Last Sunday, November 21st, marked two major anniversaries for Nintendo: the 23rd anniversary of the release of Ocarina of Time and the beginning of the 1997 show of Nintendo Spaceworld. Fans of these two anniversaries have celebrated by dropping a beta demo for a project that seeks to recreate the 1997 Spaceworld demo for Link's first 3D adventure.
As we said back when we discovered this project in July, a new wave of interest in Ocarina of Time was sparked by Forest of Illusion discovering some beta assets. One group among this wave included some fans looking to recreate the game's 1997 Spaceworld demo. The beta of this recreation, released last Sunday, offers three "tour" modes that show off specific aspects of the game (locations in Hyrule, battles against enemies and bosses, and dungeon exploration) and a debug mode that lets players visit maps in various states of development. Although some parts of the demo had to be recreated from scratch, most of it is true to the source material, thanks to the "gigaleak" and some of the 1997 Spaceworld demo being found on a dev cartridge of F-Zero X.
Out of all the Spaceworld shows Nintendo held, the 1997 show has given us quite a bit in terms of lost media and "what could have been" scenarios. A few years ago, someone leaked a ROM of the 1997 Spaceworld version of Pokemon Gold and Silver gave us a look at beta Pokemon designs and an early version of the world. Earlier this year, we also got some new footage from EarthBound 64, the game that many people now know as MOTHER 3, from a Twitter user who won a 1998 Nintendo company report in an auction.
You can download Ocarina of Time – Spaceworld ‘97 Experience and find its installation instructions on GitHub.
