The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia by Shigeru Miyamoto

The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia

by Shigeru Miyamoto

Make sure to check out the other installments in this unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda franchise with the New York Times best selling The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts and The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia. Also look for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild — Creating a Champion for an indepth look at the art, lore, and making of the best selling video game! 


Dark Horse Books and Nintendo team up to bring you The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, containing an unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda franchise. This handsome hardcover contains never-before-seen concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the official chronology of the games, and much more! Starting with an insightful introduction by the legendary producer and video-game designer of Donkey Kong, Mario, and The Legend of Zelda, Shigeru Miyamoto, this book is crammed full of information about the storied history of Link's adventures from the creators themselves! As a bonus, The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia includes an exclusive comic by the foremost creator of The Legend of Zelda manga — Akira Himekawa!

Reviewed by inlibrisveritas on

4 of 5 stars

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This answers so many of the Zelda fan’s dreams and I’m happy to say this was the book that kicked 50 Shades from the Amazon’s number 1 spot on the Best Seller list, even now it’s still ahead of it. At any rate!

Historia is a whole collection of history, concept art, storyline and timelines that Zelda fans have been dreaming of for so long, over 25 years…seriously. It opens up with a section solely on Skyward Sword the newest installment to the series, and the rest of the book kind of refers back to it as well. Part of me knows this is kind of selling point for them but it’s also because Skyward Sword is technically the 1st game on the timeline now, so there are a lot of cool little things that they connected to the others games to help tie them together. The concept art is really awesome and I’m happy the designers decided to actually keep their really old notes because it’s neat seeing their processes to get to those final characters. The one problem I had with it, and I’m blaming this on the fact that I had to read it on a computer is that the wording in the concept pictures is too hard to read. But I’ll simply count that as another reason to buy this.

The timeline is exactly what we wanted. It explains the rather complicated timelines (since it splits into three) and gives you the basic storyline from one to the next, which some side info on characters, objects and places. I’m a bit sad there wasn’t more to my favorite game, Link’s Awakening, but since I never finished it the story of it made so much more sense. For something that they will admit came together by accident it’s actually a pretty cool storyline for the world, and despite a few consistency errors it’s pretty fluid. Some of it is a tad repetitive, but most people will not sit down and read this like a normal novel so I doubt that will be too much of an issue.

I think that any hard-core Zelda fan would love to have this both as a great reference but also to pull back those memories of sitting in front of the NES or N64 for hours, chopping grass or rolling to get some where faster. It’s a great addition to any gamer’s collection.

I received this from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 13 February, 2013: Finished reading
  • 13 February, 2013: Reviewed