An Early Ocarina of Time Demo Has Been Salvaged from an F-Zero X Cartridge

One of videogame’s most legendary games, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time still has secrets being uncovered. They’re not always in the game itself, though. Recently, an early demo version of Ocarina of Time was found on a Nintendo 64 development cartridge dating back to 1997.

As Eurogamer reports, the cartridge in question appears to be from Nintendo Spaceworld, a now retired trade show where Nintendo would show off new products and make announcements. The cartridge was used to hold F-Zero X, which had mostly saved over the Ocarina of Time demo. Despite this, preservationists were able to salvage info on the early build and have shared it online.

There are tons of left over graphics, maps, etc. About half of this build is able to be recovered which is insane! pic.twitter.com/9Kkb9LD2j9

— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) January 19, 2021

Forest of Illusion, a Twitter account dedicated to preserving Nintendo’s history according to their bio, has released this date “dump,” which mostly consists of maps and graphics. According to them, they’ve been able to save about half of the files that existed there and very little of it appears to be code or music.

Since the dump became public, many have gone combing through the info and scrounging what they could find. Among it all are icon art for items that have been unearthed, as well as accompanying text that, when translated, suggests what some of these were supposed to do early in development. Supposedly there was even a medallion that would transform Link into Navi and let you fly around.

Already, at least one of the demo’s maps, Kakariko Village, has been rendered playable, which you can see below.

While the dump may represent only about half of the demo’s content, it’s nonetheless been a huge find to the community of preservationists plumbing its depths.