Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios was reportedly working on a Final Fantasy Tactics-like game set in the Legend of Zelda universe called Heroes of Hyrule. And based on what little we know about it, it sounds like it would’ve absolutely Hyruled.
The leak comes from the video game historians and fact-checkers behind the YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming. They released a video over the weekend reporting on a canned game the Banjo-Kazooie studio pitched to Nintendo executives in 2005 for the Nintendo Wii.
They mentioned at the end of the video they were working on another video about Heroes of Hyrule, a scrapped tactical RPG project set in the Zelda mythos that was also reportedly brewing at Retro.
The game was set 100 years in the past, within a timeline where Ganon defeated Link. In an interesting twist for the series, Link was an old man and owner of an antique shop. According to concept art shared in the video, the story appeared to follow a hammer-wielding Goron, a Zora sorcerer and a Rito archer on their quest to stop a revived Ganon.
They also revealed more about Project X/Sheik, AKA the gritty action adventure Zelda game they pitched to Nintendo in the mid-2000s. Leaked concept art in 2020 appeared to show a dark fantasy take on Hyrule: clockwork soldiers, a race of draconic creatures similar to the dragon Valoo from Wind Waker.
The studio apparently presented artwork and a playable prototype to Nintendo when they pitched the idea. Retro Studios programmer Paul Tozour worked on the prototype. He told Did You Know Gaming the game was unlike anything that could be considered traditional for the franchise. Rather, it was an “experiment gone wrong”.
“I see people commenting on that concept art on the internet saying, ‘oh my God. Retro was working on a Zelda game. That would’ve been so awesome.’
“I understand that feeling but what they have to understand is it was not actually a Zelda game. At no point was it anything like Zelda. It was an experiment gone wrong that happened to be set in the Zelda universe.”
Tozour said he was told the pitch was “immediately rejected” but then clarified that there’s a chance it was never even shown to Nintendo executives.
“Nintendo gave us the green light to make the prototype. But they had zero input or visibility [during] the nine months of pre-production, which is one of the reasons it failed,” he said.
The Did You Know Gaming team said they would release more information on Heroes of Hyrule in a deep dive video in a few weeks.
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