The Legend of Zelda: Mystical Seed of Courage was a Game Boy Color game that was planned to be the third Zelda game in the Oracle series, alongside The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons. It was to be published by Nintendo and was being developed by Capcom. It was eventually scrapped due to problems in the debugging process—specifically, issues with how all three games interacted with one another.
The game would have featured Farore as its oracle, and was originally set to be centered around time travel and puzzles concerning the time of day. The puzzles were all to be focused on time, and some were unable to be solved outside of a specific time of day. Mystical Seed of Wisdom, which eventually became Oracle of Ages, originally had the theme of color, with each event and puzzle relating to color in some way. The developers abandoned this theme, however, and after the cancellation of Mystical Seed of Courage in July 2000, Mystical Seed of Wisdom adopted its time travel theme.
Neither screenshots of this game nor Mystical Seed of Wisdom before its massive storyline change are known to exist.
Story
Non-canon warning: This article or section contains non-canonical information that is not considered to be an official part of the Legend of Zelda series and should not be considered part of the overall storyline.
This is the story Nintendo had set up for The Legend of Zelda: Mystical Seed of Courage, the intended first part of the series:
"Princess Zelda, responsible for managing the four seasons of the Land of Hyrule, and the Triforce of Power has been kidnapped by Ganon. The brave hero Link learns of this and sets out to save the princess. However, Ganon learns of Link's quest and splits the Triforce into eight pieces, scattering them throughout the land. In addition, the Rod of the Four Seasons (a device that controls the seasons) along with its hiding place in Hyrule Castle, have flown off to another dimension.
As a result of this calamity, Hyrule's four seasons are thrown into chaos and the order of the seasons becomes jumbled. In order to save Princess Zelda and find the "Rod of the Four Seasons," our hero Link must travel back and forth between Hyrule and this other dimension, while receiving help from the spirits residing in the "Tree of Mystery" and also the strange Uura Tribe found in this other dimension. Two characters that will help Link on his quest are introduced. The first is a kangaroo named Ricky. When Link climbs into Ricky's pouch, he will be able to jump and using a pair of boxing gloves, be able to punch out enemies. The other character is Maple. She suddenly appears flying on a broomstick and crashes into Link, bringing about various events in the storyline. The new item, the Rod of the Four Seasons will be required to solve certain riddles that appear in the game."
Non-canon warning: Non-canonical information ends here.