Hidden area in Legend of Zelda that 30 years later one player finally opened

> That's because the minus world was never intended for players — it was an area where code could be tested before being implemented into the playable game.

I don't see any evidence of the above quoted claim either.

TechCrunch has a more detailed article which suggests your interpretation: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/03/zelda-has-a-minus-world/

> obviously was not crafted but is simply created on the fly by the game’s engine attempting to make sense of the data it’s reading.

Yeah. I've read before about how much effort went in squeezing as much map data as possible into the limited memory available. It doesn't seem reasonable that they'd leave a bunch of unused test data in like this.