Hyrule Historia the Website

The team at Knights of Hyrule have created a nifty little subsite that deals with everything to do about the infamous Hyrule Historia. By now, we should all know the important things that the book had to offer, so what does this website do? Well the main purpose of the website is to organize the growing collection of scans and translations that generous people are donating, though they also have a section to aid you on your quest should you be interested in actually buying a copy of Hyrule Historia. Hit the jump for more!

By now, any particular things of interest that have been printed in what Knights of Hyrule consider to be the “Zelda Bible” have already been reported to the fans. As you may remember, one of the most exciting additions to the book was the official timeline, which people still argue over discuss; any current talk about Hyrule Historia probably deals with concept art. You probably only have any current interest in this book if you’re one of the people translating or scanning… or you’re looking to buy it.

This is where Hyrule Historia (the website) becomes very handy. Unfortunately, there is no way to get around the high cost, which is about $40 for the book and $40 to ship from Japan. They have a section that combines websites where you can actually purchase the book and an online petition to try to convince Nintendo to localize the book.

My thoughts about localization are that Nintendo is not going to localize it. I bought a copy a little while ago (with no regrets) and after actually looking over the majority of the book, I realized why a localization wouldn’t be in Nintendo’s favor. Much of the book is composed of concept art and designs that have scans of handwritten Japanese. This would mean every single picture would have to be captioned by Nintendo if they wanted readers to understand everything.

While I’m not saying this is impossible, certainly the fans are doing a great job (shout out to Glitterberri and her fantastic translations), it probably wouldn’t be profitable for Nintendo. Not only do they have to make the localizations (for every language they wanted to release in) but they’d also have to ship and sell the huge books. Despite the Zelda series being very popular, I’m not sure how well a ~$50 book would sell, and I’m guessing Nintendo thought it wouldn’t sell very well.

That being said, it’s still possible, and even if Nintendo doesn’t provide an official localization, we can always rely on the fans!

Source: Hyrule Historia