Zelda: Majora's Mask 2 Was Almost A Thing, Got Turned Into A Wii Crossbow Game Instead

We've known for a while that Nintendo can swiftly destroy the dreams of fans, but it was only recently that we learned that the company is also good at destroying the dreams of its development teams.

Legend Of Zelda fans can't seem to agree on what's the best game in the series, but Majora's Mask is always up there with Ocarina Of Time, Breath Of The Wild, and Wand of Gamelon, probably. What's interesting here is that Shigeru Miyamoto knew just how popular that game was all along, and he still got his entire team to quit trying to make a sequel (or another game in that vein) just so he could do something else.

Miyamoto said that after Twilight Princess, his team was coming up with ideas that could be described as "epic tales" and he wanted none of that. At that time, Miyamoto was all about the Wii's zapper gun. His team fought back, presumably bringing Wii swords to Nintendo's offices, so Miyamoto said they should come up with a small demo for focus groups to test it out. Unaware that this was between getting a gimmicky game or a sequel to a beloved game, The focus groups claimed to love this demo about shooting stuff with a crossbow, so Miyamoto forced his team to scrap every possibly awesome idea that they had.

Hindsight is always 20/20, so we definitely wouldn't be complaining had he come up with something new and absolutely marvelous, but the direct result of this decision wasn't Breath Of The Wild, but rather Link's Crossbow Training for the Wii.

Crossbow Training isn't bad, not at all, but come on, a game can only go so far when it has the word "training" in the title. There's no way that the casual fun we take out of it can measure up to the experience of a new Zelda – especially if it's weird as heck like Majora's Mask.

Top Image: Nintendo