Zelda Producer Wanted To Make A Link’s Crossbow Training Multiplayer FPS

The producer of The Legend of Zelda series wanted to make a multiplayer FPS sequel to Link’s Crossbow Training, but he was turned down by the higher-ups at Nintendo. The Legend of Zelda series is best-known for its single-player entries, but there are plenty of underrated multiplayer Zelda games in the world.

The main gimmick of the Nintendo Wii was its Wiimote controllers, which offered motion controls when hooked up to a TV set. This turned out to be incredibly popular around the globe, with games like Wii Sports bringing an entirely new audience to video games. The Wiimote and the nunchuck acted in a similar manner to a wireless mouse, which made them the ideal controllers for shooting games. Light gun games flourished on the Wii, which led to third-party companies making their own gun-shaped controllers to house the Wiimote.

Nintendo released its own official gun peripheral for the Wii, called the Wii Zapper, which was named after the gun used in games like Duck Hunt on the NES. The Wii Zapper was packaged with a game called Link’s Crossbow Training outside of Japan, which was a light gun game that reused a lot of assets from Twilight Princess. Link’s Crossbow Training was a short game, but it was a lot of fun to play, and the producer of the title wanted to expand the concept for its sequel.

Zelda: The Sequel To Link’s Crossbow Training

In an interview with Now Gamer (via Nintendo Everything), Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma said he wanted to make a sequel to Link’s Crossbow Training that was multiplayer-focused. Aonuma wanted to use everything his team had learned making the first game and turn it into an first-person shooter, with players able to battle each other online. Link’s Crossbow Training featured “Ranger” stages, where the player could move Link through the level. It would be easy to expand this concept into a much larger game.

Unfortunately for Aonuma, his request to make a sequel to Link’s Crossbow Training was denied. The higher-ups at Nintendo wanted Aonuma to work on the next mainline Legend of Zelda game, which turned into Skyward Sword on the Wii. The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons can act in a similar way to the Wiimotes, but they aren’t as accurate, so it’s unlikely that a sequel to Link’s Crossbow Training will ever come to fruition, unless it was switched to dual joystick controls. It’s a shame that The Legend of Zelda series never received its arena shooter, as it would have been interesting to see what Aonuma and his team did with the concept.

Source: Now Gamer (via Nintendo Everything)

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Scott Baird
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Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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