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Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Archival Scans: Hisshou Hintbon! An Amazing Find from 1986 of Lost Art, Better Art, and Lost History

Thanks to this guide, and the people who helped me search, we have not just missing pieces from wildly popular sets of art, we now know the names of the artists behind official and Zelda art that was distributed to magazines all over the world. Including, possibly, the pink-haired female Link!


First off: Find the 1200dpi scans on archive.org as well as 2400dpi scans of the art.

Apologies that this took a while to upload past when I promised it: each zip took a day and then it took us a while to figure out all the information in this guide.



I thought the Adventure of Link guide I posted a few short weeks ago was going to be the best thing I found in a long time since it has actual official enemy art that was completely unknown. I mean: It is literally its last known location/source it. No one outside of Japan ever saw it. In fact it only ever appeared once in an official famicom magazine that the guide was a collection of. Scans of that appeared just days before I was ready to upload my own. Very cool timing. Well it looks like we have several mind-blowing finds this year already:


This guide is the original Japanese version of the famous official US Tips and Tactics guide and completes some sets of VERY famous art by filling in missing art. Before now we never really knew exactly what the source for it was either, except for this name. Tips and Tactics calls it "Hissyou Hintbon." This Japanese version was published by Wanpakku comics, which is a publisher under Tokuma Shoten. May 25, 1986 (though sometimes I see February listed.) Tips and Tactics was officially published by Nintendo of America in 1987.


Credits from the back pages of the official Nintendo of America guide, Tips and Tactics 


If you are unfamiliar with Tips and Tactics, here is an example of how close the US version copies the Japanese one. (Below.) The notable differences are the updated screenshots of things like the enemies (the Japanese guide uses some earlier development screenshots that changed before release,) the outside jacket and its original art are different, once piece of missing art that was overlaid on the map model on the inside is missing, and then the manga explaining how to use the removable map is missing. Which, coincidentally, is the page where the art of female Link is. Obviously it would have been a lot of work to redo, or heavily edit, the manga for a Western audience that was, at the time, completely unfamiliar with that kind of layout: so it makes editorial sense that it was simply removed from the final US version.

I also like that it shows that NoA also obviously got all of the art from this guide because they moved Link around on the image of the map.






I don't know where to start, there's so much to say about this. This is a really exciting and interesting find to me for several reasons.

Maybe the easiest thing to explain should come first: This has the 2, known, missing pieces of art for the pink-haired female Link and fairy. The others in the set were made famous by KazzyKazy's viral post and I found that volume and scanned those pieces earlier this year so we could have 2400dpi archival versions online. In his thread he mentions finding a YouTube video of someone's childhood scrapbook and how it had another 2 pieces of art from the set in it. In all that time since posting no one else had been able to find it or figure it out. Time for a good hunt! I bought every Shonen Captain from that year (if I couldn't find someone who owned an issue to confirm) and even a couple of extra volumes that looked a little promising. There was nothing else about her. Me and a couple of other very amazing and helpful people were searching every picture in old auctions for other listings even just to try to find a magazine with the same numerical page font or Zelda features on the same pages. One of the people asked the YouTuber; they couldn't remember either. Someone even offered to go to some libraries in Japan and look through their collections, but they had to cut their trip short. Nothing but dead ends. I figured I was only going to find it by a random stroke of luck. And that is exactly what happened. Now we have the full, known set, of 8.




Cleaned 2400dpi scans of these are in the gallery


Here's some interesting things about all this now: Originally I, and many others it seems, assumed that the female Link was a mistake, based on the game's title, made by some random artist or staff member working for a monthly comic publication with no real knowledge of the game. Well, I'm not so sure any more. I can't rule that out completely, obviously, but now I think the artists were working specifically for a guide and probably would have had at least a little oversight. Bear with me: So the other 6 pieces from the set are from a short walkthrough in the monthly manga magazine, Shonen Captain (May 18, 1986) and these 2 pieces are in a publication produced by Wanpakku, (May 25, 1986, sometimes listed as Feb) who also produced a monthly manga magazine as well as a lot of game guides. Wanpakku and Shonen Captain are different companies. They are, however, owned by the same company: Tokuma Shoten. To me this strongly implies that the female Link art came from an artist at the parent company. Keep in mind Nintendo heavily used Tokuma Shoten in the 80's as well. So the twitter account, VGDensetsu, who is forever awesome to me, tracked down one of the artists that worked on this guide. Not the female Link art, we still don't know who did that, (Update: actually, we may have just figured it out by comparing the art credits in both guides. More below) but I asked this other artist about the workflow and they confirmed that Tokuma Shoten had reached out to them to create art specifically for this publication. This leads me to believe my newer assumptions about the pink-haired Link may not be incorrect.

