Majora’s Mask

Phantom Hourglass - Merchandise

The Phantom Hourglass merchandising steamroller is at top speed, so we’ve decided to compile all the stuff we know about (except for the blurry US DS pictured below) onto this handy page. I think I’ve been a bit snarkier than usual when commenting on absolute tat, so enjoy!

Retail sources are saying that in the US, there will be a Zelda-style DS, packaged with Phantom Hourglass, released towards the end of the year, in time for Christmas. It is golden in colour,and include a small Triforce logo on the corner. Very similar to the old SP model released in Europe a few years back! In my opinion, the design seems uninspired. There’s a lot of better things you could do with a Zelda DS than just take an old design and slap it on a DS.
The price is rumoured to be set between $130 and $150, but we’ll let you know when there is an official announcement with a solid price and release date.
(Note: The other DS in the image is a Pink Nintendogs themed model, which comes packaged with, you guessed it, Nintendogs. It will most likely be released at the same time as the Zelda model.)

The European release date for the Wii Zapper, packaged with Zelda spin-off, has just been announced as December 7th, a few weeks after the US date of November 19th, but in time for watching your grandfather awkwardly try to play the game on the 25th of December. It will retail for an affordable £20, or €30, depending on whether or not you live in the UK. Professional impressions seem to be positive, so it may well be worth picking up if you’re a fan of A) Zelda, B) Lightgun games, or C) Both.

Twilight Princess - Packaging
Phantom Hourglass - Packaging

There is, I now see, something seriously wrong with me. I spend an inordinate amount of time scanning, cropping, rotating, fixing, healing, filtering and levelling images of packaging used to sell games to the otherwise unaware. You and I will buy the new Zelda game no matter what the cover looks like. Others are more shallow or ignorant (pick one!), so really, this artwork is for them, and I have no business being so obsessed with getting high quality copies so neatly placed across a page, clearly labelled for the hardcore to do whatever it is they want with them. But I continue cleaning and adjusting, even to our older images - I want to rescan them to get rid of that ghastly (and seriously out of date) watermark, the moire and the low resolution.

Dear Deidre, what the hell is wrong with me? Does anyone else share this obsession or am I on my own?

Ocarina of Time

The Ocarina of Time section has been buffed up all nice and what. More PNGs, more Lightbox, Random Quotes and of course, more coherence.

A small word of warning, though. Restoration updates will crawl for a few weeks for a couple of reasons; one, I’ve just found a job in London and will have to put up with all that ‘finding a home’ malarky, and two, I’ve hit sections that are going to be completely reorganised, remade or even removed. That last one doesn’t take much time but the former two will, so I apologise in advance.

Link’s Awakening

The Link’s Awakening section is now fully updated, with PNGed items, Random Quotes, fixed Maps, Lightboxed galleries, touched-up Packaging, a Statistics page and perhaps most importantly, improved grammar! We so clever.

If you look to your right, you’ll see the new Zelda Elements Interactive login box. It was a lot more impressive in my head. But I’ll be adding buttons to it tomorrow! Lots of buttons. Three, actually. And then you can click them.

The Legend of Zelda - Statistics
The Adventure of Link - Statistics
A Link to the Past - Statistics

As part of this whole ZE Restoration thing, we’re introducing a new statistics page for each of the main games. There’s some of the stuff found on the splash page, but this new format allows us to feature more release date and sales information, as well as a few choice stats about the games themselves.

The Legend of Zelda
The Adventure of Link
A Link to the Past

Regular readers will know that we at Zelda Elements are, for better or worse, perfectionists. I estimate that over the past six years I’ve spent more time refining content and creating new layouts than actually adding pages. Well, I’ve got the itch again, this time donning my grammar-nazi hat, my CSS whacking stick and my image quality… something. Anyway, the purpose of this latest refresh is to update old information, CSS and PNGize content, add the gorgeous Lightbox image gallery, and rewrite pages from my youth that read like the average Sun article.

As I’m doing this in order of filename (original I know), the first three sections to be hit are the first three Zelda games. I found an Adventure of Link boss guide that I never uploaded, which contains one too many geek references but still made me chuckle. Reviews have been updated to cater more for gamers looking to download on the Virtual Console, and there’s other bits and pieces in there, with more to come soon!