[Redlandsman87]

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Hours is an April Fool's Joke and possibly proposed Zelda fan titles. These maps (as evidenced in the images below) were created by a Jon Leung...I'm not aware of his current stance on the maps or the proposal of a fan game based on such. Either way, they are very good maps.

For those of you unaware, the Zelda Oracle series were two connected titles released on the GBC in 2001. The games were originally proposed as a GBC remake of the original Zelda title, which was quickly scrapped. The GBC series was then planned to consist of six titles, four original games and two remakes (most likely Zelda I&II) but this proved itself to be much too costly and time consuming. After of a year of development time, Shigeru Miyamota (creator of Zelda and Mario, etc) proposed the idea of a trilogy, cutting away the remakes and fourth original title. Each game in the proposed trilogy was to feature unique and different  gameplay elements. This trilogy was referred to as the "Triforce Series". The Triforce is composed of three parts: the Triforces of Power, Wisdom, and Courage; each game in the trilogy was to be associated with a piece of the Triforce.

Based upon the earlier GB Zelda title, Link's Awakening, the first game of the three was demonstrated at Nintendo's SpaceWorld trade show in 1999, under the working title Zelda no Densetsu: Fushigina Kinomi – Chikara no Shō, a very early version of LoZ: Oracle of Seasons. Zelda no Densetsu: Chie no Shō (the precursor of the Oracle of Ages) which focused on color-based puzzles, and Zelda no Densetsu: Yūki no Shō (the unfinished third title,which used the times of day to solve puzzles in a mechanic similar to the use of seasons), were not shown.

In the US, the games became The Legend of Zelda: Mystical Seed of Power, Mystical Seed of Wisdom, and Mystical Seed of Courage.



Troubles again began rising once conception on how to connect the three games came into play. The designers wished to allow the player to be able to pick up any of the three titles, regardless of order, and begin playing. Upon completion of a title, the actions of the first game affect the story of the other two. The limitations of this system and the difficulty of coordinating three games proved too complicated (as well as the looming release of the GBA), so the team scaled back to two titles at Miyamoto's suggestion. Staggered releases were abandoned in favor of releasing the two games simultaneously. This made it easier for the team to test the interaction between the games and keep the style consistent amongst the two titles. (Beating the officially released two titles requires a minimum of four play-throughs...each game individually and then the two "Password/Linked" play-throughs.)

Condensing the games into a single cartridge was never considered, as the prospect of multiple endings and the added replay value afforded by the ability to play the titles in either order was very attractive. Oracle of Seasons was adapted from Mystical Seed of Power, Oracle of Ages was adapted from Mystical Seed of Wisdom, and our third title, Mystical Seed of Courage was canceled.

The Legend of Zelda: Mystical Seed Of Courage is one of the few "lost" Zelda titles. The game would have featured Farore as its oracle, and was originally set to be centered around time travel and puzzles concerning the time of day. The puzzles were all to be focused on time, and some were unable to be solved outside of a specific time of day. Mystical Seed of Wisdom, which eventually became Oracle of Ages, originally had the theme of color, with each event and puzzle relating to color in some way. The developers abandoned this theme, however, and after the cancellation of Mystical Seed of Courage in July 2000, Mystical Seed of Wisdom adopted its time travel theme.

Neither screenshots of this game nor Mystical Seed of Wisdom before its massive storyline change are known to exist.


...So here we are. The two titles were very well received (both of which are my favorite Zelda titles.) and the series moved onto bigger and better things. Zelda games haven't been few or far in between since, but the third proposed Oracle title still intrigues me. Not much in the way of story, screenshots, or well...anything has been released concerning the title and most likely never will be. Several proposed titles were made and even a fan game or two have been started and seemingly abandoned. "Oracle of Secrets" (as Farore was named in the other two and was supposed to be the featured Oracle) was one, but "Oracle of Hours" proved itself...more visually apparent.

In 2008, a member of VGmaps named Jon Leung released April Fool's Day screenshots of the "supposed" third Oracle title, named Oracle Of Hours. Though eventually discovered to be a hoax, the maps were of such high quality some still did not believe it. Featured in the below maps are a title screen, the world map, mini-maps featuring obstacles for your animal friends and most surprising of all, eight completed dungeons, AND a final dungeon. (Proodyl...not a bad boss name. Kinda sounds like poodle.)