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Anyway, on to the next amazing thing! That artist (and game designer & innovator) I spoke with is Yoshimiru Hoshi. He worked with Hideaki Ito on the VERY famous Link art where he's carrying all his gear. (Side note: According to VGDensetsu- Ito/Itoh was apparently was more of a anime historian/researcher than artist, professionally speaking, and frequently wrote for magazines. Sadly he's since passed away)  

This is the famous piece they did!
Cel drawing and art by Yoshimiru, colored by Hideaki Itoh, scanned by the wonderful art collector @ArtofNP


Itoh often gets credited for it in the US because of the way Tips and Tactics phrases things (below.) Since the credits in both this guide and the Tips and Tactics guide also always confused me a little bit I went ahead and asked Yoshimiru about it and he confirmed that he did the drawing and linework and that he would often ask Itoh to be the cel colorist. (Painter/Colorist would mean he did not do the linework but filled in the color based on directions.) You can search around online and see that worked on a few projects with the same kind of joint credit. It appears that they were both in Work House together and this is where Yoshimiru would pass the cel line work over to Itoh. (Work House was a place an editorial company that would allow students to rent space. This is also where Yoshimiru was personally discovered by Iwata)


Publication credits from the front of Tips and Tactics.


This is what confused me too. From these descriptions I had thought that maybe Yoshimiru had just taken the photos of the cels and that Itoh did the rest. I'm so glad to now know for sure that Yoshimiru was the artist.


Image of the credits from this guide


Translation by VGDensetsu:

-Cel / セル画- Original drawing / 原画: ☆Yoshimiru / ☆よしみる (Metal Slader Glory)

Cel work(s) / セルワーク: Hideaki Ito / 伊藤秀明 (the same person that did the cover art for Aretha II. Source)

Illustrations / 力ット: Susumu Kobayashi / こばやし将, Nobuyoshi Takagi / 高木信義, Narumi Tanaka / 田中成美

Manga / まんが: Suzuo Yasuki / すずおやすき

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So here's the other cool thing about this guide: It doesn't just have the missing female Link art, it has 3 more pieces in the set of 4 of Yoshimiru and Itoh art! 2 of the pieces of missing art and one more piece that was normally known from Nintendo Power (you can see it here and now we have a much better version,)  The art on the front and back cover has only ever been online before as small photos, mainly from auctions. Again, this was drawn by Yoshimiru and he handed it to Itoh to color in, so it would be most appropriately credited as Yoshimiru being the artist.



This has been in several US and European publications, often redrawn by a staff artist.
Full resolution 2400dpi scan in the gallery here


Link with a sword that matches both the white sword and magical sword a little bit. (thanks for noticing that, Conradd) The background is also beautiful, I'm not sure who did that (more on that below.) This has only been online as small auction-type photos.
Full resolution 2400dpi scan in the gallery here

I also REALLY want a better picture of that background.. as unlikely as it is I'll ever find it.


And then this which is, hands down, one of the cutest pieces of Link art ever. It's also never really been online before except as a small photo. I think... this actually might be my favorite out of all of the ones in the guide.
Full resolution 2400dpi scan in the gallery here

 

Okay, so, now I'm going to talk about something that I'll probably get yelled at for but who cares. Like it honestly doesn't matter that much, let's just have some fun here:

In the US we basically consider the Yoshimiru art official. NoA used almost all of the other art in this guide... except the manga spread: which means the art of female Link and the fairy got cut too. But obviously they were in the same guide, with all the same art; art we consider official. So screw it, I'm saying it's just as official as the Yoshimiru art and the watercolor art below. I'm not saying it's "done in Nintendo's dev studio" official, like the manual art of the enemies that are also found in this guide and were obviously shipped to publishers, but Nintendo and Tokuma Shoten used a lot of contract artists and if we're going to consider 3 sets of art in this official, art by other contractors, why are we not considering the 4th set official too? Is it simply because, as a Western audience, it's not a theme we were expecting to see?

