Archival Scans of the Link to the Past 4koma Action Comics #1 by Futabasha

Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org

I've started scanning the 26ish volumes of Legend of Zelda 4-Koma and I'm actually going to post large versions of it, which I usually don't do, but it's only because I think the chances of it having a market to be republished are pretty slim. I'm trying to make sure I support publishers but, also, it's a shame something disappears because it's been unavailable for decades so I'm trying to figure out the balance there.


The Legend of Zelda 4 Koma Manga Kingdom # 1
A 4koma for A Link to the Past
Anthology
Published by Action Comics and Futabasha
ISBN4-575-93293-0
First Published Date: May 28, 1992
Approx Length: 136 pages

Any translations will be posted to this Flickr album for now.


I am super sad these never got popular. They're so awesome! I've had small scans of most of the pages on historyofhyrule.com since 2002-2004 and I haven't even seen so much as a meme from them. And they are so meme worthy! Only 1 out of roughly 26 Zelda 4komas have been translated so, if you would like to translate this, even just sections of it, please go ahead and let me know!


If you use these pages please always link back to the main website though, so people can find more information and rare materials, or even help me find more!

Here are examples and info on the other 4koma, they're for the games LttP, LA, OoT, MM, WW, OoA, and OoS. I will be scanning them all in the coming weeks: Here's what you can expect to see.

Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, 4koma, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce, The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, SNES, Super Famicom, 600ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, videogame, Comics, Manga, 4-koma, Yonkoma, 4コマ漫画, LoZ, Nintendo,

Archival scans of the Legend of Zelda Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Triforce of the Gods 2

Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org

Info on it:

• The Legend of Zelda 2 Triforce of the Gods (A Link to the Past) [ゼルダの伝説 2 神々のトライフォース]
• A Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series [双葉社ファンタジーノベルシリーズ]
• By Katsuyuki Ozaki [尾崎克之]
• ISBN 4-575-23125-8
• Published by Futabasha [双葉社]
• September 10, 1992
• Approximately 230 pages

My old illustration scans were here, I actually had the illustrations for this on the first version of the site, I think in 2003? and I'll eventually have even higher res images of the illustrations in the gallery.

Other Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Novel, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, 小説, Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce, The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, SNES, Super Famicom, 600ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, novel, story, videogame, Hyrule Fantasy, illustrations,

Archival scans of the Legend of Zelda Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: The Count of Black Shadows by Akio Higuchi

Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org

The Legend of Zelda: The Count of Black Shadows (Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series)
ゼルダの伝説 黒き影の伯爵 小説 （双葉社ファンタジーノベルシリーズ）
Author: Akio Higuchi 著 者 樋口 明雄
Published by Futabasha in February of 1992
Approximately 255 pages
ISBN: 4-575-23096-0

My old illustration scans were here, I actually had the illustrations for this on the first version of the site, I think in 2003? and I'll eventually have even higher res images of the illustrations in the gallery. For now the "1992 Link meets 2022 Link" is scanned at 1200dpi and you can find that there


Other Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Novel, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, 小説, Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce, The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, SNES, Super Famicom, 600ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, novel, story, videogame, Hyrule Fantasy, illustrations,

Archival Scans of the Link to the Past Nintendo Player's Guide

Scans for this aren't new, but this is the best quality you'll find online. I scanned this at 1200dpi and you can find both the cleaned up images and pure raw scans on my archive.com page, here

It was published by Nintendo of America in conjunction with Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. 1992

If you've never flipped through this, do so! It doubles as a story book & production art book- which was so rare

ZeldaLegends.net still has the original downloads released by Nintendo. The images are small but they have great color. Find those here

Other Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Strategy Guide, Nintendo Power, Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, SNES, 600ppi, 1200ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, videogame, Nintendo Power, Strategy Guide, Game Guide, Player's Guide, Katsuya Terada,

Archival scans of the 1993 Link to the Past manga by Junko Taguchi

Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org


If you downloaded this before February 21, 2022 then you will want to re-download the new larger, cleaner, files I've uploaded

