Hi! My name is Melora Hart!
I'm a librarian at heart: I scan, I organize, remember, keep track of, hunt art, repair images, and try excite and educate others about Zelda publications and art, so that their sales do well and companies and creatives will be encouraged to make more of what we love.
I'm one of the people who's been getting the non-digital Zelda art online since the beginning of the internet, ran the big campaigns and led efforts to get Zelda artbooks and manga world-wide localizations, and got a huge chunk of the information out there about all of the amazing books and art that exist for the series. There's still a lot to figure out and do so let's help each other in this incredible journey! Write me if you have info or questions about Zelda art and publications: melorasworld@gmail.com
About History of Hyrule
I started my site in 2002 because I had finally gotten my hands on my favorite childhood book again. I had been looking for it for maybe a decade and it felt like a fever dream because the internet now existed but the best art in the world still wasn't on it: The book was The Link to the Past Nintendo Player's Guide and the art was Katsuya Terada's Zelda art.
My friend had stolen my original copy when she moved. I couldn't blame her though, it's a really great book. Anyway, I decided to start a site to get that art online so no one would ever have to miss out on the experience of having the art that inspired them in their life and so more people could see why it was so worth loving this series. To be inspired to love it more through these same experiences.
I also wanted to have something dedicated to the first 4 games, the "History of Hyrule," since there weren't too many websites for them. The first 4 were my favorite Zelda games and, while it wasn't hard to find resources for Ocarina of Time, sites for the Adventure of Link or Link's Awakening were extremely rare. (Though I almost sent the Zelda art to another site so I could start a Secret of Mana site instead. The thing was, it already had a bunch of great sites, Zelda had fewer.) The handful of Zelda game sites that were out there were great at focusing on things like walkthroughs so, since I'm a visual person, I decided to fill the gap that was left when it came to art and publication information. That soon expanded to manga and other out-of-print publications, since I had to get the art scans from somewhere, as well as translations thanks to KitsunePixie, Anastasia, and Beno. (And thank you to Louisa and Max for being the support I always needed.) The original HoH did have game help but it was almost set up more like basic reference information for fan artists. I should also add that the original site and forum was a fairly big fan artist hub and, at one point, I ran some decently large fanart contests to try to inspire people to flesh out the world of Zelda and keep drawing more.
Some of my proudest moments and achievements are:
- I led the campaign and fan efforts to get the Akira Himekawa manga localized outside of Japan and for there to be a Twilight Princess manga.
- I taught a massive number of people how to import the manga and magazines before there were online stores. (These sales likely helped the case for localization.) Honestly it wasn't hard for people to do: it's just that so few people knew they could! It wasn't just people asking me, I would actively search in different languages for people's comments wondering where they could find it and then walk them through the process and then encourage them to write publishers and authors to ask for it in their language.
- I've been responsible for organizing translations for the largest chunk of non-localized Zelda manga; often in multiple languages. KistunePixie started the project to make the Akira Himekawa manga accessible to non-Japanese fans and I came on later. She and I worked on the first set of fan translations of Himekawa's manga, but we didn't really want fan translations, we wanted the real thing. We also wondered why this wasn't happening. So she wrote them and asked them why it hadn't been published outside of Japan, and when we learned the answer, I got to work on changing the situation. When it was finally announced it would be released outside of Japan we stopped the fan translation project because we knew fans would finally have officially-licensed access in multiple languages. We really wanted them to have super-strong sales and want to support them in every way we can~ We adore those two women! So I worked hard on that too. And I want to thank Andrea (Peroth) of Hyrule.co.ar for being the original place I learned Zelda manga and doujinshi existed and for it helping me find KitsunePixie's site.
- I started and led the big campaign to get Hyrule Historia localized outside of Japan. I was also the one who was helping the fan translator with scans- who Darkhorse later hired to work on the official book.
- I made the first scans of Japanese Zelda guides so that translators were able to learn the rest of the real names of bad guys and locations, and other facts, about the early games. Shoutout to Zethar-II, Masamune, and IronKnuckle who did the translation work and to Mak (from then all the way up to the present) for always letting me know what is needed or important. These kind of scans helped carve the path for fan theorists and historians, which is a direct route as to why books like Hyrule Historia and Zelda Encyclopedia had such a strong interest from the community.
