Welcome to the latest episode of Past Games, a Patreon-exclusive monthly series that uncovers the histories of 2026's biggest and most consequential gaming anniversaries.
This Month on Past Games:
Act 1: The Making of The Legend of Zelda
Act 2: The 30-Year Evolution of Zelda Games
Act 3: A History of the Zelda Fan Community
Guest:
Max Nichols: Game designer, educator, and operator of Hyrule Interviews
Closing Song: “Boléro” Maurice Ravel. Orchestre de l’Opéra National de Parism. Conducted by Manuel Rosenthal
Act 1: The Making of The Legend of Zelda
Hyrule Interviews (Hyruleinterviews.com)
Hyrule Interviews on Bluesky (Blueksky)
Ultima (Wiki)
The Black Onyx (Wiki)
Hydlide (Wiki)
Xanadu (Wiki)
Legend of Zelda – 1994 Developer Interview (shmuplations)
How The First Zelda Was Made and Featured a First-Person Perspective Initially (ThatGuyGlen)
Act 2: The 30-Year Evolution of Zelda Games
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link Review (IGN)
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, The Review (GameSpot)
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Review (IGN)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess review (Eurogamer)
The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD Review - Link To The Past (GameSpot)
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review (Game Informer)
Critical Compilation: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Critical Distance)
Act 3: A History of the Zelda Fan Community
Zelda.com - Then and Now (r/Zelda)
The North Castle (Northcastle.co.uk)
Zelda HQ (ZHQ.com via Archive.org)
History of Hyrule (Historyofhyrule.com)
Miyamoto’s interview in Time Magazine for Kids (WordPress)
Minako Hamano (Fandom)
Satomi Asakawa (Fandom)
Gaming Alexandria (Gamingalexandria.com)
Retromags (Retromags.com)
The Hyrule Journals (YouTube)
Max's Bonus Show Notes:
People:
Melora Hart, who runs History of Hyrule.
By FAR the most prolific scanner of Zelda books, guides, and other art, and she’s been doing it since 2002 or 2003. The absolute pillar of the Zelda community for the last twenty years IMO, and the one who inspired me to make Hyrule Interviews
Joshua Lindquist is a Zelda fandom historian. He runs Zelda Archive, a collection of info on the various Zelda fansites from the history of the fandom, and he even recreates some of the old sites. He is also a webmaster at Zeldauniverse.net
Mases Hagopian is one of the webmasters over at Zelda Dungeon, and he is kinda quietly responsible for a lot of old Japanese guides getting scanned. He’s scanned many himself, and provided Melora with many for her to scan.
Spritecell runs the Shigeru Miyamoto Archive, a big directory of Shigeru Miyamoto interviews
Clyde Mandelin runs the blog Legends of Localization and has written a book about Zelda localization. Professional translator for stuff like One Piece, Attack on Titan
Keza MacDonald is a long-time journalist who’s done many interviews with Zelda devs. She just published a Nintendo history book, Super Nintendo
Chris Kohler is another long-time journalist who’s written books and done tons of interviews with Zelda devs.
He is also a game developer himself nowadays, working at Digital Eclipse
Alex Highsmith runs Shmuplations, which isn’t specifically Zelda-focused but is the biggest repository of translations of Japanese interviews out there. He’s translated many interviews with folks who worked on Zelda.
Aria “Glitterberri” Tanner has a site where she posts translations of Japanese interviews, and has a particular focus on Zelda. She was actually involved with the official translation of the Hyrule Historia book, too.
Mr. Talida, who runs Keshi Corner, where he 3D scans old collectible miniature figures from Japan. He’s done a lot of Zelda ones
Two extremely prolific Zelda collectors who share a lot of media about their collections:
Ikhana Kingdom - I think she has the Guinness World Record for the biggest Zelda collection? Or did at one point.
Notable Websites/Communities:
History of Hyrule - Biggest and longest-running collection of scanned Zelda material.
The two biggest Zelda fan sites are still actively maintained today:
Zeldawiki.wiki – the biggest independent (ie, not Fandom) Zelda wiki.
Hyrule Interviews - My own site
Zelda Archive - Fansite archive
Shmuplations - Interview translations
Gaming Alexandria is a group dedicated to scanning old gaming material, especially from Japan.
Retromags “The Vintage Video Game Magazine Archive”
BS Zelda - A tiny little community that’s been trying to preserve the BS Zelda games for decades.
First two (known) Zelda fansites:
Zelda Headquarters, founded by Niels t’Hooft in 1996. Defunct. Archive.org link
North Castle, founded by Juliet and Kirsty Singleton in 1997. Still live!
Sources for my more outlandish claims:
Zelda started off as sci-fi (Source)(Source)
Zelda was originally for Nintendo Vs System (Source)
Zelda was originally going to be a dungeon maker, and then was just a dungeon crawler before adding an overworld (Source)
Ravel’s Bolero was almost the title theme (Source)
Zelda was influenced by Ultima and Black Onyx (Source)
Miyamoto has a brother (source)
Miyamoto drew one half of the Zelda 1 map, Tezuka drew the other half (Source)