The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zalda [sic]
A manga for A Link to the Past
by Junko Taguchi
Published by Hippon Super!
ISBN4-7966-0741-2
First Published Date: November 20, 1993
Approx Length: 192 pages


My old upload of it was here: historyofhyrule.com/publications/manga_lttp_zalda

Other Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link to the Past, Manga, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce, The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, SNES, Super Famicom, 600ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, videogame, comic, comics,

New English Translation: Oath of Lilto Volume 1

Ammon contacted me a while back to express interest in translating something and, long story short, he ended up translating the highly requested Oath of Lilto. He did a wonderful job! This funky little Dragon Ball Z style Link to the Past manga was done by Furusawa Jun'ya (古澤純也) of Dragon Ball fame, and spans 4 volumes. You can find the 600dpi scans and the translation text document over on archive.org

If anyone would be interested in page cleaning and typesetting this, please do. This translation is not a scanlation, it's just a text document, I'm swamped in other projects and don't have time to be able to do that myself right now. 

New Large Resolution Scans of the Link to the Past 4koma Action Comics #2 by Futabasha

Here are 300dpi scans posted on archive.org

I've started scanning the 26ish volumes of Legend of Zelda 4-Koma and I'm actually going to post large versions of it, which I usually don't do, but it's only because I think the chances of it having a market to be republished are pretty slim. I'm trying to make sure I support publishers but, also, it's a shame something disappears because it's been unavailable for decades so I'm trying to figure out the balance there.

The Legend of Zelda 4 Koma Manga Kingdom # 2
A 4koma for Link's Awakening and A Link to the Past
Anthology
Published by Action Comics and Futabasha
ISBN4-575-93359-7
First Published Date: April 28, 1994
Approx Length: 129 pages

Any translations will be posted to this Flickr album for now.


I am super sad these never got popular. They're so awesome! I've had small scans of most of the pages on historyofhyrule.com since 2002-2004 and I haven't even seen so much as a meme from them. And they are so meme worthy! Only 1 out of roughly 26 Zelda 4komas have been translated so, if you would like to translate this, even just sections of it, please go ahead and let me know!


If you use these pages please always link back to the main website though, so people can find more information and rare materials, or even help me find more!

Here are examples and info on the other 4koma, they're for the games LttP, LA, OoT, MM, WW, OoA, and OoS. I will be scanning them all in the coming weeks: Here's what you can expect to see.

Other Keywords: Zelda, tLoZ, LoZ, aLttP, Lttp, A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda, Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce, The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods, SNES, Super Famicom, 300ppi, RAW, RAWS, scan, scans, high res, high rez, high resolution, Link, Ganon, Princess Zelda, Hyrule, Nintendo, book, videogame, Comics, Manga, 4-koma, Yonkoma, 4コマ漫画, LA, LoZ, Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima, Windfish, Koholint Island, Marin, Link, Tarin, Nintendo, Gameboy,

Massive Dump of Retro Magazine Scans Incoming

I would like to mention that there are interviews in them that I really hope someone translates! Link me if you know of someone who is doing that!

I've been wanting to post this (and a few other things!) for a few days but Blogger has been acting up and then I had to play through LttP, lol, but thanks to the absolutely incredible efforts of the Videogame History Foundation, and Hubz of Gaming Alexandria, a huge batch of Family Computer Magazine from 1886 and beyond (and Famitsu magazine) have been purchased in bulk and are being archivally scanned. And just being scanned, period, for the first time is incredible because it's allowing us a whole new look at the history of the series: and it's honestly it's already a goldmine. Look at just a few highlights from just a few issues:

As twitter user MrTalida points out:

In this series of tweets we see that these 4 issues feature Legend of Zelda Q&A interviews with Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka, identified by their pseudonyms at the time of "MIYAHON" and "TEN TEN."

That this features images of sprites before they were finalized

This is a Q&A with Miyamoto and Tezuka teasing mentioning the Adventure of Link very recently after Hyrule Fantasy's release

Dark_Linkael realized this was a different photo of the overworld map model and noted these cool differences that mirror what the original prototype of the Hyrule overworld looked like

This, below, is my favorite thing ever though!

