Here’s a press release Dark Horse Comics sent out yesterday about their upcoming Legend of Zelda art book.
In late 2016, Dark Horse announced the next installment in their legendary partnership with Nintendo® would be The Legend of Zelda™: Art & Artifacts. Today, Dark Horse is excited to reveal a limited edition of The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts!
Fans who purchase The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts limited edition will experience the thrill of finding and unsheathing the Master Sword! The cover features a 3D embossed sword hilt sculpt with a metallic foil finish. The sword hilt is life size to give the reader the satisfaction of unsheathing the very realistic sword from the acetate sleeve that encases the book. The cover’s background features the Lost Woods (a maze of mystifying forests that has appeared throughout the franchise) in a custom-mixed deep purple ink with a soft-touch lamination and spot-gloss UV, framed with metallic foil. The book’s pages are gilded as well.
Both the regular and limited editions of The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts have over 400 pages of fully realized artistic masterpieces, exclusive interviews with the artists behind the beloved video game franchise, the official pixel art of the early series, and rare promotional art never before published in this format.
The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts limited edition is available for preorder from Amazon, Penguin Random House, Things From Another World, and more. The limited edition retails for $79.99 and goes on sale February 21, 2017.
$79.99! WHAT THE ACTUAL F**K Dark Horse! The regular edition is $39.99 with the exact same internal content and same book size dimensions. I only reached Calculus 1 when I was in high school 73 years ago, but according to my phone’s adding machine that’s a $40 difference.
Don’t get me wrong, I adore most of the art book collaborations Dark Horse have published in partnership with franchises like Nintendo’s games, Metal Gear, and Uncharted. For collectors and people interested in the game industry these books provide a keen insight into parts of the development process. In some cases, they even tell fun behind the scenes stories or reveal things that didn’t make it into the game. I was looking forward to The Legend of Zelda: Art & Artifacts and will pick up the regular edition…at some point. For what it’s worth, I’m not against premium editions of things in any form. When something goes reasonably above and beyond in order to speak to the niche within a niche, it should be supported by its fans. I’m a big mark for all things Link. As someone who doesn’t have a giant skyscraper full of coins I swim in every day, this doesn’t feel like something worthy of the niche.
Look at the limited edition version of the book (ABOVE). The design, novelty of the sword cover, and gilded pages…all nice tat Dark Horse. But $40 more for a c*cking piece of plastic and some gold trim; that’s more than a couple of bucks for not a lot of thought. It’s actually a full 100% more in price for something to get all our thumb smudges on. At least actual video game special editions have tangible bonuses like a statue or other things not available in the regular edition.
Sure, if you’re reading this you could easily say “well simply don’t buy it” and you’d be missing the point. There’s nothing wrong with pandering to the diehard Nintendo fanbase but the cost of this limited edition feels like outright exploitation and as consumers, you should demand more. What’s to stop it from happening again if it succeeds? Anyone who sells a premium product next to a regular version should be trusted to deliver something that feels worth the additional cost. Had this been $59.99, I could have been persuaded to get behind it but not at $79.99.
Let me give those of you considering buying the limited edition of the book a tip: it ain’t that limited. Shop around for an Amazon deal or at Cheapgraphicnovels website. Often times, after the initial release you can probably pick up the limited edition for the cost of the regular.
If the consumer could only get the content by buying this version, it’d be ‘outright exploitation’. But they don’t need to do so, so it’s not. There’s always a market for this sort of limited edition and only hardcore fans of the series will purchase it.
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