Spoiler:

So....I'd like to see Mystical Seed of Courage...or Oracle of Secrets, or Hours, or whatever you call it, released in some form or another. These maps are a great starting point, and while I realize that creating an entire game off of them is definitely a lot of work, it certainly isn't impossible.

Who thinks this could be done? What would it take?

Anybody interested? I'd LOVE to see this happen!
November 09, 2012, 09:11:53 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)Nothing, eh?

[Zoinkity]

The only oracle editor I can think of would be ZOLE, but it's still under development and robably won't be released until finished.

The pertinent link is:
http://zeldahacking.blogspot.com/

You might want to ask them just what's feasible or coerce them into a prerelease copy.

[Dr. Floppy]

This is f-ing EPIC!!! I recently played thru Oracle of Seasons, and lamented the fact that the color-based game never game to be. (What would it have been titled? Oracle of Color sounds kinda lame.)

I have to admit, the overworld map does bear more than a casual resemblance to that of Seasons. That said, I'm very much intrigued that this guy went to the trouble of mapping out eight dungeons and whatnot. Perhaps if I new anything about z80 assembly, I'd offer my assistance in any fan-based golem project.

[Gideon Zhi]

I remember seeing a similar set of maps (under similar circumstances) for Metroid Dread. Would love to see THAT get made.

[justin3009]

Could always see about making this stuff a community project. That's if people want to work on it together etc

[Piotyr]

Why bother making it for the GBC when we can make it using this? http://www.zeldaclassic.com/what.php

[justin3009]

I've heard that ZC is kinda... eh to use.  I haven't personally used it as I've had no need, but it's worth taking a look into.

[Redlandsman87]

I ran through Zole and messed around...in my five or ten minutes of screwing around, I successfully placed some treasure chests on screen and played with some blocks. From what I've read, it only works on Ages. Dude is supposed to be releasing a new version 5, but he hasn't updated his blog in awhile. I definitely see it having the potential to completely hack the game as needed...though I'm definitely no map or level designer.

Either way, despite the suggestion of the maps, I still believe Oracle of Secrets to be the best title seeing as it is her "official" name within the Oracle games. Why mess with that? GBC would be the preferred system...we have a hackable game available with some very useful tools and a complete set of maps already created specifically for use under the same graphics scheme. My biggest concern is...how would we go about messing with Password/Game connectivity? Surely something could be managed, yes, but the fact that Nintendo couldn't conceive it or just gave up is a slight concern.

A community project would be great, but who would be on board? I'm sure something great could be made if we had a solid team, well versed in the Zelda series, who could unify and get the ball rolling.

A plot would need to be devised, new antagonist. New music would have to be created, some remixed, and I'm sure some would be borrowed. Enemies would have to be placed around dungeons and the maps, NPCs and other folks would need creating...and most important of all, we'd need to devise a unique game play aspect to compliment the time travel and seasonal changes provided in the first games. Day/Night seems alright, though I'm sure that could be expanded or improved upon.

New Deku tree...We'd need some unique weapons (AND INCLUDE THE BOW! Which is absent in BOTH Oracle titles...strange for a Zelda game, eh?). A new race/species would need to be created, to compliment the Subrosians and Tokay races.

Any ideas, folk, anything you think the original two could have used or have something you think would be nice for the third title?

[Spikeman]

I could be wrong but I think someone was working on making this hack over here: http://zeldahacking.ulmb.com

To answer your question though, I remember seeing a site for Oracle of Hours that had all of the maps/dungeons for the game already designed. So if someone wanted to make a hack, they wouldn't have to have any design skills at all. And there is a editor (ZOLE) for the Oracles games that could be used to make the hack. That said, there's a lot of stuff that can't be done with the editor (eg. programming new enemies or boss fights) that would take a fairly skilled hacker, so if you'd like to do this on your own, you better learn to hack you some assembly.

[Redlandsman87]

The Oracle of Nature hack there by Lin looks pretty decent (admittedly buggy, I gotta say) but hasn't had a fresh post/update in over a year. Abandoned, perhaps?

And do you mean you recall seeing other Dungeon maps and such designed besides what we have?

