Nintendo did at some stuff

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, it's like multiplayer in a side-scrolling beat 'em up versus an isometric one -- it's a lot more fun in the isometric game because of the additional space.

Yeah, it's a much better mechanic than the "fight it out" focus they had in the Four Swords games. Hey, let's emphasize cooperation instead of rivalry in our COOPERATIVE Zelda game!

The rivalry stuff was fun, but it did make it hard to actually finish levels sometimes. :P Of course, going by streams of this game I've seen (Treehouse has had it) some people are attacking eachother anyway, but it's to their detriment so they eventually stop and actually play the level, which is good.