VGDensetsu posted these pages of these adorable clay models of pink haired Link from A Link to the Past and let us know that they were created by Hiroyuki Nakazawa / なかざわひろゆき. They're pictures taken from the September 11, 1992 issue of Famitsu, also uploaded by Hubz on Archive.org. They remind me so much of what they ended up doing for the Link's Awakening remake that I kind of wonder if someone at the company remembered these, pulled them out, and was like "I know how this should look."

There is this really awesome 4 page comic that user Capcom of Metroid Database scanlated and posted in this tweet

Anyway, Hubz has been scanning the Famitsu issues for a while and you'll see a whole load of them but the Family Computer Magazine issues are new: be sure to check both out on his site or user page at archive.org. And follow VGDensetsu and MrTalida on twitter, they post/find/highlight some of the most amazing stuff.

Zelda Manga: 600 dpi Scans of all 3 Volumes of Ataru Cagiva's Link to the Past manga

It feels so good to have good scans of these on the web after all these years! We didn't do it at first because we were worried they would be re-published but that never happened. 

I can't wait to have the old translations on the new pages so they're as beautiful as they can be! I want everyone to love these and that should really help encourage people to want to read them. By the way, if you have really nice editing skills and would like to do that please just let me know so a bunch of people aren't doing the same work all at once!

Volume 1 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

Volume 2 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

Volume 3 scans at 600dpi and here are the English translations

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 1
Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 1
The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 1
Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva
Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス
Publication date: June 27, 1995
Language: Japanese
Page count: 192 pages
ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-541-8

 

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 2

Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 2

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 2

Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva

Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス

Publication date: December 27, 1995

Language: Japanese

Page count: 191 pages

ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-522-9

ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース 3

Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Triforce 3

The Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods Volume 3

Author: かぢば あたる Ataru Cagiva

Publisher: Square Enix スクウェア・エニックス

Publication date: May 27, 1996

Language: Japanese

Page count: 191 pages

ISBN: ‎ 4-87025-559-6

Indie Zelda and Louisa's Comics!

Blast from the past: If you use to visit History of Hyrule back in the day you probably remember IndieZelda.com, or Independent Zelda, the fan comic site run by one of my best Zelda & artist friends, Louisa Roy. You may know her as SomeGirl or Om Nom Berries too. She is an awesome fanartist and person, and ran an incredible forum where a bunch of Zelda webmasters hid out... hung out? ..probably both. She fuled a lot of our creativity and humor and helped keep me sane. I've known her for about as long as I've known anyone on the internet. We met on one of the first forums I ever joined.

Anyway, I adore her, she's still around doing her thing, making comics, and she sent me these Zelda doujinshi she created back then so I could preserve them on the web! I am so excited about this! So I got 4 series of hers, of vastly varying length, posted on archive.org last night. 

Be sure to check out her new stuff. She has a lot of other incredible Zelda comics and is doing Star Wars and other original comics as well. That link goes to her link tree.

The Legend of Zelda: The Dark Mirror is a 5 part comic for Ocarina of Time

A Space for Us Among the Clouds is a roughly 36 page comic for Skyward Sword

Her Twilight Princess Series is 5 parts, just under 130 pages, and features the stories: Beautiful Midnight, Hello Time Bomb, Symbolistic White Walls, and Alert Status Red

And this volume was made for the 25th anniversary of the series, it features stories for A Legend of Zelda fan comic for The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess.

Love ya, Louisa!

1992 Link meets 2022 Link

I posted this on Twitter and it really took off so I figured I might as well catalog it here. This great little illustration comes from the Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Legend of Zelda, Count of the Black Shadow 1992, by Akio Higuchi. The cover illustration is accredited to Fujiwara Kamui but I don't know if they did the inside illustrations as well because there is no one specifically credited for them. ISBN4-575-23096-0 It's a 254 page novel with about 14 incredible illustrations. I'll scan the whole thing soon but for now you can find the old illustration scans and info here and the nicer illustration scans are in the LttP art gallery, here. 

