historyofhyrule - Tumblr blog

[historyofhyrule]

I've 2400dpi scanned the first of the "lost" chapters of the very first Zelda manga series. This would have been volume 3 for Adventure of Link but it was never published in book form, it can only be found in the monthlies & before now we only had scanned xerox copies. Find the scans for the chapter here: https://archive.org/details/zines_wanpakku_1988_02 And the English translation here: https://historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2021/10/vol-3-ch-1-english-translation-for.html Or here if you want to start from the beginning. It's one of my favorite manga: https://historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2021/09/after-35-years-its-finally-fully.html

[historyofhyrule]

Thanks to some awesome sleuthing work we've figured out this piece was mislabeled in the official Art and Artifacts artbook. It wasn't done for a 1994 re-release, it's actually from a 1987 Nintendo Calendar. Which means it's a piece from 1986: likely done along with other original Zelda 1 game art.

[historyofhyrule]

I'm really behind on posting stuff people have done & sent in! Like these unseen-until-recently color pages from the very first Zelda manga that were repaired so incredibly beautifully by Olga twitter.com/chaosdrifter93 Find them all here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/historyofhyrule/albums/72177720315079925/

[historyofhyrule]

After decades all 4 volumes of the LttP "Oath of Riruto" Zelda manga are finally in English! This is one of the wildest off-shoots of the series: drawn by a DBZ fan artist turned actual series production artist. Head here to find the scanlation links! https://historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2024/01/translation-and-scanlation-complete-all.html

[historyofhyrule]

I didn't realize the full volume may not have been online: This is where the German Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time comics are from but there's also an interview in there as well. I did some rough 600dpi scans to get it to someone and will do better scans later. Enjoy! https://archive.org/details/zines_club_nintendo_1998_de

[historyofhyrule]

New Scans: The Light and Dark World Maps from A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda Triforce of the Gods World Guidebook, 1992 | ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, ワールドガイドブック| ISBN4-8033-3874-4, Published by Taishubo Co.

I 2400dpi scanned and repaired this really awesome set of maps from an old Japanese strategy guide. While someone had posted low quality scans of the whole guide on archive.org at one point; I can no longer find them so I bumped scanning it up on my to-do list. The maps themselves have never been repaired or placed in an online gallery before either so this is probably the first time most people are seeing them.

[historyofhyrule]

I found & 2400dpi scanned something I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to see: The color pages for the first Zelda manga ever. The Legend of Zelda by Ran Maru, Wanpakku Comics June 1986. They're honestly beautiful. There's also a link to a complete translation. Go here to find it all.

[historyofhyrule]

Another batch, mostly lineups:Link with his stupid tall new family, Gerudo Women that are too TALL (also Ganon is even bigger, what do they feed him) and some Purah from all 3 games (TotK one is imo the best) also I just wanted to show how I worked out glow animation on Dranon but it was so silly stiff so I added some lazy movement. That is one angry puppy D :

[historyofhyrule]

Another batch Ganon and him getting bigger and bigger XD All the Zelda costumes : D Impa and Paya (I was so sure Impa from AoC was more simmilar to Paya, but the changes are there) OH nad Rito and proof that Revali was a teen bc look how short he is with his red dots on cheeks that every Adult don't have. He is a baby and we do not let anyone badmouth Revali in this house (he wanted Link to prove him that he was equal bc that how he makes friends. There would be arrows everywhere and nobody would be safe if Calamity didn't end the way it did. too little time to get close, too much stress bc CALAMITY)

[historyofhyrule]

All the unique Zora... or mostly unique as the black one from the right is Khira and her pallet swap is Chroma, but the files were still marked NPC and not UMii so yeah... unique Sidon head does not fit into the mask. the model has separate head model when he wears the mask that hides big portions of his head X"D (Also will he grow as large as Dorephan? there might be something about rulers of Zora that make them grow larger than typical Zora, as Muzu is still normal adult size and Dorephan? that's a big boy) Once again past champion is smaller that others. She is still a teen Zora then.

My headcanon is that Zora growth is different from Hylian. The proportions change for a time until some early teen years and then they just grow bigger. So Adult Mipha would look same as teen, but closer in hight to Chroma or Yona OH also YONA! She is older that Sidon right? Probably still younger that Mipha but still, older that Sidon... nice. (I like Yona, she is cute and they make nice pair with Sidon <3) One more thing. I like Dorephan costume so much more in TotK, but Sidon got sillier in TotK X"D

[historyofhyrule]

Finally done with the Zonai

Have you noticed all of them have the same switch around the middle? even Mecha Mineru has one : D 1. Mecha Mineru is such a nice model : D Look, there is nice place for link to sit in with tiny handles for his tiny hands : D and even place for his tiny legs : D comfy place for a baby hero <3 2. The grey one is the training one you meet at some shrines.

