And now it’s time for your “funny story of the week,” and it comes from The Legend Of Zelda, believe it or not. No, it doesn’t have to do with a new game that’s arriving soon, or Tingle in any capacity (thank goodness…). Instead, it has to do with some classic illustrations that were made for the series long ago. You can see one such illustration above. That was made by Katsuya Terada, a famed Japanese artist who lent his talents to Nintendo titles via certain publications to help promote the games. The twist in this tale is that, as revealed by Time Extension, he made all of those legendary (pun intended) pieces…without actually playing a single Zelda title…
“I hadn’t actually played any Zelda games. However, I was already familiar with the worldview of the game from Japanese game magazines at the time.
Back then, the game industry wasn’t as strict about managing characters as it is now, so I could basically do whatever I saw fit with my work on Nintendo Power. I remember being free to draw what I wanted. And because Famicom games had such a low resolution, I had that much more room to exercise my imagination.
That said, I was aware that my job was to translate the world of Zelda into a more realistic language, as it were, so I made sure not to deviate too much from the original visuals. Thankfully, I became known as someone who could depict fantasy in a realistic way, so I’d say my work on Zelda was a success in that sense.”
Yep. He did that. Obviously, it worked out, and sometimes, you’re just that good. Nintendo will obviously be a bit more precise when The Legend of Zelda and its promo art as we go into the Switch 2 era, which will undoubtedly feature multiple entries from the franchise.
