History of Hyrule, Zelda Archivist
@historyofhyrule
Melora Hart. Zelda archivist & publication campaigner since 2001. Art, books, manga, the retro & rare. Into Zelda? I've quietly been the source for a lot of what you know. artist/animal dork/hiker doin' my nerd shit
I just spent a stupid amount of money for a monthly from 1987 bc of this Zelda poster I want to scan. Add to the cost: I bought the issue before only to find the poster missing. This will be the most I've ever spent for one piece of #zelda art. I'm not doing the math, I'll hate myself too much.
Added scans of this 1992 #Zelda #LttP strategy guide by Keibunsha. As far as I can tell there isn't anything really remarkable about this one, 2 maps for areas that were hard to screenshot, but it is nice to get them all checked off the list when it comes to preservation: archive.org/details/guid...
I don't even have a good comment. Just, yeah, 100% this.
I just uploaded scans of this 1990 book that talks about a ton of Super Famicom games & has a really great speculative manga about what Link to the Past might be like once it's released. Manga by Hiroshi Aizawa 愛沢ひろし who had work in Nintendo Power and Wanpakku Comics. archive.org/details/guid...
Just scanned and uploaded this March 1992 #zelda Link to the Past guide by Futabasha. It has some hand drawn maps that are so good that I thought they were screenshots the first time I flipped through it. Find it here: archive.org/details/guid... I'll get 2400dpi scans of the art done soon.
If they drew the merchant in the same style
I just uploaded 600dpi new scans of this 1987 Adventure of Link guide by Keibunsha. archive.org/details/guid... You'll find a couple of different styles of original art including some rare, but simple, hand drawn maps. I'll be making (and adding) 2400dpi scans of those soon.
The Miyamoto quotes were on the jacket band! My copy didn't have one still so I found an auction listing that shows it. They *are* hilarious. I added them to the update post about the 4koma here: historyofhyrule.blogspot.com/2026/07/600d...
There's also just several old publications Zelda 1-3 where Zelda has pink or blue hair. They just didn't really care that much to stay on model, and the artists would get sent other guides for reference, so there's a lot of cross pollination that leads to all sorts of visual mutations.
To me it honestly doesn't matter either way, bc old guides are simply full of randomness, but the reason I said it is because on both pages with her drawn like this, (and one is with Link seeing her, which only happens with Zelda and not the maidens) they talk a lot about Zelda. So it felt implied
Because the most awesome people would draw Link as a girl ;D But for serious answers, if anyone is wondering, the Fairy Spell, in Zelda 2 AoL: that lets Link turn into a fairy to fly past areas, & it uses the same fairy sprite as the regular health-fairies, so that's what's going on in the manga
Here's a wonderful instance of Link presenting as a female fairy in 1987. I love her. The short CYOA manga is in a multi-famicom-game strategy guide. #zelda Find it here: archive.org/details/guid... Human translated text accompanies the images here: www.flickr.com/photos/histo...
This is one of the most random whim purchases I've made, had no idea what would be in it but it was $3, and it turned out to actually have a few handfuls of cute little #zelda illustrations! Find the scans here: archive.org/details/tv-b...
I gotchu, it's at the bottom here: www.warppoint.games/embed
Hold up... I just uncovered something. This little manga from February 1992 features most of the enemy artwork from the game booklet archive.org/details/clvp... But the lizard-dude (Blue Zazak?) was never printed anywhere until we got Art & Artifacts. So this artist got to see all of what they had ✨
Okay! Last one in this set! New scans of Volume 3 of a 1994 4koma & short-form manga for some famous, & more forgotten, games: King of Fighters '94, Super Momotaro Electric Railway III, Mother 2 (EarthBound,) Street Fighter II, & Zelda: Link to the Past. Read it here: archive.org/details/4kom...
Volume 2 of this 1994 mini-manga and 4koma that I just scanned contains comics for some awesome classic video games: Samurai Spirits (Samurai Showdown,) Zelda: A Link to the Past, Street Fighter II, Mother 2 (EarthBound) & Feda: The Emblem of Justice. Read it here: archive.org/details/4kom...
Volume 1 of this 1994 mini-manga and 4koma that I just scanned contains comics for some both popular, and rare, video game series: Street Fighter II, Sansara Naga 2, ONI, Feda: The Emblem of Justice, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and Super Metroid. Find it here: archive.org/details/4kom...
(If you're wondering why I'm referring to Akira Himekawa as "them," it's the pen name of 2 women A. Honda and S. Nagano and they've been working together since the 90's.)
Look at this cute little Link illustration from a 1986 Marukatsu. The ever wonderful @ozidual.bsky.social scanned this and let me know about the Zelda content: archive.org/details/maru... I love him 😭❤️ #zelda
Wow, one of the other artists in here, Hiroshi Fuji ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%86%... worked for Namco & did the character design for Valkyrie no Bōken ワルキューレの冒険 時の鍵伝説 He's active on Twitter: x.com/FUJIHIROSHI_ Seems like a bunch of artists who had pro gigs in the industry were doing 4koma for fun 😆
I had to google some of these games! I just scanned and uploaded an RPG 4koma from 1992 by Action Comics with sections for Fire Emblem, Zelda, Ys II, Tengai Makyō II: Manji Maru, Shining Force, Indy the Magical Kid. Find it here: archive.org/details/4kom...
Oh no! Man, why do people have to be like that! :( There was actually a really cute old SSB doujinshi for them that is one of the few we got translated. Here's the first few pages: historyofhyrule.com/publications...
I scanned & uploaded these 3 volumes of 1991-92 Super Famicom 4koma manga that feature comics for most of the main Nintendo games like #mario #zelda #fireemblem #mother #eathbound #fzero #simcity Find them here archive.org/details/4kom... archive.org/details/4kom... archive.org/details/4kom...
Oops! Almost forgot: I scanned all the art at 2400dpi on a flatbed so it's super nice looking, including making map scans from my other set so that they don't have notes drawn all over them. I just uploaded those zips. You can also find some of it in the old gallery: www.flickr.com/photos/histo...