Zelda games don’t get rid of the ‘crunch’ either: an old Ocarina of Time maker recounts his experience

The pro remembers working 14 hours a day for two weeks to get the game out.

The vast majority of players agree that Zelda: Ocarina of Time is real. revolution In the realm of 3D adventures that raises Nintendo’s name to never-before-seen levels. This love of the franchise has given us fan projects as elaborate as a full remake with Unreal Engine 4, but today there are people who remember this development for their ‘parts’.crunch‘ they lived.

Most of my time was spent on that gameJim Wornellone of these professionals Jim WornellTalking about her experience as a co-producer of the title in an interview with the Kiwi Talkz podcast (via Nintendo Life), she said, “Zelda was a great game, as I loved Ocarina of Time, almost death for me because most of my time was spent playing that game, two weeks without vacation, working from 8 in the morning to 10 at night. It was crazy”.

This problem went beyond long hours and, as Wornell recalls, also credit From her job: “[Ocarina of Time] developed towards the end of my time as co-producer. It was one of the last projects I worked on before I moved on to design, so it was a little frustrating to get to the end of the game and see my name in the credits. manual editor“.

Although the former producer explained that such a situation exists, towards the end of developmentWith the release date fast approaching, there’s no doubt he still remembers the details of that formidable patch. Despite this, he explains that Nintendo didn’t resort to crunch in all their games: “Well, Ocarina was Nintendo’s strongest release at the time, it was huge. Not like that in all games, no, not at all“.

Although this story put Nintendo in a bad place, it should be noted that it was also the key to ending the crisis of Retro Studios, which was developing at the time. Metroid Prime. Currently, this practice is still present at some of the most important companies in the industry, something that has only gotten worse with the coming of the pandemic. But, fortunately, there are more and more professionals. dare to raise your voice.