Someone wondered if this was real and it was neat to be able to point out it was on my site all the way back in 2004. The reason people haven't seen much of this stuff, even though it's been online for around 17 years, (I somewhat sarcastically, then sincerely, spoke about this in one of my last posts,) is that I had problems where larger sites and forums wouldn't link to my site because supplemental material at the time, at least that wasn't mass consumed in the US like the Valiant Comics, wasn't considered "real Zelda content." People would get chased off if they wanted to post/talk about even just for fun. Which was just so strange to me! Because I can assure you: you can still enjoy the core games without being angry that other stuff was created for the series. It's so much more fun if everyone is just enjoying what inspires them to love the series even more! It honestly helps give it life in the years between games.

One of my friends, linksliltri4ce, also reminded me that A Link to the Past also had the concept of floating islands with temples on them. (Not in game, but in the backstory and manual art.) Which I knew but it never really clicked when it came to how much fun it is to play around with the idea of connecting Breath of the Wild 2 with aLttP. Some of the ruins with pillars on hills in BotW are around the same type of ancient Greek-pillar as Ganon's Tower in LttP, which is in the Sacred Realm too. Anyway, that's all super loose but it's fun thoughts for fan artists and people who like to play with ideas!

New High Resolution Scans of the Link to the Past Enix 4-Koma (Manga) Vol. 8

Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org

I've started scanning the 26ish volumes of Legend of Zelda 4-Koma and I'm actually going to post large versions of it, which I usually don't do, but it's only because I think the chances of it having a market to be republished are pretty slim. I'm trying to make sure I support publishers but, also, it's a shame something disappears because it's been unavailable for decades so I'm trying to figure out the balance there.

This volume is "The Legend of Zelda 4 Koma Gekijou # 8." 

It's an anthology that was published on October 29, 1995 by Enix. ISBN4-87025-847-1 (Japan) and it's for a Link to the Past and Link's Awakening.

 

Any translations will be posted to this Flickr album for now. 

I am super sad these never got popular. They're so awesome! I've had small scans of most of the pages on historyofhyrule.com since 2002-2004 and I haven't even seen so much as a meme from them. And they are so meme worthy! Only 1 out of roughly 26 Zelda 4komas have been translated so, if you would like to translate this, even just sections of it, please go ahead and let me know! 

If you use these pages please always link back to the main website though, so people can find more information and rare materials, or even help me find more!

Here are examples and info on the other 4koma, they're for the games LttP, LA, OoT, MM, WW, OoA, and OoS. I will be scanning them all in the coming weeks: Here's what you can expect to see.

Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening, LA, ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島, Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima, A Link to the Past, Triforce of the Gods, LttP, aLttP, manga, comics, zelda, RAWS, 600dpi, High Resolution, Scans, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, 4koma, 4-koma, Yonkoma, 4コマ漫画

New High Resolution Scans of the Link to the Past Enix 4-Koma (Manga) Vol. 7

 Here are the 600dpi scans posted on archive.org

I've started scanning the 26ish volumes of Legend of Zelda 4-Koma and I'm actually going to post large versions of it, which I usually don't do, but it's only because I think the chances of it having a market to be republished are pretty slim. I'm trying to make sure I support publishers but, also, it's a shame something disappears because it's been unavailable for decades so I'm trying to figure out the balance there.

This volume is "The Legend of Zelda 4 Koma Gekijou # 7." 

It's an anthology that was published on April 24, 1995 by Enix. ISBN4-87025-806-4 (Japan) and it's for Link's Awakening and A Link to the Past.

 

Any translations will be posted to this Flickr album for now. 

I am super sad these never got popular. They're so awesome! I've had small scans of most of the pages on historyofhyrule.com since 2002-2004 and I haven't even seen so much as a meme from them. And they are so meme worthy! Only 1 out of roughly 26 Zelda 4komas have been translated so, if you would like to translate this, even just sections of it, please go ahead and let me know! 

