As a strange turn of events, one of the creators of Twin Peaks claims they worked on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Now, I know you’re already thinking it, so let’s clear this up right away; No, David Lynch didn’t work on a Nintendo game. Warren Spector once said that “‘There’s a tendency among the press to attribute the creation of a game to a single person”, and the same is often true of other media like movies and TV shows.
While David Lynch is closely associated with the bizarre small town America – murder mystery, Twin Peaks was really a co-creation of Lynch and Mark Frost. Mark is a notable and successful writer in his own right, with credits on movies and shows like The Hill Street Blues, The Equalizer, Nightbreed, and the 2000s Fantastic Four movies under his belt. He may not be as critically acclaimed or as famous as David, but Mark is likely the reason we have some level of understanding of Twin Peaks at all.
As reported by ComicBook, earlier today Mark made a surprising tweet in relation to Game Boy classic The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. He stated:
“Anybody ever play this? I met with them about it and gave them some ideas, never tried it myself.”
Mark was replying to a Collider article about The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, explaining how it derived inspiration from the TV show.
That article, in turn, quoted Nintendo veteran staffer Takashi Tezuka, about his inspirations in making the game:
“At the time, Twin Peaks was rather popular. The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town… So when it came to The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, I wanted to make something that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics.”
Later in the interview, Tezuka, alongside Eiji Aonuma and the late Satoru Iwata, explained more plainly where you could actually see that inspiration in the game:
“Aonuma: At the time, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was like, “What is this guy talking about?” (laughs) But since Twin Peaks was popular at the time…
Iwata: You thought he just wanted to be trendy?
Aonuma: Yeah. (laughs) I thought, “You really want to make Zelda like that?!” Now the mystery is solved. (laughs) When I was reading Tanabe-san’s comments in the strategy guide, I saw, “Tezuka-san suggested we make all the characters suspicious types like in the then-popular Twin Peaks.”
Iwata: Did that guy who looks like Mario appear because you wanted to make someone who looked suspicious? He did look suspicious, but… (laughs)
Tezuka: After that, in Ocarina of Time 12 and Majora’s Mask 13, all kinds of suspicious characters appeared. I didn’t tell them to do it that way, but personally, I did find it considerably appealing.”
Whether you played The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening as a 3D game on the Switch, or in its earlier versions on the Game Boy and Game Boy Color, you probably understand how this was implemented in the game.
Twin Peaks, Washington looks nothing like Mabe Village, but Nintendo brought that rural atmosphere filled with interesting characters over from the TV to their little black and white game. On another level, strange and mysterious characters also dwell in the background of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, from the Owl and the Wind Fish, to the Shadow Nightmares that seem to be Link’s antagonists.
Taking all of that in, it’s surprising that Mark now reveals that he talked to someone in Nintendo about making this game after all these years! It looks like Takashi Tezuka is the most likely culprit to have done this consulting with the writer, but unless someone from the West gets a chance to interview him, we won’t really know for sure.
It should also be said that this was really unusual, as it was nothing like Hideo Kojima hanging out with Guillermo Del Toro today. The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was released all the way back in 1993, the same year the US senate had hearings about violence in video games. It was a far cry from when games had the credibility in the other entertainment industries it has today, but then again, this was also the time Nintendo produced the live action Super Mario Bros movie.
It definitely rewrites this little bit of video game history as we know it, and only serves to highlight, even as Iwata Asks is Iwata’s dearly valuable and cherished contribution to that history, even that was highly constrained and really only opens a small window to the behind the scenes at Nintendo.