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Speaking of the other sets of art! This guide also has way higher quality art of the watercolor illustrations of the characters and equipment than Tips and Tactics had. We've also always kind of considered this official in the US too so knowing this artist's name is a big deal! Back in the 80's, especially in the US, we had a lot of art that was produced by companies other than Nintendo's in-house artists that we considered official. This is back when it was a lot more common for Nintendo's main studio, and especially Nintendo of America, to use other studios and contract artists to create the "official" art. So the line between what we consider official and semi-official, or not official at all, gets blurred quite a bit more than it does now that everything is done in-house and has far more stringent corporate oversight and trademark checks.

Thanks to VGDensetsu's translations we were able to narrow it down to being Susumu Kobayashi! こばやし将 I can't believe that, after all these years, we finally know which artist to credit. You can also find his work in Nintendo Power. You can find him on Twitter at @show_kob


Here is the best quality we had before, from Tips and Tactics


Here is the quality we have now thanks to this guide!

But this is where this gets even more exciting! It's also why I should have known AND why we should stop writing off the manga as not important to the history of the series. Susumu Kobayashi drew a whole volume of manga for Hyrule Fantasy (Zelda 1) and not only is it the story, it's a completely functional strategy guide: 



The Hyrule Fantasy: The Legend of Zelda manga by Kobayashi Susumu
Published by Wanpakku Comics July 15, 1986.
It still needs to be translated!


While on a personal level I wish he had kept Link looking like he did in this guide, the art is amazing, especially the dungeon entrances; and what's very notable is that the item's style in this match exactly to those in Tips and Tactics. I should have noticed this 20 years ago when I first got this manga. I'm honestly a little mad at myself about it, lol. Zelda is also done in a very similar style and the first time we see the fairy she's in basically the same pose.






She is so adorable!

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This is crazy but I'm not even close to done yet.
SO! We think we figured out who did the official enemy art from the game's manual too. Through process of elimination there's only one more illustrator's name left in the Japanese version that's also in the US version: Narumi Tanaka / 田中成美

If you have any reason to believe this could be wrong, please, absolutely let me know. If you find work that matches this style under that name, for any series, please let me know. Credits them anywhere else? Etc, let me know. But for now, after all these years, this seems to be a really solid answer. I feel pretty safe saying that Narumi Tanaka is responsible for this iconic art:



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Now, that brings us to the one remaining name, Nobuyoshi Takagi / 高木信義, and the few remaining pieces of art. 

All that is left that could even possibly be considered an illustration, I think, are the female Link and fairy as well as the landscape behind Link on the cover. 

I strongly believe that by calling this person an illustrator in the credits that it would be referring to the character drawings of pink-haired Link and the fairy. I actually have a BFA in illustration and entered college with the goal of working in traditional animation production: In the Japanese guide, by so distinctly referring to the cel work as a different discipline than illustration, I believe they would have also correctly attributed the landscape painting to a "background painter/artist" and not listed them as an "illustrator." It's just not really how it's ever credited (and, to note, it's not common that cel artists do the backgrounds either, completely different discipline as well)



Is Nobuyoshi Takagi her creator? The possibility is extremely high!



So... there we go! Internet sleuths, can you poke around and see if you can find an old-school artist named Nobuyoshi Takagi / 高木信義 and if they did character art or background art? I am 90% certain though that this will be the name of the creator of our once very elusive, and now very beloved. pink-haired female Link. (But I also want to know who may have done that beautiful landscape painting too. It's a long shot but maybe they have an image of it without all the overlays.

To note: There are a bunch of artists in Shonen Captain that have a similar Rumiko Takahashi style, I actually took picture of their names and art to ask around incase we got more clues. I'm going to go find those in the next few days to see if it can help here.