[Spikeman]

This is what I was thinking of: http://www.vgmaps.com/NewsArchives/April2008/index.htm#LegendOfZeldaOracleOfHours

I guess there isn't maps for all the dungeons, just some of them? Sorry for misleading you.

[Lin]

The only oracle editor I can think of would be ZOLE, but it's still under development and robably won't be released until finished.

The pertinent link is:
http://zeldahacking.blogspot.com/

You might want to ask them just what's feasible or coerce them into a prerelease copy.

Alright. Lots to say here. First off, ZOLE has been released and periodically updated over the past couple of years. You can get it and other tools like a script editor and text editor at the official forums for it (don't get the build on this site since it's outdated) - zeldahacking.ulmb.com (I'm sorry if it's not okay to advertise it). Second, you will need assembly knowledge if you want to make a decent and unique hack. A good amount of knowledge about the games, like memory addresses is highly recommended, since if you don't want to do a lot of assembly hacking, you can at least do cheap hardcoding hacks using ZOSE as long as you have the appropriate memory addresses.

Third, a guy named Luigi has been working on an Oracle of Hours hack for a while. It's not very good with attention to detail, but he's had a lot of help from Jigglysaint so a lot of out-of-ZOLE work has been done. The project page for it is here: http://zeldahacking.ulmb.com/index.php?topic=260.0

Now for ZOLE stuff - You can make a full-fledged hack using all of my tools (but you'd be limited to how unique things are), but you'll have to learn to look at how the game does stuff since me and other people never really wrote tutorials. It applies a lot of assembly hacks to allow things like uncompressed maps, uncompressed graphics and tilesets, 3-byte pointer jumps for scripts, special script commands, and other cheap hacks to make work for me and other people easier. Most of the features only work for Oracle of Ages because I never wanted to write the assembly patches for Seasons. That might change soon.

There's a great deal of knowledge I and Fatories know about the games but keep to ourselves, so if you ever have questions, please don't hesitate to hop onto ZOLE's IRC channel (irc.caffie.net #ZOLE). I almost want to say the only other people who know as much or more than us are Jigglysaint and maybe Dwedit, so please feel free to ask us for help.

Also, yes, Oracle of Nature has been abandoned. Lots of stuff to explain but I'll just leave it at that. If you want anything of the sort that it had, lots of scripting and assembly hacks will need to be done, since the scripting engine in the games is only so powerful.

So in conclusion, this is totally doable right now (at least in Ages) by using ZOLE and the other tools I've made. It might be hard to make the weapons and custom blocks, but other than that it's definitely possible. Like I said, join the IRC channel for any questions.

EDIT: Oh and I forgot to mention - I've spoken to Jonathan Leung quite a bit and he's okay with people making fan games for it. He doesn't remember the storyline or much about it so you're on your own for that sort of stuff.

EDIT 2: If you're interesting in a community project, you'd definitely be interested in ZOLE Live - It's basically a Google Docs version of ZOLE 4, where multiple people can work on the same ROM at once while their edits appear to others in real time. The public build is outdated and buggy so ask me for the latest build if you're interested. http://zeldahacking.ulmb.com/index.php?board=34.0

[Fatories]

The Oracle of Nature hack there by Lin looks pretty decent

*cough*and Fatories*cough*

[Redlandsman87]

Checked out the Oracle of Hours hack. Not bad per se, the trailer isn't bad. Too bad that the download link for the patch is dead though :/

[Jigglysaint]

I wish I could have done more to help with Oracle of Hours, but unfortunatly my data finding skills are so much better than my coding skills.  There was an attempt to turn minecarts into the Spinner item, but I was unsuccessful at keeping the minecart from going though walls.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqDhRpqtIV8

I stopped hacking Oracles mainly because there was just so much stuff in the game that my attention span could only hold maybe a partical level edit or something.  I will say that the game is extremely easy to hack, even in ASM because this game has one of the tighest engines I know of.  It also has a routine that allows for JSR's to anywhere in the rom without having to hit up bank 0 for each bankswap change.

[justin3009]

That Mine Cart would have been amazing if that solidity issue was fixed.  Damn

[Redlandsman87]

Hm, anybody interested? I've started messing about with maps and item placement, though won't have much to show for a bit. I'm giving it a crack, though.