History of Hyrule has been doing some fantastic work in archiving The Legend of Zelda series history. And they've been at it once again with another fantastic find.
In January, we reported that the archivist had uploaded a 1986 choose-your-own-adventure book that contained tons of quirky lost Zelda lore. That book was based on the original NES The Legend of Zelda, and it also let you play as Zelda!
Now, History of Hyrule has discovered and uploaded what they believe to be the very last missing CYOA book for the Zelda series. Released in 1992 and titled The Legend of Zelda: The Triforce of the Gods, follows the events of A Link to the Past (Triforce of the Gods is the game's Japanese title, after all), but deviates in a few different ways, such as the Light World bosses now being attached to one of the Gods of Power, Wisdom, and Courage. It's also notoriously buggy — which, in gamebook terms, means many of the directions send you to the wrong page! It's actually not even possible to finish legitimately!
As History of Hyrule says, the illustrations are gorgeous. While the 1986 one had some interesting Zelda illustrations and a cute, bug-eyed Link, this 1992 book is a lot closer to the art and design that we know and love.
Here's just a small selection of some of the beautiful artwork within the book.
You can go and check out a full book (thanks History of Hyrule!) over on archive.org to see an important and fascinating slice of Zelda history once thought lost. Don't forget, though, you'll need to read right to left given that it's a manga-style book just like the last one!
[source archive.org, via twitter.com]
Comments (15)
Well, it's not in English so remembering to read it right to left won't help too much.
Those illustrations look nice too, but it's a shame to hear that they didn't check to see if the actual game instructions were written properly.
Choose your adventure books are really fun, I hope this gets fan translation.
The books from the series that I remember lacked of drawings but were fun as hell!!! This one looks stunning!
Those illustrations are friggin' rad!
Someone needs to translate this!!!
Like anything Zelda it's a long lost legend waiting to be found... Until it is!
@AlanaHagues "*While the 1986 one had some interesting Zelda illustrations and a cute, bug-eyed Link, this 1992 book *is a lot closer to the art and design that we know and love."
@Markiemania95 That was a pretty hig miss from me! That whole sentence was a mess 😅 thanks!
Directly inspired Breath of the Wild.
@AlanaHagues *big
…sorry, I had to 😂
I’m a sucker for the oldies
@Markiemania95 slow clap I'll see myself out.
The Oracle games had choose your own adventure books, but didn't have cool pictures like this book. They were definitely released after '92.
@xzacutor Oh, absolutely, I meant still missing from being accessible/the internet since they went out of print. As far as I am aware everything but this had been uploaded.
Thank you for the feature! <3
Tap here to load 15 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...