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Okay, one last interesting thing that I can think of that directly relates to this guide. This is a fun post by Mr. Talida that highlights something else that's cool about this guide:

MrTalida: Early Legend of Zelda enemy sprites found in a magazine scanned by
@GamingAlexandri! Many differences here, some more notable than others. That original Head of Gleeok sprite--yikes! How late were these changed to still be in the preview build for a March '86 game mag?



So images for this guide must have happened right after they acquired assets for the March 1986  Famimaga (Issue 8) magazine  (Scanned by Gaming Alexandria) because some of the sprites in the guide are the old ones, and some are updated and look like the finals!

MrTalida: A few of these sprites appear in the "ZEL-B" prototype released by Lost Levels in 2010. Some, like Pols Voice, match the magazine build, while others, like Stalfos, are nearer to final. This suggests that the magazine's build is even earlier than ZEL-B.
https://tcrf.net/Proto:The_Legend_of_Zelda#Sprite_Differences…


Alright, my brain is fading, I honestly can't think any more, lol. I guess that's enough for today XD

Email me at melorasworld@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter @historyofhyrule if you can help with any of this info.

  • Huge thanks go to:
  • VGDensetsu for helping with so much difficult sleuthing, translating, and thoughts
  • To Ikhana for seeing the book at auction and sending it to me; it only took a world record holder to find it after a decade+ of wanting it
  • To Mak for helping me realize this was Tips and Tactics before I ever got it!
  • And to everyone else along the way! There were a lot of you!

Quick F.A.Q & notes: 
1: Yes, that map is an actual physical model they photographed 
2: There was no way for a company to take screenshots so they literally had to set an actual camera up in front of a TV and take a photo of each screen. Then develop those. Then cut them out and patch them together. Since TV screens were curved the lighting on them can look a little weird to us now that we're so use to flat screenshots.
3. I would also love to try to figure out who did the 3D model of the map that was photographed, as well as wanted a better version of the hand painted map on the cover.

How the tabs are used on the map: I was wrong, they're not stickers (I thought I was missing a sticker sheet) they're just cut-outs that you paste on the map. Thanks @johntv for finding this image and clearing up what the translation meant


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Side notes and unfinished thoughts, morning of May 11, 2022: I need to write this down somewhere. These are just stream-of-consciousness style thoughts. 


Thanks to Mak I now realize Nintendo of America had a HUGE working relationship with Tokuma Shoten





Things I'd love to know- Did Nintendo (of Japan) directly speak with the Wanpakku artists? ...or was it maybe like a representative Nintendo had at Tokuma Shoten? (That 2nd option would be my first guess, but it's only an assumption and mine tend to be conservative guesses.) Wanpakku did a lot of game guides. Like a TON with Zelda in them (I've purchased a lot of these recently but I still need to scan them) and Wanpakku has 4 volumes of Zelda manga, by 3 different artists, that acted as game guides for the Zelda series

Their strategy guide manga:

And then Wanpakku also produced the Ran Maru manga which is the damn best. Like I keep saying this and no one reads it so no one understands how many firsts for the series it has in it. 
  1. https://archive.org/details/zelda_manga_ranmaru_1_loz
  2. https://archive.org/details/zelda_manga_ranmaru_2_aol_vol1
  3. https://archive.org/details/zelda_manga_ranmaru_3_aol_vol2
  4. https://archive.org/details/zelda_manga_ranmaru_4_aol_vol3
(There is a video on YouTube that goes through it that seems so well done, I didn't watch all of it, but they get the ending wrong so I don't know what else they got wrong. I did, however, pay for an English translation however and it's at those links)


And if Nintendo did work more closely with the Wanpakku branch... does that lend more weight to how much the series seems to borrow from Ran Maru's LoZ and AoL manga? (the pink hair one) Because it's CRAZY how much it borrows from that. I can not get over it. I'm not going to die on that hill or anything but I am going to keep investigating until something proves without a doubt that there's nothing there because it's really been sticking in my brain as much as it was sticking in my brain that finding this guide was going to be important.
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1 comment:

  1. DarthDubAugust 21, 2024 at 5:15 AM

    Sure would be nice if there wasn't watermarks on these.. It ruins preservation imo.

    ReplyDelete