Instead of his iconic baton, Link was originally supposed to play the theremin in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.
YouTube channel DidYouKnowGaming has put together an exclusive video that looks into all of the cut content and unused ideas from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, including the fact that Miyamoto reportedly cringed when he was first shown the game's art style and asked for it to be changed.
One of the more interesting facts comes right at the start of the video, where it's revealed that Link was originally supposed to play the theremin as his wind-changing instrument, before it was changed to the baton that we all know and love.
According to DidYouKnowGaming, the theremin was intended to be Link's instrument for about half of the game's development. The idea for Link to use a theremin is thanks to the film Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey having released in theatres before the Wind Waker's development, leading to Nintendo developers seeing the film and wanting Link to use a theremin in the next Legend of Zelda game.
To use the theremin, players would reportedly have had to put their hand over the controller, similarly to holding it over a theremin. The theremin was planned to be Link's instrument for half of The Wind Waker's development, which means that it was also planned to be the titular Wind Waker for some time.
This was all explained by Eiji Aonuma in a 2003 issue of Nintendo Dream which was recently translated by DidYouKnowGaming. Eiji Aonuma even joked that the game could have been called The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Theremin.
So what caused the team to change to a baton? According to Aonuma, Shigeru Miyamoto came to test the game out early in its development and said that it was "entirely unacceptable" to use a Theremin as the Wind Waker, which led to the team rethinking the instrument and going for a baton to control the wind instead, which interestingly still uses hand movements.