Tantalus Media Share How The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD Came To Exist

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Tantalus Media may not be a name that is immediately familiar to most, but the Australian developer has been the creative force behind three impressive ports for Wii U.

With Mass Effect 3: Special Edition and Deus Ex: Human Revolution – Director’s Cut proving how well Tantalus could interwork the Wii U GamePad, Nintendo were suitably impressed and would later request their help with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD.

The Kyoto giant had even been supportive early on with EA’s Mass Effect 3: Special Edition, encouraged by the interest that had surrounded the finale to BioWare’s space opera.

“[Nintendo] were particularly supportive of that game being there for launch, as were Epic who built the Unreal engine which Mass Effect 3 utilises,” Tantalus Media CEO Tom Crago shared with IGN. “With all those parties working together we were able to get Mass Effect 3 on the hardware, ready for launch.”

In 2013, Crago received a call from Nintendo asking whether they would be interested in remastering GameCube and Wii adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While Crago can’t discuss any specifics due to a strict privacy policy, he described the opportunity to work with Nintendo as “a huge thrill.”

“Nintendo approached us. We had worked with them before on Top Gear Rally on GBA, and had remained in close contact in the intervening period,” Crago explained. “I guess they were impressed by the work we’d done on Mass Effect 3, which was a launch title on Wii U.

“It’s not every day someone from Nintendo asks you if you’d be interested in making a Zelda game, so definitely it was happy moment. By that stage Tantalus had shipped around thirty games on Nintendo platforms, and so certainly it felt like a natural fit. A huge thrill, but a natural fit.

“We worked with Nintendo very closely. A dedicated team in Kyoto worked with us throughout the duration of the project, and senior members of our team made several trips to Japan.”

It was a largely positive experience, and Tantalus are now looking to the future. That unsurprisingly revolves around new hardware, with Crago “very excited about” Nintendo NX.

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