Game art is far more than just cover art or the art that is found inside certain manuals. Heck, game art doesn’t even fully apply to the video game’s visuals when you start playing the product. Game art can apply to all manner of things, including art that is used to help market video games or be seen in certain magazines, websites, and more. Before the internet, special illustrations were used for various properties to help elevate the game property and get people excited. The Legend of Zelda was one such franchise that had many classic pieces of art shown off, many of which were made for magazines and other publications by Katsuya Terada.
He created many of the original game illustrations during the NES and SNES eras, and many of them became iconic. The twist is that in an interview with Time Extension, he admitted that while he loved making them, he did so without ever playing the games!
“I hadn’t actually played any Zelda games. However, I was already familiar with the worldview of the game from Japanese game magazines at the time. Back then, the game industry wasn’t as strict about managing characters as it is now, so I could basically do whatever I saw fit with my work on Nintendo Power. I remember being free to draw what I wanted. And because Famicom games had such a low resolution, I had that much more room to exercise my imagination.”
When you think about it, that makes sense. Back then, The Legend of Zelda was top-down in perspective and heavily pixelated. So, Terada just needed things to “feel right” and have Link look like his official version, which would have been seen in other magazines he looked at.
He did note that while he went off his experiences to draw it, he did go and make sure certain things “lined up” right:
“That said, I was aware that my job was to translate the world of Zelda into a more realistic language, as it were, so I made sure not to deviate too much from the original visuals. Thankfully, I became known as someone who could depict fantasy in a realistic way, so I’d say my work on Zelda was a success in that sense.”
This is both hilarious and inspiring all at the same time. It highlights how skill can translate to many things, including doing renderings of a world you’ve technically never experienced yourself.