3. Getting the bows for Captains for pain but the look so much better with bows than weird hands that as far as I know have one more other form? ugh 4. I tried to pose them a bit bc the t-pose for most of the robots is even worse than dranon's. Need to make proper IK rigs for them as even that simple thing was a mess 5. Oh and headcanon time The soldiers were left on the sky islands and some other places to protect them and in theory help future Hero, but they are still robots programmed to scan for malice and attack and guess who is still full of malice OUR BOY LINK! We can see bits of it leaving with every shrine and I don't think we are fully rid of it before the final fight with Dranon... That's why I posed them with Mineru and the Helper. All of them are Mineru Copper babies, some jus have a bad programming inside, needs update to the kill filter X"D

[historyofhyrule]

Thanks for the great reminder for people: Please always save the content that you can! Some of the stuff on my site, I saved it in my personal files when I first saw it, but I linked to other sites because it was their content and they deserved the hits for finding it. Over the 20+ years I have been doing this some of it has completely disappeared from the web though, including the Wayback Machine, and it couldn't be found on reverse image searches. The only reason it exists publicly now is because I had those old files saved and actually realized they were no longer online. Some of it is as new as Minish Cap and even large files for Creating a Champion are gone. Also know that that my main domain isn't where everything is hosted either, so Wayback Machine wont work for everything. I'm working on scanning a massive amount of "new" content (old publications and art), organizing the gallery on flickr, and then will update my site. Until then you can find updated files on my Internet Archive and Flickr accounts. Even when I have not been active in my community I have made sure my sites stay live. But, while I will continue to keep working on Zelda content as long as I am alive, it's too precarious to depend on a handful of people, let alone one or two. Also want to give an example too: A few weeks ago V-i-z got one of the old Zelda mangas pulled from my IA page even though I don't think (?) they hold the rights to that work. (I couldn't find anything saying they had acquired them and they haven't published anything else by that publisher or author as far as I could find.) It was the Legend of Zelda manga by Yuu Mishouzaki- loosely based on the original game. My assumption is that whomever was submitting the legal requests for V-i-z was just doing a blanket search for "Legend of Zelda manga" and they probably just don't know there's other Zelda manga besides the Himekawa manga. (To note: I don't host anything in print, as long as I am aware of it being in print.) I can't challenge it with IA because I am also not the right's holder. (And regardless, I'm leaving it off the web because I can't be sure that they don't have the rights right now and you can still find it on the site that first scanned it 20+ years ago anyway, Kasuto.net) But they didn't send IA a takedown notice for the 2nd volume, which was titled Adventure of Link manga, and, since the 2 volumes have the same publisher and author, I have to assume V-i-z wasn't searching for anything but "LoZ manga." (But!! I don't want to draw attention or do something wrong so don't bother anyone about it. If they don't publish it in a year or two, or don't have any updates on acquiring rights, I think it will be safe to assume that it was a mistake and will just re-upload the better files with a name that will make it more clear it's not something they've published. I just wanted to tell this story so everyone can be aware of how important it is to save things!) Edit: if anyone wants links to old Zelda sites, my very first site is still online and here is the link list. You can also visit the incredible Zelda Archive, where Joshua keeps track of some of the best Zelda sites and which ones are still live and even active. Edit 2: I believe North Castle is not only the oldest Zelda site still online but actually THE VERY FIRST Zelda site ever made. Lady Juliet deserves a lot of credit for that. (At the very least: those of us who were some of the first Zelda site webmasters have said for decades that we believe hers to be the first.) And I truly love that the very first heartbeat of Zelda websites was heavily centered Fanart and Fan Fics.

I’ve just learned of the existence of the website historyofhyrule dot com, and it has an incredible amount of rare Zelda art. And my favourite thing is how back then the artists of guidebooks and tie-in stories only had tiny sprites to work with, and as a result we have a whole bunch of versions of the characters.

[historyofhyrule]

Are the old pink-haired girl Link with the rapier scans on your Tumblr? I've been gripped by a need to reblog them but I can't find them T.T

They were not on here, so here you go! Pink-haired female Link from Monthly Shonen Captain magazine, May 18, 1986, and the Wanpakku & Tokuma Shoten guide, May 25, 1986: which was later released by Nintendo of America as the official Tips and Tactics guide. More info on those publications can be found here: https://historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2022/05/archival-scan-hissyou-hintbon-super.html And more info on the history of pink haired Link can be found here: https://historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2021/11/why-did-link-have-hot-pink-hair-in-link.html Scans made by me. Full sized images can be found in this album: https://www.flickr.com/photos/historyofhyrule/albums/72157629221232021/page2

[historyofhyrule]

Here's another rare piece of Zelda art that hasn't been cleaned up, or really online, before! I LOVE this map

https://twitter.com/That_black_lynx did most of the work fixing this up (thank you!) & I uploaded a bunch of versions here: https://archive.org/details/zelda_guide_loz_ikeda & here: https://flickr.com/photos/historyofhyrule/52731097260/in/album-72177720305777637/

[historyofhyrule]

An absolutely adorable image of Link and Princess Zelda from the 1986 Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha Legend of Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy strategy guide

[historyofhyrule]

Lesser-known Katsuya Terada Zelda art appreciation post! I'm currently making new archival scans of the German Link's Awakening guide and can't keep my love of these to myself. This is one of my favs

In the meantime my old scans of the guide are here: https://historyofhyrule.com/publications/guide_la_de/001.html

[historyofhyrule]

Do you happen to have the old Majora's Mask guides? I could only find the Nintendo Power and the Prima 3DS books. That still leaves the original Prima, the Brady Games, and the Versus guides. If you happened to have any of those I'd be very happy. 😊

I don't. Sorry about that! I mainly only have things for the first 4 games and then random books with unique art for any of the games that came later than that. Mases has been scanning some of his guides and actually collects guides to have the guides, not just for the art like me: https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Strategy_Guides And then some of the people on my favorite's list on IA might have them. I'm not sure though, it's been a while since I checked https://archive.org/details/fav-historyofhyrule