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Thursday, February 14, 2019

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts

The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts by Nintendo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My wife and I both dismiss Valentine's Day as a commercial holiday. When I got home from work yesterday, she surprised me with this. Luckily I'd gotten her a t-shirt with that caterpillar from the Labyrinth on it so I wasn't caught empty-handed.

The Legend of Zelda series is my favorite video game series of all time and I have fond memories of gazing at the art in the manuals and promotional materials. This book is treasure trove of Zelda art. It's a weighty tome at over 400 pages and I bet there are less than 4000 words in the entire thing, all occurring in an interview with artists on the series at the very end of the book.

Every page is packed with art. There are concept sketches, promotional art, box art, art from the manuals, even pixel art from the games themselves. Every game, from the original Legend of Zelda to the most recent game, Breath of the Wild, is well-represented. I don't have the Zelda II manual anymore but I think some of the art for it came from issues of the Nintendo Fun Club Magazine, the precursor to Nintendo Power. Is Nintendo Power still being published? Anyway, every character, every enemy, and even every magical item is depicted. I can't imagine a better source of Zelda art than this book. Four out of five Triforces.





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