The game was originally pitched as a Legend of Zelda game with Link as the protagonist. The game's director, Shinya Hiratake, didn't think it could be a Mario game at first since all of the Mario characters could jump, and he wanted to remove the jumping mechanic.

When presenting the idea of a game featuring Link where the player explores small dioramas to the heads of Nintendo, Miyamoto at first thought they wanted to produce actual dioramas. Though the idea wasn't turned into a full game at first, it was allowed to be incorporated into Super Mario 3D World as a mini-game. Later, Miyamoto encouraged them to take the mini-game and make it into a full game.