Gaming Zelda Fans Come Hither...

Wow, I still can't believe they've come this far. I can't wait.

 

Go back to what they did before, I guess, reorchestrating the rest of the games.

 

Awesome news- can't wait.

 

Well, I've put in for preorder. After listening to the latest preview, I'm sure it'll be worth it.

 

Most impressive.

 

Nice. I liked how they used music from the 25th anniversary concert. And that's a really cool visual representation of the timeline they have there.

 

Hard to not stare at that thing while hearing this music:

 

Beautiful. What's it from, Quest? DeviantArt?

 

Whoops, forgot the link. You can buy a copy of the print from there as well.

EDIT- corrected link.

EDIT 2- couldn't resist. Bought one.

 

Ah, Etsy, ThinkGeek's younger cousin.

 

Gonna preorder the collector's edition this week. Looking forward to it. I've been really dissapointed with the hardcover bound collector's player guides for all the post-TP games, especially Skyward Sword. They stripped out all the interesting lore and story content and just left the players guide content. Need HH to offset that.

I still love the ALTTP players guide from NP. That thing is like my Zelda bible. I wish they'd rerelease that in hardcover, so my current copy has had some wear over time...

 

Amazon has the preorder. It's $70 and comes out 2 weeks after the regular edition

 

Here's the pre-order page. Although apparently they're not taking pre-orders just yet- you can only sign up for availability alerts.

The limited edition of Hyrule Historia looks like it could have been pulled off the shelf of one of the sages in Hyrule. The faux-leather hardcover bears the symbol of the Gate of Time, debossed, on the cover, and gold gilded pages. The limited collector’s edition of The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia is perfect for the hardcore The Legend of Zelda™ fan!



There's also a trailer for the regular edition out:

 

(just making this a separate post to break things up)

Watching that Timeline video the other night, I was particularly struck by the use of iconography for each game- how each pillar had some kind of stone-carved-styled visual for each game. Now, it did eventually devolve into actual game art, but that got me thinking: If one were to create a series of such carvings with a uniform nature, what would be the defining graphic/image for each game? Or, at the very least, what image represents the game the best (and would do so even when lacking color)?

I'm going to start with just the first 9 games and come back around for the others- since many of the more receent ones are probably more straight-forward.

LOZ: I'm going to agree that the box art key/lion/heart/(vent?) shield here is the key graphic.


Likewise, the sword box art for AOL


Now, for ALTTP, there is the cover art/title logo sword/shield combo. It fits the pattern of the first two games, for certain (and neat that it represents a combination of the two, visually). You'd have to remove the Z, obviously.



However, there's an equal argument that, just as iconic for the game, was the promo art (possibly also box art for the Super Famicom version?) featuring the Master Sword in the Lost Woods:



Hard to choose between the two, though the former would probably translate better than the latter.

Then we come to Link's Awakening, which didn't have it's own unique cover art design (it recycled ALTTP's). There's a couple possobilities here. The most obvious would be the visual of the Wind Fish's egg atop the mountain of the island:



The next posisbility that comes to mind is the cover to Nintendo Power's 50th issue, featuring the game on the cover:



One might take the Owl by himself, though the sword in the sand on the beach goes with it pretty hand in hand. Downside is the sword looks like it's at least partially recycled from the AOL cover art, just with more bling.

Following that, we get to the fifth Zelda, OOT. It has both it's Hylian shield logo:



...and the obvious ocarina itself to use as representation.



Majora's Mask is the easiest:



Then we hit the Oracle games... I like what Timeline did by combining the Rod of Seasons and the Harp of Ages into a single combo image... and would pair well with the (potential) trend starting with OOT of focusing less on box art/ title screens and more of the defining object/item of a game.



And for now we'll pause with The Wind Waker (Zelda 9, for those counting! ), which has both it's cover/title image of the King of Red Lions



or the Wind Waker itself:



Some of those are tough to choose between- and others would simply fit the pattern better in some cases.

 

That timeline video just has an additional heart for LoZ's shield logo. I don't have my copy of the game on me, so I can't see what it has.