The official poster for The Legend Of Zelda’s 35th anniversary is now out in the wild, but some fans are noticing that it looks somewhat familiar. The long-running dungeon-crawling series is just one of the many gaming franchises that are celebrating milestones in 2021, and Nintendo is planning to go all out with Legend of Zelda announcements and special promotions to commemorate the occasion.
While nothing official has been confirmed for The Legend Of Zelda’s 35th anniversary as of yet, there is plenty of fan speculation to go around. Rumored game remasters are abound, with hints of past Zelda installments like The Legend Of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Twilight Princess circulating the internet in the months leading up to this summer's anniversary blowout. There are rumors of new games as well, with fans hoping for new updates on Breath Of The Wild 2 and DLC content for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity in the coming month or so. In the meantime, Nintendo’s promotional material for Zelda’s milestone celebration has drawn some less-than-excited reactions from some players.
Twitter user Wario64 recently uncovered the special poster that is being given out at GameStop to commemorate The Legend Of Zelda’s 35th anniversary, posting images of it for all to see earlier today. However, commentators like BY2K have noted that it bears a striking similarity to the one used for the 30th anniversary five years ago – to the point of accusing Nintendo of being lazy with its promotional designs. Indeed, the two posters have the same gold color scheme and utilize small portraits of various Zelda characters in a triangular pattern layout, though there are a few small differences between them.
The alleged laziness on Nintendo's part is especially noteworthy given the visually stunning and considerably more original artwork that The Legend of Zelda fans have drawn up in the build-up to Zelda’s anniversary. Meanwhile, Nintendo is gearing up for its upcoming E3 panel on June 15 - which some speculators think will contain some kind of Zelda-related news given how close it is to the planned celebrations next month, though it’s still too early to tell at this point.
While the initial reaction to The Legend Of Zelda’s new 35th-anniversary poster is that Nintendo simply copied the design of the last celebratory image and called it a day, it is also likely that the company wishes to maintain some brand consistency between Zelda’s milestone events. In any case, fans will hopefully have something less controversial to look forward to as The Legend Of Zelda’s 35th anniversary plays out later this year.
Source: Wario64/Twitter, BY2K/Twitter