Oracle of Secrets?

[Zenox]

The Oracle games were supposed to be a Trilogy, there are only two however. The third game, featuring Farore as the Oracle, was to be called "Oracle of Secrets"

Here's a link to the ZeldaWiki page:

http://zeldawiki.org/The_Legend_of_Zelda:_The_Mystical_Seed_of_Courage

Yes, it's called the Mystical Seed of Courage, but that's because the Japanese names for the Oracle games are the "Mystical Seed of Time" - Oracle of Ages

Why it isn't titled the Mystical Seed of Secrets, I have no idea, but I like the title Mystical Seed of Courage more than Secrets.

Here's the story for the game:

Princess Zelda, responsible for managing the four seasons of the Land of Hyrule, and the Triforce of Power have been kidnapped by Ganon. The brave hero Link learns of this and sets out to save the princess. However, Ganon learns of Link's quest and splits the Triforce into eight pieces, scattering them throughout the land. In addition, the Rod of the Four Seasons (a device that controls the seasons) along with its hiding place in Hyrule Castle, have flown off to another dimension. As a result of this calamity, Hyrule's four seasons are thrown into chaos and the order of the seasons becomes jumbled. In order to save Princess Zelda and find the "Rod of the Four Seasons," our hero Link must travel back and forth between Hyrule and this other dimension, while receiving help from the spirits residing in the "Tree of Mystery" and also the strange "Uura Tribe" found in this other dimension. Two characters that will help Link on his quest are introduced. The first is a kangaroo named Ricky. When Link climbs into Ricky's pouch, he will be able to jump and using a pair of boxing gloves, be able to punch out enemies. The other character is Maple. She suddenly appears flying on a broomstick and crashes into Link, bringing about various events in the storyline. The new item, the Rod of the Four Seasons will be required to solve certain riddles that appear in the game. Maybe the winter snow covers a secret entrance to a dungeon, and you'll need to change the seasons to uncover it.

Not much other than that is known, but the plot of the game was to involve the Book of Secrets (The book Farore carries in the Oracle game's official artwork)

There are no screenshots for the game, so it must have been canceled early into the Oracle trilogy's developement.

This image might be fake, it probably is, but if not, the game may have also been called the Oracle of Hours. I guess with a day/night theme involved.

 

[MrMosley]

From what I understand, the Oracle games started out in the very beginning as one game: A remake of the original LoZ. If you pay attention to Holodrum's layout, design of verious places (especially the Gnarled Root Dungeon), and many of its bosses, you can see that much of this is similar to what LoZ had. This leads me to believe that OoS was the first game being created, originally as the LoZ remake, then made into Mystical Seed of Courage, then eventually Oracle of Seasons.

Then, they decided to make three games. If I am not mistaken, the games were supposed to be called the "Triforce Saga", hence the names "Mystical Seed of Courage, Wisdom, and Power". Due to time restraints, the team had to only make two of those games. According to that description from Zelda Wiki, what would have been Oracle of Secrets became Oracle of Seasons. The seasons changing in Hyrule were obviously replaced with that of Holodrum, I suppose due to storyline purposes. Another thing that made the three games hard to make was the password system. It worked better between only two games supposidly, and was easier to do that way.

Farore is still in the two games as the Oracle of Secrets. I don't believe the game would have been called this in the end. In fact, I'm pretty sure that if they would have stuck to their original plan of three games, we would have very different Oracle titles altogether. The reason she was given the title of Oracle of Secrets, in my opinion, was because it would have been out of place to have one of the three named after the Goddesses not be an Oracle. She keeps the secrets of the games, so that became her title.

 

[Zenox]

Still, Oracle is a much better title than Mystical Seed of Courage. I doubt American fans (considering they seem to be much more fierce) would like that title as much and it probably wouldn't have sold as well as it did if they kept that title. That title could have been just a Japanese Translation. I wish we had screenshots of the game ...

 

[MrMosley]

Here are some (unofficial) images said to have been from the third Oracle title.

As you can see, the description of the changing seasons was apparently correct (check images on right). Another notable difference is Maple's appearance.

And of course, credit goes to IGN for these images. Images were gathered from this link:

http://gameboy.ign.com/objects/873/873036.html

 

[Skull_Kid]

At first, all started with the idea of remaking LoZ for the GB, but, after that, they wanted to do a trio of games(each one representing one of the triforce pieces), but it was later putted aside because it would be harder to make the password sytem work correctly with 3 games to get passwords from.
The Mystical Seed of Courage project was dismissed and only remained the Mystical Seed of Wisdom and Power.
Of course, those are the names of the japanese versions of Oracle of Ages and Seasons.

 

[ChargewithSword]

The title image is most likely fake, considering the fruit is the same symbol as the Oracle of Seasons fruit.

Now, had MSoC had been released, it would have destroyed the use of the linking, since transferring data between three games would mean many opportunities to change the story, and for the GBC, that would be to much pressure. However, this would have made the oracle games clearer for us though since that Link (no pun intended) mechanic destroys it's part in the timeline. So really, I would have had no problem.

Another thing, is that if it had been released all at once, even without Linking it would have confused fans which was first or last. So they could have done this, release the games with 2 months separating each release so that people could tell the consistancy.

 

[MrMosley]

At first, all started with the idea of remaking LoZ for the GB, but, after that, they wanted to do a trio of games(each one representing one of the triforce pieces), but it was later putted aside because it would be harder to make the password sytem work correctly with 3 games to get passwords from.
The Mystical Seed of Courage project was dismissed and only remained the Mystical Seed of Wisdom and Power.
Of course, those are the names of the japanese versions of Oracle of Ages and Seasons.

Not exactly SK. The Japanese names are "Chapter of Earth" (for OoS), and "Chapter of Time and Space" (for OoA). The whole point of them naming the games after the pieces of the Triforce was because it was supposed to be subtitled the Triforce Trilogy, or something along those lines. After they had to cut it down to only two games, that entire idea was dropped, even the seed of power and wisdom. In fact, looking above at the first post, you can see that the description given for "Courage" is what became OoS, with its time altering portions being given to OoA.

 

[Zenox]

Reading over the description of the game again, it is actually suprisingly similar to the LoZ, just with reversed roles. Instead of Zelda breaking up the Triforce of Wisdom to keep it from Ganon, Ganon breaks up the Triforce of Power to keep it from Link, so Skull Kid might actually be right about that remake idea.

 

[MrMosley]

Reading over the description of the game again, it is actually suprisingly similar to the LoZ, just with reversed roles. Instead of Zelda breaking up the Triforce of Wisdom to keep it from Ganon, Ganon breaks up the Triforce of Power to keep it from Link, so Skull Kid might actually be right about that remake idea.

But that would mean that Ganon would lose all of his power. To me, a remake with that plot wouldn't make sense. Ganon is trying to gain the Triforce, not separate it and put in in various dungeons so that Link might wander upon and find it. He should have learned by now that about every time he goes to do something, some kid in a green suit is gonna come by and mess it all up for him.