Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker originally wasn't supposed to be a Mario spin-off – instead, it was meant to be a Legend of Zelda game. That fact was well publicized in the wake of Captain Toad's launch, but one more notable detail has emerged in a recently translated interview: the dev working on the concept was so distraught by Shigeru Miyamoto shooting down the Zelda concept that he burned the diorama he built by hand to sell the idea.
The basic gameplay format of Captain Toad started as a simple prototype at Nintendo. As in the final game, you'd slowly explore as a tiny character from a distant perspective, solving puzzles and finding collectables in a diorama-style environment. The concept was born within the Super Mario 3D World team, but the devs quickly realized that Mario himself was a poor fit for it.
