The Legend of Zelda - Hyrule Historia

HYRULE HISTORIA
ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDITION
Publisher
Mike Richardson
Editor
Patrick Thorpe
Assistant Editor
Everett Patterson
Translation Coordinator
Michael Gombos
Digital Production
Cary Grazzini • Chris Horn • Ian Tucker
Lead Designer
Cary Grazzini
Designers
Tina Alessi • Stephen ReichErt
Cover Design
Cary Grazzini
ORIGINAL JAPANESE EDITION
Publisher
Masahiko Shioya
Supervising Editor
Eiji Aonuma (Nintendo)
Design & Editing
Akaharu Tsuchida
Yasuyuki Kato
Kazuya Sakai (Ambit)
Naoyuki Kayama
Mika Kanno
Ginko Tatsumi
Hironori Sao
Junko Fukuda
Kunio Takayama (Shogakukan)
Tadahikio Abe
Coeditors
Florent Gorges • Kevin Die • Chie Maruyama
Original Cover Design
Akemi Tobe
Originally published by Shogakukan Co., Ltd. First edition: December 2011.
Special thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto, Akira Himekawa, Jeremy Krueger-Pack, Davey Estrada, Nick McWhorter, and Annie Gullion.
President and Publisher Mike Richardson • Executive Vice President Neil Hankerson • Chief Financial Officer Tom Weddle • Vice President of Publishing Randy Stradley • Vice President of Book Trade Sales Michael
Martens • Vice President of Business Affairs Anita Nelson • Editor in Chief Scott Allie • Vice President of Marketing Matt Parkinson • Vice President of Product Development David Scroggy • Vice President of Information
Technology Dale LaFountain • Senior Director of Print, Design, and Production Darlene Vogel • General Counsel Ken Lizzi • Editorial Director Davey Estrada • Senior Books Editor Chris Warner • Executive Editor Diana
Schutz • Director of Print and Development Cary Grazzini • Art Director Lia Ribacchi • Director of Scheduling Cara Niece • Director of International Licensing Tim Wiesch • Director of Digital Publishing Mark Bernardi
The Legend of Zelda © 1986 Nintendo
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link © 1987 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past © 1991 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening © 1993 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time © 1998 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX © 1993, 1998 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask © 2000 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / Oracle of Ages © 2001 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker © 2002 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past & Four Swords © 2002, 2003 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures © 2004 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap © 2004 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess © 2006 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass © 2007 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks © 2009 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D © 1998, 2011 Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword © 2011 Nintendo
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: HYRULE HISTORIA
The Legend of Zelda™ © 1986–2013 Nintendo. All rights reserved.
Dark Horse Books® is a trademark of Dark Horse Comics, Inc., registered in various categories and countries.
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the express written permission of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured
in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual
persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental.
Published by Dark Horse Books
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International Licensing: (503) 905-2377
First English edition: January 2013
ISBN 978-1-61655-041-7
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Printed in China
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HYRULE HISTORIA
Translated by
Michael Gombos • Takahiro Moriki
Heidi Plechl • Kumar Sivasubramanian
Aria Tanner • John Thomas
All concept illustrations that originally
contained handwritten notes in Japanese have been translated
into English and updated for this version of the book.
I started working on the first Legend of Zelda project
with a small staff in a corner of Nintendo’s development
office in Kyoto. It was the mideighties, and the Famicom
[Editor’s note: Famicom is the Japanese name for the Nintendo
Entertainment System or NES] console had been out for
about two years. At that time I was working on a Super
Mario Bros. compilation for the Famicom, but the Disk
System [Editor’s note: The Disk System was a peripheral for
the Famicom that was not released in the United States] was
about to come out, and we needed to develop a launch
title for it.
I thought that we should take advantage of the Disk
System’s ability to rewrite data by making a game that
allowed two players to create dungeons and then explore
each other’s creations. We designed that game, and the
overall response was that playing through the dungeons
was the best part. We made a one-player game with
dungeons under mountains that surrounded Death
Mountain, but we couldn’t shake that “I want to play
aboveground, too!” feeling, so we added forests and lakes,
and eventually Hyrule Fie...