ps.design - More than just an after-thought

Zelda Timeline is an interactive look at the story-arc of Zelda, the one that Nintendo, until recently, said they'd never publish. Many websites have attempted to describe the timeline, with some illogical infographics and even one poorly implemented ‘website’ attempting to explain the idea.

My version of the timeline follows the version officially published in the recent book release 'Hyrule Historia', a stunning 274 pages of official Zelda material that contains a lot of never-before-seen concept artwork for the games, from the development of a stylised Link in Skyward Sword, to the many wolf forms in Twilight Princess as well as other miscellaneous sketches representing the earlier games.

The book contains official artwork and covers events such as “The Origin Story” introduced in Skyward Sword within the first section of the book, and “A Complete History of Hyrule” in the second section. The rest is filled with 25 years of Zelda artwork, and translations have deciphered that this book includes the complete history of Hyrule – including the coveted timeline, and the one I'll be following for Zelda Timeline.

Designed and built with the same precision and care that Nintendo themselves put into the games, Zelda Timeline covers every angle possible you want to see from a Zelda fan-site, and with the added bonus of the site being completely responsive, you can view the site perfectly at any time from your computer, tablet or smartphone. On presentation, the site will cover the official timeline and background to the timeline, as well as quotes and game information. The site will contain game info, trailers, pictures, ratings and links to goodies, linked pages full of content, Disqus comments and links. Add in retina graphics and homescreen icons for Apple devices, and exclusive icons supplied by Max Steenbergen for the console history, Zelda Timeline will be the home to the story of Zelda and set the standard for fan sites.

Zelda Timeline will launch February 1st, 2012 as part of another side-project called Game Histories, which will focus more on the history of franchises rather than story-arcs of popular games such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Mario, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy to name but a few.