The original Hyrule Warriors is a fun if not particularly revolutionary game, but Nintendo were apparently so worried about it, it almost kept it Japan-exclusive.
Unless it’s a particularly small or niche title, most major Japanese games make it over here these days, normally day and date too. It’s taken a while to get to this point, but gaming is just so globally popular these days, including some of the more eclectic titles to come out of Japan (like the now very successful Yakuza series) that it’s generally a safe bet to localise them over in the West. However, back when the original Hyrule Warriors was originally gearing up to release, Nintendo of America apparently wasn’t so keen on it, as it was particularly worried that it could have tarnished the Zelda brand.
This comes from former Nintendo employees Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, who you’ll probably best remember as the frequent hosts of Nintendo Treehouse showcases. The pair now have their own podcast, simply titled the Kit & Krysta Podcast, where they frequently talk about their experiences at Nintendo, often sharing various tidbits of information about games that were released while they were working there. On the most recent episode of the podcast, which you can check out above, Hyrule Warriors came up, with Ellis describing it as “eye-opening at the time.” Ellis continued, “Like, oh wait what? You’re combining Zelda with Dynasty Warriors?
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