Legendary Artist Katsuya Terada Discusses His Work on The Legend of Zelda in Recent Interview
Posted on March 06 2025 by Rod Lloyd
Known for his distinct visual style and artistic approach, Japanese illustrator Katsuya Terada has made significant contributions to the worlds of manga, western comics, film, television, and video games over the course of his 40-year career. In addition to providing artwork for games in the Prince of Persia, Virtua Fight, and Tekken series, the artist is known for his collaborations with Nintendo throughout the 80s and 90s, having contributed various illustrations to Nintendo Power magazine between 1989 and 1995. Notably, his striking promotional artwork for The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and Link’s Awakening featured in Nintendo Power (as well as the official Link’s Awakening German-language player’s guide) are still celebrated today.
Katsuya Terada was interviewed last year by Time Extension, where the artist discussed his influences, his artistic philosophies, and his prolific career. In addition to sharing about his work for the Prince of Persia and Virtua Fighter series, Terada also touched on his time with Nintendo and his illustrations for the Zelda series:
Time Extension: We’re wondering, can you remember the first time you played Legend of Zelda? Had you played the game before getting the Nintendo gig?
Terada: 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.
Time Extension: Did Nintendo give you any specific guidelines for working with its characters like Zelda? Or were you established enough at that point to have total freedom to explore your ideas without objections?
Terada: 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.
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.
Time Extension’s interviewer follows that up by asking Terada if he’d like to translate any other Nintendo characters into his own style:
Time Extension: Are there any other Nintendo characters that you would love the chance to reinterpret in your own art style?
Terada: That’s a good question. None immediately come to mind, though. Oh! I liked Metroid a lot, so it might be nice to draw something from that if I got the opportunity to do so for work.
You can read Time Extension’s entire interview with Katsuya Terada right here.
Are you a fan of Katsuya Terada’s work? Have you seen his Legend of Zelda illustrations before? Let us know in the comments below!
Source: Time Extension
A Link to the Past artwork archived by History of Hyrule
Rod Lloyd is the Editor-In-Chief at Zelda Dungeon, overseeing the news and feature content for the site. Rod is considered the veteran of the writing team, having started writing for Zelda Informer in 2014 as a Junior Editor. After ZD and ZI officially merged in 2017, he stepped into the Managing Editor role and has helped steer the ship ever since. He stepped up to lead the writing team as Editor-In-Chief in 2023.
You can reach Rod at: rod.lloyd@zeldadungeon.net
