Eiji Aonuma and Shigeru Miyamoto have been discussing all things Zelda in a roundtable interview where they let loose some details on the new Zelda and some development history on Phantom Hourglass for the DS.

Zelda: Phantom Hourglass surprisingly wasn't directed by any of the two esteemed gentlemen but by a rookie. Also the entire Zelda-staff was bolstered by a lot of new rookies. Aonuma did this so creating new mechanics in the old Zelda-fomula would be a lot easier.

And it seemed it worked. Aonuma was telling anecdotes about how Zelda-veterans at Nintendo had trouble solving the newer puzzles in Phantom Hourglass while people new to Zelda were picking up the new mechanics on the fly. Also, planning for Phantom Hourglass started after Wind Waker was finished, and that was in 2003!

About the next Zelda both gentlemen were extremely quiet but Aonuma explained he had a problem no being able to tell all the new ideas they were working on. But he did promise that we would know about them faster then usual. He did mention that he did some thinking of what would happen if Link would be dropped in a WWII-setting or a sci-fi setting.

Clearly Nintendo is planning to give the team all the time they need to reinvent Zelda. here's hoping it doesn't take as long as with Mario Galaxy, which started as Mario 128 in 2001, which started as Super Mario 64 2 in 1999.

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