Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo 2002.12.1 (Japan)
(This was a joint release between us and our good friends at Gaming Alexandria!)
After years of various fakes and speculation, a genuine demo build of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was discovered to be silently residing on a forgotten GameCube demo disc titled “Gekkan Nintendo Tentou Demo 2002.12.1”. Said disc was sold on eBay just a few months earlier, and thanks to the generous owner of the disc, the data has been preserved and can now be experienced by all.
Screenshots
What is this demo disc for, where did it come from? These particular demo discs were distributed to Japanese game stores, being publicly displayed starting on December 1, 2002. This allowed customers to experience a demo of the game thirteen days prior to the title’s release in Japan. Because of this, there are large amounts of small differences and bugs littered throughout the game. After use, the discs were intended to be returned to Nintendo, however this disc and another copy are the only two which are publicly known to have survived as of October 2019.
The materials on the disc are as follows: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Mario Party 4, Sonic Mega Collection, and many promotional videos.
Wind Waker Differences
The title screen of the demo appears with a night setting for the background instead of the final’s sunny background.
Earth Temple boss, Jalhalla, has an different trophy in the Trophy Gallery at Forest Haven. In the demo it shows us that he indeed used to have a face. In the final versions, he is only shown wearing a mask. Whilst fighting him in the demo, he wears the mask for a just like the final build of the game. This seems to suggest that the game’s developers revised Jalhalla but hadn’t yet changed the trophy until a later revision.
Forsaken Fortress contains early exterior whilst inside the the fortress. It is possible to peek back into the interior through a window.
There is a visual bug with Link’s magic meter in the demo. It appears fuller by one pixel, although it doesn’t actually have more magic.
The camera while Link grabs the Master Sword is slightly different.
The camera angles present in Din’s Pearl cutscenes differ from the final.
The King of Red Lions gets sent to the center of the great sea when playing the Sun’s Song.
Other differences include:
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During the cutscene in which the player meets Fido and Laruto for the first time, there is a noticeable lack of sound effects. Fido completely lacks music, which suggests his track was completed far later in development. They’re also solid instead of ghostly transparent.
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On slot 2 in the demo disc, the save with Forsaken Fortress, there’s a glitch when Link get’s to the tower and retrieves his sword. In the final game he holds it up in the air with the animation paused. In the demo, he holds it up in the air, and the monster slashes at him continually with the sword until the dialogue box closes.
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All pearls are required to grab the Master Sword.
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Beedle’s ship plays a horn sound when close. This sound is audible at any time.
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King Lion talks to Link immediately after entering the Master Sword chamber, and not when near the sword.
Debug Features!
Plugging a controller into slot 3 at any time and pressing the Z button will bring up a debug console. The console’s output list grows as Link visits different areas or when bugs occur. Holding L+R whilst in the debug console state will allow you to scroll up and down the console to view all of it’s outputs.
Plugging a controller into slot 4 and messing around with various different buttons at any point causes random text boxes to appear on the screen, which appears to be intended as a dialogue test.
ROM Information
----| File Data |--------------------------------------------------
System: Nintendo - Nintendo GameCube
File: D44J01.iso
BitSize: 10 Gbit
Size (Bytes): 1459978240
CRC32: 1B5A2934
MD5: 0176E215BA8D790E1F170442350930C9
SHA1: 4CE687B48F40870C907DE4210D877E34AAB8593F
SHA256: F175ACC09F663B8EAE1C87BD2773A8D1F4705A842A66751228551D2B282294D6
----| Header Data |------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Disk 2002 For Japan December 2002 For Japan
Game Serial: D44J (Japan)
Maker Code: 01 (Nintendo)
Version: 0x00 (v1.0)
Disc Id: 1
Disc Images