- I may have been the one who had scanned and uploaded a big chunk of the art that you saw online for the early games. The other main people would definitely end up being Mases of Zelda Dungeon and Jade of Zelda Europe as far as I know. They are amazing and we seemed to help each other where we could. Davogones and Khuffie of Zelda Legends also had one of the best early galleries. I would also ask, at official places like E3 and via email, why Nintendo didn't do artbooks: and the answer I would get was there was probably a lack of interest in the old series art. I feel like the interest and push we created within the community, to get people excited about the old art, really helped with eventual community drive, and then success, of books like Hyrule Historia, Art and Artifacts, and Creating a Champion.
- I'm the dork that wouldn't stand in line to play Zelda at E3 and instead hung out by the booth asking them to make art books before we had things like Hyrule Historia and Creating a Champion. I wanted to make sure enough people at Nintendo knew that there was interest that maybe, one of them, would think about supporting it or green-lighting a project like an artbook.
- Nearly every piece and feature on Katsuya Terada Zelda art online uses the scans I made. (Amazingly he still seems to have his originals and I hope someone can convince him to scan them!) Daniela got the first ones online from the German guide at a site we both contributed to. She's forever my hero.
- I have found so much lost art, interviews, publications, and info for the series. Scans I have made have allowed amazing Zelda historians and translators to put so many pieces together. I am so thankful to these people.
- I have been able to figure out and credit some of the original artists for the series, names we didn't know how to properly credit before. Thanks go to VGDensetsu for going through scans and sleuthing on all of this recently, you are insanely knowledgeable.
- I have gotten permission from several of the Japanese artists of licensed works to keep their scans and art online (obviously unless they're released again, that goes without saying.) This isn't binding but I just want them to know I respect them and love their work and that I only do what I do so people can see something that is long out of print. I actually want to, when I get a little more time, work on pushing to see all of them brought back into print again.
Honestly this has all been a giant joint project because people do so much that I can't and so many people send stuff in that I would never find on my own. (Thank you to the collectors Ikhana and Linksliltri4ce.) But I also frequently didn't talk about things I did, I use to try to be fairly anonymous... because it feels really weird to speak about yourself like this (I am not good at this) but then I realized people didn't know I was getting things done. I would need help, or give someone info they were looking for, or post about something actually completely unknown, and would get brushed off like "who is this scrub" "This publication was probably known, definitely can't be anything important." I only recently realized you have to brag a little bit if you're seeking help, trying to run projects, and trying to get the correct information to a broader audience.
Due to health I was gone for a while but I came back in 2010-11ish to work on my site again and try to get more publications translated. My arms still barely worked but we managed to cobble some really awesome projects together. Because I couldn't draw for close to a decade I used this time to try to encourage others to make art and see more creative options for the series. I held some really fun fanart events on the site, gave away a ton of cool things, and really found a ton of joy in that and the community! The site reboot also lined up perfectly with Hyrule Historia's release in Japan so I worked on spreading hype for that, getting info to the big sites, and leading a big campaign to get it a world-wide release. (Originally we thought it was a limited edition release in Japan that was already sold out.) But if anyone wondered why the site went down again not long after that: Unfortunately someone demanded I let them put scans online after localization was announced, I told them they could make their own if they want but that I don't personally do that, I have no idea why they got so mad about that, and they or the people they were venting to in a chatroom... maybe set-up the DoS attack on my site around 2 days later. That caused enough problems that the site basically couldn't function for a few years and we lost all the translation and artist credit, history, and information compiling work on the forums, when I needed to switch servers, because I couldn't be logged in long enough to complete a backup. It worked out in a way though because I had some surgeries that fixed my arms, I got a lot of stuff done in my real life that was extremely fulfilling, and I just spent a few years checking things off my bucket-list.
So flash forward to 2021 & today. I'm back at it and I've "scaled back" to 3 missions:
- Getting the old manga translated
- Finishing the official and semi-official art gallery collection
- Scanning more out-of-print lost publications so that we can build hype for them, like we did for other publications, and maybe get official releases or more retro art books one day.
Please keep in mind I have not gotten to all the games yet but I do have art for them saved. It can take a week to two months, of 12 hour days, to complete one game's art section in the gallery. It's a lot of scanning, hunting, comparing, double checking, organizing, and repair work.
To publishers: I have never, to my knowledge, kept a publication online if it is in print or brought back into print. Most are over 30 years old, the rest are probably 20 years old. I work tirelessly to support official releases, do not accept money, and have never made any profits off this site or anything related to Zelda. I want people to support official releases so we get more publications, so more artists are supported. I only do all of this because I am an enthusiastic fan that wants to encourage and grow more love for the series. If I have something online you want me to take down, you only need to ask, I simply hope that you will allow things to remain online if they are otherwise inaccessible because I have seen, first hand, how viewing and enjoying old works inspires people to push for new works.
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