Official Female Link Art, Lost Since 1986, Found By History Of Hyrule Archivist

The Legend of Zelda archivist Melora Hart, who runs the History of Hyrule archive and blog, made a major discovery this past weekend when she found a long-lost drawing of Link as a pink-haired female in a Japanese strategy guide. Before the discovery, the image existed as only a poor-quality photo from an unknown publication.

Now, we have high-quality scans, which Hard uploaded to Flickr just the other day.

According to Hard, the guide is a rendition of the North American official strategy guide for the first Legend of Zelda game. It was published in 1987 by Wanpakku, who Nintendo has worked with on a number of official strategy guides and publications in the past, making the female Link art about as close to official as possible.

The image shows the protagonist of the series, Link, as a woman with pink hair holding a sword behind her back. Another notable piece of artwork shows a fairy from the game with similar pink hair and rainbow-colored wings.

Female Link art was first discovered in 2019 by Twitter user @kazzykazycom, who uploaded a number of drawings of Link as a female from an issue of Shonen Captain. The art's misgendering of Link is believed to be a mistake made by the artist. The newly recovered drawing, in particular, was first revealed in a YouTube video uploaded in 2020 showing off the magazine and marks the completion of the known collection of female Link art.

Now, all that's left to find out is why the artist drew Link this way in what can be considered an official strategy guide.