14 DAY TRIAL // Games inspired by movies are statically inclined to be a disaster waiting to happen, but there are also the ones that proved to be the exception from the rule. However, this exception comes from a clear break in the pattern, so the experiment and its results could be irreversibly compromised. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a movie-inspired game that did just great on the Game Boy, but chances are that, even if you know the film it was inspired by, you'd never put the two together in the same room.
In another edition of "Iwata Asks," Zelda series creators Takashi Tezuka and Eiji Aonuma admitted that they found inspiration for the title in the popular, at that time, Twin Peaks TV series, directed by David Lynch. While no Zelda character made even a cameo in the movie, and most definitely not vice versa, the common points shared by the two items lie in the similar characters that Aonuma named "suspicious types."
"At the time, Twin Peaks was rather popular. The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town," Tezuka said. "I wanted to make something that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics." So, while not blood relatives, it would appear that indeed Link's Awakening and Twin Peaks are strongly related, and a very odd pair at that. And if you think that pairing the two is a pretty far-out idea, then you should feel better knowing that even the rest of the higher-ups at Nintendo thought this was as weird as a three-sided mirror.
"I thought, 'You really want to make Zelda like that?!'," Eiji Aonuma, Zelda's director, shared about Tezuka's Twin Peaks-Zelda mash-up idea. "Now the mystery is solved. (laughs) When I was reading Tanabe-san's comments in the strategy guide, I saw, 'Tezuka-san suggested we make all the characters suspicious types like in the then-popular Twin Peaks.'" It looks live an interview hosted by a Nintendo executive reveals more things than one held by a professional journalist ever could.