If you've spent a good amount of time with the N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and its sequel The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, you may have become quite familiar with the visuals of each games and which assets were brought over from one title to the other.
The keen-eyed among you may even notice some small differences, too. One of these happens to be the texture of the deku stick, a key item in both games that can be used to give enemies a good whack while also acting as a pretty handy makeshift torch. Apparently, the slight difference in the stick's appearance between both games wasn't by design, but rather a bug that was left during development. This comes via Twitter user 'darkeye' who discusses the curiosity in a thread (click through to view all posts):
In a nutshell, the texture for the Deku stick in both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask is a bit skewed, as the commands sent to the N64 to draw the stick tries to essentially load a 16x16 pixel texture on an 8x8 pixel asset. So what happens is that some of the data after the texture command is used as if it were part of the same texture.
So for Ocarina of Time, Link's hair texture is used for the stick, but for Majora's Mask it's a little bit more complicated. The texture here actually incorporates something called a 'joint table' seen within the main menu of Ocarina of Time, which displays an "image" of Link holding whichever item you've chosen to equip. The joint table itself isn't used in Majora's Mask, but the data commands for it remain; specifically, the command for 'Child Link with the Hylian Shield' appears directly after the deku stick data. So in essence, this image is used to form the texture of the deku stick.
It's an odd set of circumstances, to be sure, but the inclusion of such a bug apparently didn't bother the development staff all that much, as the result is a simple minor alteration of the deku stick texture and appearance. As for what the stick might look like had the bug been fixed, well... Darkeye has the answer to that, too:
We have to agree, the "intended" design for the deku stick looks a bit bland here, so we're actually quite thankful that this particular bug remained within the game!
What do you think, dear readers? Is this something you've noticed yourselves? Do you prefer the stick design without the weird bug? Let us know!
[source twitter.com]
Comments 24
Looks blurry and the same to me tbh
What’s with the little yellow dashes on the OOT artwork at the top of the page?
Always up for some arcane Zelda knowledge. I never really paid much attention to the Deku Stick's textures before. Cool stuff, but only interesting for the maniacal fans I suppose.
Im guessing it was a bug originally, but they liked the way it looked and kept it that way. Probably the same thing can be said for the Mario 64 smoke.
Who notices these things?
Zelda ocarina of time is the best 3D zelda game ever, breath of the wild has great graphics but that’s about it, breath of the wilds final boss and ending sucked, it also didn’t feel like a zelda game sometimes, but ocarina of time has memorable music, memorable bosses, great final boss and ending
You'd think with the textures pulling from parts of Link the sticks would not be all brown though. Unless the game colors them brown in engine or something.
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@OldManHermit I apologise; Nintendo doesn't drop Direct presentations every day.
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@Olliemar28 No worries dude, just being cheeky.
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I will sleep well tonight. Thank you.
Full HD remake of both games would solve this problem. Just sayin, Nintendo
@Yosher From what I understand, it's not taking the colours from Link's textures, what it's doing is that it's interpreting the code that determines Link's pose in the equipment screen as texture information
Honestly the intended stick looks better. I wonder if there are any beta screen shots we can compare it to?
Always fun when a bug works in the devs’ favor. I remember thinking the deku stick looked cool (it looked like the texture moved to me) but that was the extent of my 12 year old self noticing anything.
Behold... Content!
It's neat to see how things run under the hood. Don't listen to these babies that can't get over the fact that there is no Switch Pro, and that their mom forgot to get them Sunny D at the grocery store, so they feel the need to attack people who just want to share some interesting tid bits with the community.
Such incredibly specific knowledge of this topic. I love it!
@Impoh While we welcome constructive criticism and feedback, your comment history for the past month repeatedly shows open disdain for NL's articles and writers. This post, clearly labelled 'Random', examines a tiny detail we think will interest Zelda fans, because it interested us. We'll continue writing such posts, in addition to the wealth of other articles we publish on a daily basis.
If you care to offer further feedback regarding the site, its staff, or any other related matter, I encourage you to use the contact form at the bottom of the page. This would be more appropriate than repeatedly leaving comments voicing disapproval of articles that other readers appreciate and enjoy. Thank you.
@dartmonkey Thank you
I wouldn't be surprised if it's a deliberate technique to make the stick look more interesting without adding more. Or, at the very least, they identified the bug and chose to keep it as it looked better than without!
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