If you use these pages please always link back to the main website though, so people can find more information and rare materials, or even help me find more!

Here are examples and info on the other 4koma, they're for the games LttP, LA, OoT, MM, WW, OoA, and OoS. I will be scanning them all in the coming weeks: Here's what you can expect to see.

Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Link's Awakening, LA, ゼルダの伝説 夢をみる島, Zeruda no Densetsu: Yume o Miru Shima, A Link to the Past, Triforce of the Gods, LttP, aLttP, manga, comics, zelda, RAWS, 600dpi, High Resolution, Scans, ゼルダの伝説, 神々のトライフォース, 4koma, 4-koma, Yonkoma, 4コマ漫画

Why did Link have Hot Pink Hair in A Link to the Past?

The world may never know. ...Unless we look at several years of monthly manga magazine covers from just a 3 years earlier, from early 1986 until late 1988. I don't know though, I've never heard of game developers who also like comics... and certainly not ones about the game they made. It's not like Miyamoto was trying to be a manga artist before he joined Nintendo or anything ...and I really doubt any of them would like one of the best comics ever made for the series. And thus it will forever remain a mystery ♡

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, in One Pack Comics, by Ran Maru

ゼルダの伝説, わんぱっくコミックス,  乱丸

Find the English translation for the Hyrule Fantasy, the first volume this story starts in, here.

And here are the English translations for Adventure of Link volume 1, volume 2, and volume 3.

There's also some other other magazine art that's kind of fun. The first 2 are a hot pink haired female Link from Shonen Captain (Monthly Magazine) May 18, 1986. 3rd image unknown but it comes from this video. EDIT: I have found, and made, 2400dpi scans of this art of her.

Anyway, just a guess. Maybe we could agree that hot pink is just a great color too. #plink

Edit: There was a giant fanart challenge thanks to @Aeyga_X based on my scans and she was dubbed "Linka" by fans

Also, I saw this said a lot: "16-bit" is about the processor, it doesn't mean 16 colors. Though, yes! Some of the modes for the SNES topped out at 16 colors per sprite/tile, and LttP is an example of the use of one of those, so I could see how people could get confused. Source 1. Source 2. But, no, it wasn't pink because the bunny was pink and it "needed to be the same color for technical reasons" ...because, even if (?) that were true for some reason, the rabbit's color of pink wasn't even the same as his hair. (Thank you to whomever made this graphic, I couldn't find the source to credit) 

Update: Just to keep all of the Pink Haired Link images in one place, here's a cool feature from a Famitsu issue from 1992

I've had that manga online for ages, on the old main site, (the better scans on archive.org are new,) but so many fans and other sites in the early days would blow off the manga (and my scanning work and site*) as "not real Zelda content" -so it's just been overlooked for 35 years when this question would get asked. Which is a huge shame. Wanpakku, Naughty Comics, sometimes translated as One Pack, was a  division of Tokuma Shoten: the publisher Nintendo always officially used back then. And Wanpakku did the Japanese version of Tips and Tactics that Nintendo translated and released officially in the US

Edit 2: Okay, guys, turns out pink haired female Link from 1986 (May 25, 1986 and May 18, 1986) is as official as the Itoh art from Tips and Tactics because she IS in the Japanese version of Tips and Tactics. This kind of changes the way I'm thinking about her, I no longer thing she was just a mistake made by a comic magazine's walkthrough artist like I originally did.

Tips and Tactics was released by Nintendo of America in 1987 and calls itself the "US edition" "Translation of HISSYOU HINTBON Originally published in 1986 by Tokuma Shoten"

Both publishing companies, Wanpakku (the maker of this guide) and Shonen Captain, where she appeared, were owned by the publisher Tokuma Shoten: and Nintendo worked with them a LOT back then.

Here are the 2 manga pages with pink-haired Link and a fairy that were left out, along with some of the Itoh art, of the US edition: 

Edit 3: Slightly different but here's a cute pink-haired Princess Zelda from a Famicom magazine "ファミコン決定版(1986-07-20)"