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Moblin's Magic SpearA Little Golden Book featuring the Legend of Zelda Special thanks to [email protected] for scanning and sending me this book! If you have any video-game related books, comics, or merchandise that isn't posted on the site, please scan or photograph the item and I'll happily post it on the site with credit to you! This is a children's book from 1989. There were several Mario books produced around this time that I may review soon (one is "Trapped in the Perilous Pit" and "The Secret Bridge", a Super Mario Bros. 3 story - I know there were others, but I've never seen them in person). The beginning of the story retells the Zelda legend, with Ganon and his minions attacking Hyrule and taking Zelda away, with Impa escaping and finding Link. The main part of the story, though, tells a portion of Link's adventure. In the story, Link finds a hidden shop and buys a Magic Shield, which helps him to defeat a Moblin (called "Molblin" here) who has a magical regenerating spear. Of course there isn't any violence to speak of in the story, and it would probably encompass about five minutes of gameplay, but it's still a valiant attempt to make a story out of ordinary events in a video game. Let's see how they drew our heroes. Remember, this came out in 1989 when the character designs weren't nearly so official as they are now. You can tell from a lot of Mario and Zelda products/cartoons/books in the 80s, there didn't seem to be a specific design standard for many of the characters (like Princess Toadstool (Peach) - various official sources changed her hair color from blonde to red to brown indiscriminately). Compare the characters in this Zelda storybook to those in the Sticker Fun book to see what I mean. Link, our hero(this book, official artwork from Zelda 1, official artwork from Zelda 2) He doesn't look too different from official game art of the same time. He is definitely closer to Zelda 2 Link (although not left handed). Ganon Ganon looks exactly like the version from the cartoon show. There really isn't any official artwork of Ganon in the manuals, so I'm guessing they used what they had. Princess Zelda (this book, official artwork from Zelda 1, official artwork from Zelda 2) Zelda looks like she did in the manual for Zelda 2. The Zelda shown in the Sticker Fun book looks like the very few pictures available of the princess in the first Zelda game. Impa Impa's taken right from the Zelda 2 manual design. No real surprises there. Click on a thumbnail below to view the full-sized image in a new window.
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