When we’re really excited about a game, it can happen that we don’t think about anything else. Something similar may have happened to the employees of the animation studio, who fell for a real Nintendo classic while working on Powerpuff Girls in the 1990s.
Which series is it about? Powerpuff Girls is a series from the 1990s. It was produced by Cartoon Network and focuses on three female superheroes. Even though they are still in kindergarten, they are already saving their hometown from all sorts of nasty villains.
The series ran from 1998 to 2005, and another from 2016 to 2019. It was created by Craig McCracken.
Powerpuff Girls was a huge success and is now one of the classic series of that time. But the production was not without incident. One game in the Zelda series in particular really messed up work on the still young series.
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The whole team wanted to play Zelda
Which game was played? 1998 was also the year Zelda: Ocarina of Time came out. The game received top ratings, has an average of 99 points (via metacritic.com) and is still considered one of the best games ever. The Zelda series is still very popular.
Ocarina of Time was the first 3D Zelda and caused a lot of excitement for that reason alone. Aside from that, it was a fascinating experience that also captivated the creative minds behind the Powerpuff Girls to the screen. So much so that work on the series was neglected.
In a short documentary (via YouTube.com), series creator Craig McCracken talks about how almost everyone on the team played Ocarina of Time. Also the legendary animator Genndy Tartakovsky, who worked on other well-known series such as Batman: The Animated Series or Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
When we started the series, the Nintendo 64 came out and everyone on the team was playing The Legend of Zelda, including me. It got to a point where we had a production meeting because some of the guys were lying on their desks. Genndy and I sat down with everyone and I said, “Alright, what level is everyone on Zelda and who’s almost done?” And Genndy went crazy. Basically the studio was closed for a month.
Craig McCracken via 3Djuegos.com
Instead of working on the series, the team delved further into the game and shared its secrets and tips with each other.
An anime with its many unsolved questions still provides fans with new insights.
Did this time have an influence on the series? Fortunately, the team managed to complete the work. The series didn’t have to suffer in the long term.
In order to “return the favor,” the studio added a suitable Easter egg a little later. In the second episode of the third season (via YouTube.com) a game appears that is not called Zelda, but is obviously based on it.
The mayor in the series is playing on the console when suddenly the phone rings. He is supposed to be a babysitter for someone, but immediately hires someone else to do it. After all, he doesn’t have any time and has to keep playing Zelda diligently. A tongue-in-cheek reference to your own history with the Nintendo classic. Another player also got stuck in a game and logged over 21,000 hours into it.