MathUser has found 4 new screens from an early version of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, with some interesting differences in the levels layout.
We can notice that the doors in the lava-room are in the wrong place (or it’s just a different room?).
The bridge looks different from the “same” place on the final map and those “things” for the Hookshot were not in there yet. The background was changed too.
I cant find the same exact spot as this one with the ghosts: in the final game there is a woods full of ghosts but the details, like the trees and the “wall” in the bottom left, dont match..
This scene is only missing a few background details and a skull.
You can find a bigger version of these and more beta-screens in the Zelda: Link’s Awakening U64 Archive.
In the discussion about these screens, MathUser has even linked us to artemis251‘s website, where we can see a wonderfull collection of unused Link’s Awakening sprites that he has found in the game! Some of these are really interesting, like a removed “old man” and a weird “dog/lion head”. Big props to Artemis251!
In the meantime, thanks to VanishedOne (Robert Seddon) we have found out about a “beta” screen that was printed in the manual of the game, where we can see Marin’s text “unfortunately, it is empty“, a dialogue that is unused in the final game (but reading here, it seems that it can be seen somehow.. and more unused texts seem to be hidden in there).
Thanks to everyone for these informations! There could be even more “unseen” Link’s Awakening stuff that we dont know yet?