For our Zelda issue we really wanted to do something a bit special with the cover. During a think tank with Darran and Steve, I remember mentioning how neat it would look if we could somehow recreate the gold Legend of Zelda cart in a cover - and the boys not immediately hating the idea.

To the best of my knowledge, I can’t think of any magazine that’s ever tried that – turning its cover into a game cart. The closest example that I’ve seen was on the cover of a U.S multiformat mag called Next Generation, who I remember once daringly splashing an image of the Ocarina Of Time N64 cart on their cover against a white background with no coverlines.  But anyway, Darran and Steve both seemed quite keen on turning the front of the mag into a giant NES cart and we went forward with the concept.

The image below shows you how far we got with the idea before we had to stop (as you can see, not very far at all). The image was taken from the The Legend of Zelda manual (I believe), which is why it has the ‘includes valuable maps and strategic playing tips’ patter beneath the shield. Ultimately though, because we couldn’t get our hands on the original artwork, or even a high-res version of the shield image, we were forced to change artistic direction.  

If you look at the cover we eventually went with – the stained glass artwork of Link from Wind Waker – you’ll notice it includes a Nintendo Seal of Quality in the bottom right corner, which was a subtle mark we added to show our original intentions for this particular cover.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.