The recent beta asset leaks got me thinking about all the cool shit in Ocarina of Time that we didn't get, as well as just the interesting alternate versions of locations we did get. So, for old time's sake, here's another Ocarina of Time beta image dump, in chronological order. Here are the earliest screenshots of the action game, from footage dating back to October 1996.
This real time dynamic shadow effect isn't really used in the final game, but it exists in the debug ROM as an actor to be enabled.
This looks like a very early Death Mountain. I guess it could be any old mountain, but it probably became Death Mountain. That doesn't look like a skybox to me; rather, it looks like a polygonal sky "roof" directly on top of the walls.
This is a mysterious sky tower that is nowhere to be seen in the final game, nowhere to be seen in the debug ROM, and didn't leak with the other stuff recently. We'll never know what this is, unless wack0's buds have more OOT stuff for us...which is too good to be true.
Room 121, the second combat test room. It sure broke my heart when I realized these rooms which seemed like cool elements of a long lost dungeon were really just made for tests to shoot footage and shit in.
Here is Link standing in pitch black. What's the mysterious building next to him? We'll see soon. I think it's honestly pretty rare to see games shown off THIS early into development, these screens are mostly just from test rooms.
Look more closely. It's the inside of a cave, complete with stalagmites.
Daniel Sanchez
Now we're at January 1997. This build doesn't look all that much more advanced than the late 1996 build. It's early Castle Town! Imagine how cool it would've been to have a 3D Castle Town back then.
Why does seemingly no record of Ocarina of Time's music prior to release exist? We've heard Super Mario 64's music from Spaceworld 1995, but none of old Zelda 64's.
It looks like this guy originally had actual animations. Unfortunately, his model import in Ocarina of Time after the recent leaks doesn't seem to have had a similar actual attack animation.
This mountain cave always reminded me of the caverns inside Jabu Jabu's Belly. Maybe they repurposed these areas with a gory theme? Actually, probably not.
The Stalfos' very cool early shield. I was pleased to find that the beta Stalfos model actually leaked recently, but I don't think it had this shield anymore unfortunately. It must be from a slightly later build?
This evokes Turtle Rock in a lot of people, but it's more recently been theorized as the original location for the Dodongo's Cavern head, before they mode it to inside the dungeon, based on the texture on it being the same as the old Cavern texture.
this map is really what i truly want out of this leak. that town left such an impression on me when i saw it in nintendo power as a kid during all the Zelda 64 preview hype
wouldn't mind having at least those textures back. i'm a big fan of the pre-oot link before nintendo decided to make him a straight-up blonde bombshell
Luke Martinez
Actually, look at the lower left corner of that screneshot. That trail and those trees are indeed the extent of this map, probably.
There was a big town map found in the Mario Kart 64 models, but it doesn't match up with the old Castle Town structures, nor did it have any textures apparently.
It looks like Poes (formerly Ghinis) were an early edition.
Not going to post the image to mess with user's image dump, but here It looks like there's a design of a beta version of the market in there.
Jackson Wood
Holy shit, I didn't know about that. Thanks for letting me know.
Speaking of the leaks, here is an earlier version of Ganon's Tower that leaked recently. It's likely they made these rooms as a test, but thought the aesthetics they made would serve a final dungeon well, so they repurposed them for Ganon's Tower. Otherwise, it would be pretty weird of them to have just shown off the final dungeon so early.
