Those who played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, will certainly remember the little fairy ‘Navi’.
A blessing for some but more like a curse for the others. Navi, the loud-mouthed fairy, wasn’t always a fairy. At the start she was just a triangle.
As you already know, Ocarina of Time was one of the first third person adventure games that used a targeting Z-button. When figuring out how that button should work, Koizumi-san remembers that they wanted to make it clear for gamers which enemy they were targeting.
To make this process more easy, he created an upside down triangle that indicated the enemy you were targeting. Later on he wanted to change the ‘boring’ triangle into a little fairy women. The Nintendo 64 however wasn’t powerful enough to create such a small fairy women so he changed it into a ball of light and wings. He called it the Fairy Navigation System.
Later on Osawa-san came up with the idea to call the fairy Navi, because she navigates. Once the name was set, the ideas kept rolling in. Nintendo decided to change Navi’s color depending on who you’re targeting, friend or enemy.
Navi later on played a very important role in guiding the gamers throughout the game.
