Yoshiaki Koizumi: Difference between revisions

[[Nintendo]] was close to his university, and gave him an opportunity to work for them after he graduated. At this time, he embraced video games as an interesting way to create unique dramas that couldn't be expressed as films.{{Ref|name=Wired}}

Koizumi's first assignment at Nintendo was to put together the artwork and layout of the manual for ''[[The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past|A Link to the Past]]''. The drawing and writing involved in this project made it just the right fit for him. As he worked, the lack of any solid Zelda mythos became evident. Game elements had no meaning, and there was no peripheral story to create the feeling of a believable Zelda universe. Needing a backstory to put in the manual, Koizumi was responsible for creating many of the now traditional and well-known Zelda legends, including that of the [[Golden Goddesses]] and that of the [[Triforce]]. The Triforce had existed since the first game, but its origins were not explained until ''A Link to the Past'', and repeated in ''Ocarina of Time'' and ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess|Twilight Princess]]''.   

One of these stories that Koizumi developed, likely in conjunction with Tanabe who was in charge of the game script, was the [[Imprisoning War]]. This particular story becomes one of the most pivotal series of events in the entire [[Timeline|Zelda chronology]] as well as the basis of ''Ocarina of Time''{{Ref|[[Interview:Ocarina of Time Development - Ganondorf|Ocarina of Time Development - Ganondorf]], Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun, 26 Nov 1998|The story in Ocarina of time isn't actually original, it deals with the Sages' Imprisoning War from the Super Famicom's ALttP.|[[Satoru Takizawa]]}}{{Ref|[[Interview:Total RPG February 22nd 1999|Total RPG]], 22 Feb 1999|Basically, the events in Ocarina of Time are the "Imprisoning War" described in the SNES version's story.|[[Dan Owsen]]}}.

For ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening|Link's Awakening]]'', fellow writer Tanabe was given by the game's director, [[Takashi Tezuka]], a list of things not to include in the game: there would be no [[Hyrule]], no Triforce, and no [[Zelda]]. This gave him and Koizumi a lot more freedom to implement their superb story ideas without the burden of keeping the canon in mind. Tanabe explains, "I recall having a lot of trouble with storyline consistency in {{Tt|A Link to the Past|ALttP}}, and this meant I could leave out the stuff that got bottlenecked. … I then wrote a script that fit my vision of an egg hatching on a mountaintop ending the world with Koizumi's 'Your dream? Or someone else's dream?' Koizumi worked on the main thread of the story and I did the odd characters."{{Ref|name=LA Questionaire|[[Interview:Shogakukan Link's Awakening DX Guide|Link's Awakening DX Developer Questionaire]], translated by GlitterBerri}}

The conditions were just right to allow Koizumi to use his imagination and present to us a unique and captivating story. It was the first of its kind in Zelda, as [[Eiji Aonuma]] comments: "It wasn't until ''The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening'' that the series started having a proper plot."{{Ref|name=Iwata Asks}}  Previous games had some backstory and progressive objectives, but Koizumi considers themes like "save the princess" to be ''goals'', not ''story''.{{Ref|name=Wired}} For ''Link's Awakening'', he was able to add [[:Category:Link's Awakening Characters|characters]] to interact with and continue the story throughout the game. Even the [[Nightmare]]s whose behaviors he designed were directly related to the story and had dialog to show it.

==Trivia==