 In late 2009, following the completion of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS, the majority of its development team were immediately assigned to work on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii. However, three members of the Spirit Tracks team began working on a new handheld title in the Zelda series for the upcoming Nintendo 3DS console. Hiromasa Shikata and Shiro Mouri were two of the three members working on the new game. During this early phase, they had not considered developing a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; instead they were building a game around the theme of "communication". Around six months into the project, they presented their concept for the game to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto. It was poorly received, with Miyamoto calling the idea outdated. So, the team of three decided to rethink the concept of the game from the very beginning.
