The text on this page is taken from pages 38 to 40 of the Zelda Box guidebook, released in Japan in 2002.

The Developers Discuss the Big Octoroks & The Floormasters

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Aonuma: The “Octo” in “Big Octorok” comes from “octopus”. It means “eight”, but Big Octoroks actually resemble squid more than octopi. Even foreign players were complaining about that. “No matter how you look at it, it’s still a squid…” they said.

Takizawa: You can’t see it since they’re underwater, but they have 8 legs. Really! [Laughs]

Aonuma: Floor Masters, a staple of the series, have gotten easier over time, since we learned our lesson with games like Ocarina of Time. The Floor Masters in those games were brutal, you see. [Laughs] We discovered that some of the elements of the series were only well-balanced in 2D, and couldn’t be carried over to the 3D games without some tweaking.

The Developers Discuss Gohma

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Takizawa: Gohma is the first boss you fight. It’s also the first boss we created. The strategy for the fight is to use the Clawshot to grab onto Valoo’s tail as he’s sitting on the ceiling, then drop the ceiling onto Gohma. I was really worried about whether players would figure it out.

Aonuma: It’s a cool strategy, if you think about it. I mean, Gohma even puts the ceiling back in place all by itself. [Laughs] Even though you wouldn’t be able to win the battle if Gohma didn’t fix it for you. [Laughs]

The Developers Discuss the Helmaroc King

Art by Jerakelle on Deviantart.

Aonuma: The Helmaroc King’s stage was the hardest to create, out of all the boss battles. Players have to fight a flying enemy while climbing the tower, then continue to battle once they get to the top. Not only that, but we had to incorporate a bunch of cutscenes in the middle as well, so we went through a lot of trial and error before we settled on aspects like the size of the battlefield and the movement of the camera. I feel like it was worth it, and that everything paid off.