The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia Paperback
by Patrick Thorpe (Editor), Michael Gombos (Translator), Takahiro Moriki (Translator), Heidi Plechl (Translator), Kumar Sivasubramanian (Translator), Aria Tanner (Translator), John Thomas (Translator)

An unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda. This book contains concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the chronology of the games, and more! It also includes an exclusive comic by Akira Himekawa!

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia is a book that was released to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series. It is the first book in The Goddess Collection trilogy.

Dark Horse Books and Nintendo team up to bring you The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, containing an unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda franchise. This handsome hardcover contains never-before-seen concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the official chronology of the games, and much more! Starting with an insightful introduction by the legendary producer and video-game designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, this book is crammed full of information about the storied history of Link's adventures from the creators themselves! As a bonus, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia includes an exclusive comic by the foremost creator of The Legend of Zelda manga — Akira Himekawa!

The encyclopedia consists of three sections, bookended by messages from Shigeru Miyamoto and Eiji Aonuma describing the development of the Zelda franchise and their roles in it. The Skyward Sword manga by Akira Himekawa is included in an appendix.

The Legend Begins
The Legend Begins is a behind-the-scenes look at Skyward Sword. It is filled with artwork, concept art, design sketches, and design notes on the game's characters, locations, and items. Some pages have footers describing how Skyward Sword relates to recurring trends in the series, namely: Link oversleeping, Zelda's harp, the concept of dual worlds, Phoeni, the Sheikah Stones and Gossip Stones, unique shopkeepers, large aquatic spirit creatures, sacred grounds, the three crests of the goddesses, time-travel, spirit realms, Moblins and Bokoblins, Octoroks, and Stalfos.

The History of Hyrule
The History of Hyrule chronicles the entire history of the The Legend of Zelda universe, divided into Eras. It presents the first public iteration of the full Zelda Timeline. The section includes side entries summarizing characters, locations, and events. It also contains translation keys for the various Hylian Languages and the Gerudo typography.

Creative Footprints
Creative Footprints consists of concept art, design sketches, and development information spanning the previous 25 years of the franchise. This is followed by a timeline of the character designs of Link, Zelda, and Ganon throughout the series. The section ends with a catalogue of the Zelda titles released up to Ocarina of Time 3D, not including the Game & Watch game or any third-party games.

Publisher: Dark Horse
276 page softcover

Hyrule Historia contains 276 pages of content that documents information about The Legend of Zelda series, including artwork and production notes. It includes three major sections: "The Legend Begins: The World of Skyward Sword," "The History of Hyrule: A Chronology," and "Creative Footprints: Documenting 25 Years of Artwork." Outside of those three sections, the book includes a foreword by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and an afterword from Eiji Aonuma, who produced recent games in the series. It also includes an art piece created for the 25th anniversary of the series (and the original cover of the English edition). Information about commemorative merchandise is also included. The book includes a manga at the end as a "Special Comic." It was written by Akira Himekawa, who have created other manga for the series. The manga takes place before the events of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

- The full history and making of the The Legend of Zelda" franchise, never-before-seen concept art!
- Introduction by Shigeru Miyamoto!

The first section, "The Legend Begins: The World of Skyward Sword," focuses on the world of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword due to the book being released alongside Skyward Sword in Japan. Images from the game, such as character designs, and commentary by the development team are also included. The section explores the development process for the game, presenting concept art for characters and locations, including artwork that was never used in the game.

The second section titled, "The History of Hyrule: A Chronology" establishes the official timeline of the fictional events that take place within the series, following years of speculation by fans. Nintendo qualified the timeline by stating, "this chronicle merely collects information that is believed to be true at this time" allowing the possibility for future changes.

The final major section, "Creative Footprints: Documenting 25 Years of Artwork," focuses on artwork based on chronological release date, depicting monsters and characters from rough drawings to final artwork, including the evolution of the main characters, Link, Zelda and Ganondorf. Some of the artwork had not been seen by the general public prior to the book's release.

A list of all official games in the series is included at the end of this section. Some spin-offs are not included, although The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest, the Satellaview Zelda games and Link's Crossbow Training are mentioned.

