanishes into a second mirror. It would get quite chaotic when every character's mirror image races through the hallway simultaneously. Such fun!
Then I got a little more creative by giving little known side-characters a chance in the spot-light with their own racing course, like this one;
"Whomp & Chomp Land". Look at that awesome logo, I remember being a happy guy when I drew this. Sadly though much of my motivation ended with the logo, because the course itself could have been more interesting.
A shame, but the mountain idea would come to better use a cup later, and I went all-out;
Though a mountain of 250 meters in height isn't much, being from the Netherlands, if it's over 0, it's worth mentioning. Still, dropping 250 meters with your kart is quite something. There's a lot going on in this course; tight turns, it's pretty long, there's a waterfall and snowstorms and there's a lot of Goombas and Shy-Guys scattered around as well. Somewhat simple compared to the regular Mario Kart 8 course, but this could have been a good course for Mario Kart 64 or Double Dash!. Especially the former, considering the name being from a level in Super Mario 64.
And ideas didn't stop there, they still didn't;
Cannonballs, explosions and wrecked terrain. It was al there when I made "Wario's Bob-Omb Battlefield". A real Wario themed course.
I was really into it by the time I was drawing the courses of the Star Cup, but by now I was in the later stages of high school and my father moved in with his new wife. By then, I had more portable options for gaming as well, more games to play in general and I got more into recreation in the outside world. To make a long story short, I got older. And drawing these things took longer and longer until I got to what you would call, a hiatus. I did try to restart though, and started on one more drawing;
The final one and the most elaborate yet. A real Bowser course like every Mario Kart has. I think this is the best one, it wouldn't even look out of place in a real game. Sadly I never finished this one, as is obvious, but the map, the most important part, is there.
It didn't matter in the long run. I never rekindled the desire to draw these game ideas anymore. With "Bowser's Castle", my youth ended. I think the last drawing was made somewhere halfway through 2005, because it was some time after the second-to-last one which was probably late 2004. Pretty much exactly 10 years ago, a funny coincidence. By then, I had graduated high school and was 17. That's too old to be drawing Nintendo stuff I guess, but it means I had been drawing these things for nearly 5 years! It's a shame we'll never know how "Kamek's Illusion" and this game's "Rainbow Road" would look like, though I do vaguely remember the ideas I had for them since I drew that page with the track list.
So there it is, what I found during moving. I almost shed a tear, but not really. I laid bare my childhood to you guys. The soul of my young teen self. I just wanted to share it with you guys. You can laugh, you can make fun of some things, or you can even like certain things. Please do any of those, as I do it myself as well! I'd also love to see if any of you have something similar to share. Lay bare your own childhood soul!
