A truly amazing find!

If you're fascinated with pre-release builds of classic games like Zelda: Ocarina of Time, then it might be worth reading on...

An early beta build of Link's iconic action-adventure title from the Nintendo 64 generation has been discovered. It's believed to possibly pre-date Space World '97 and was actually found on a development cartridge containing F-Zero X. This means there is a lot of content (graphics and maps, to be precise) that didn't make the cut in Zelda 64's final release.

Here's the F-Zero X development cartridge which contains the Spaceworld 97 Zelda 64 data in the overdump. There doesn't appear to be much code or music, just graphics and maps. Zelda 64 data begins at 0x1000000 in hex.https://t.co/DsFpv5uVau pic.twitter.com/JUyOjGRP5w
— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) January 19, 2021

The source - Forest of Illusion - has made the map files from this build publicly available - in hope, they'll be able to be converted to a playable format (it seems there's already been some success). It also clarifies that this is obviously not part of the Nintendo giga leak dating back to last year.

We have a prototype Nintendo 64 cartridge of F-Zero X that contained data from an early build of Zelda 64 that used to be on the cartridge. We're estimating it's from Spaceworld 1997. We're going to look into this more. Of course everything will be released. pic.twitter.com/Q5SoAbsdWM
— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) January 19, 2021

That was fast. Someone already figured out how to view the early Zelda 64 maps! https://t.co/VVSu84Bg1u
— Forest of Illusion (@forestillusion) January 19, 2021

Source: Nintendolife