Producer Eiji Aonuma said staff members pored through "stacks of ancient documents" to produce the timeline in the book. The English version is slightly larger than the Japanese version and uses heavier-weight paper.

Henry Gilbert writing for GamesRadar responded positively to the book, calling it, "an incredibly classy collection that was worth the wait". He applauded the inclusion of the fictional timeline stating that, "Historia at last gives the fans what they’d wanted for so long." He also praised the production quality, including the cover design, translation and paper stock.

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule History is one of my favorite game series of all time and I wanted to complete the trilogy of this collection (the other two books being Art & Artifacts which is okay and the Encyclopedia which is fantastic). I mainly wanted this book because I have never understood how the games fit together and are related, and this book goes into the timeline with diagrams and explanations. That part is great, and I won't spoil the fun by going into any more detail other than to say the author isn't making any official declarations and supposes different split timelines, as in different outcomes to battles and evil-sealings which splinters the realities into different paths so that two games can coexist together when they suppose completely opposite things happened in their beginnings.

This book has some good information. One section offers the suggestion that the Ocarina from Ocarina of Time may be made from the same blue stone material as the time stones in Skyward Sword. (In that game you push a mine cart with special stone in it, and everything around the stone is transported back in time, so the desert around you turns to lush green grasslands. It was my favorite part of the game.) I would have never put the two items together.

I still highly recommend this book to collectors of Zelda stuff. It's a big book with shiny gold letters and looks good on my gaming shelf with the rest of the collection.

It is a wonderful collection of artwork and design decisions from all the Zelda games.

Ideally it would be nice to see a book dedicated to each game, as trying to fit all of Zelda's rich history into one printed book you are bound to miss a few things. Plus it means some of the images are smaller which is a shame.

However as a long time Zelda fan it is a beautiful book to own. This really does become even more special as it is a celebration of something that made up a big part of my childhood.

In summary: it is very heavy and prone to finger prints, but beautifully presented and printed and contains some wonderful behind the scenes information that makes the games that bit more enjoyable.

A must have for any Zelda fan, and something to grab while it is still available.

Netflix 'The Legend Of Zelda' Live-Action Series Was Canceled Because Of Leaks

Back in 2015, word started going around that Netflix was planning a Legend of Zelda live-action series. However, as soon as we learned of the series, it was reported that Nintendo had pulled the plug. So what happened? As it turns out, Nintendo got antsy about word of the show leaking out and decided they didn't want to move forward after all – which seems like a strange reason, all things considered.

The confirmation of why Netflix and Nintendo canceled the live-action The Legend of Zelda TV series comes from Adam Conover (via Collider). During an appearance on The Serf Times podcast, Conover talked about how he was working on a different Nintendo property – a claymation Star Fox adaptation. However, both Star Fox and Legend of Zelda got shut down after word of Zelda leaked to the Wall Street Journal.

"Then, a month later, suddenly there were reports Netflix wasn't going to do its Legend of Zelda anymore," Conover said. "I was like 'what happened?' And then I heard from my boss we weren't doing our Star Fox anymore. I was like 'what happened?' He was like, 'someone at Netflix leaked the Legend of Zelda thing, they weren't supposed to talk about it, Nintendo freaked out... and they pulled the plug on everything, the entire program to adapt these things."

I'm not entirely sure why Nintendo would be so freaked out about a story leak that they'd pull the plug entirely, but hey, that's their prerogative. That said, Nintendo hasn't had the best luck when it comes to live-action adaptations of their properties, so maybe they just got cold feet. The Legend of Zelda remains a wildly popular series for Nintendo, and while there was an animated series based on the games that ran in 1989, there have been no live-action adaptations, although you have to figure a live-action adaptation is bound to get people interested. Will Nintendo ever try to adapt Zelda again, be it live-action or some other medium? There's an animated Super Mario Bros. movie due out in 2022, and perhaps Nintendo is waiting to see how audiences react to that before moving forward with adaptations of other games.

The first Legend of Zelda game was released in 1986 and told the story of an elf-like boy named Link who is on a quest to rescue Princess Zelda. Several sequels followed, the most recent being the acclaimed 2017 release The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and 2019's The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which is a  remake of the 1993 game for the Game Boy.

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