In the concluding part of our series of the Zelda Universe staff’s fondest memories of the website and its 20-year history, we’re featuring a ton of memories of our trips to the Electronic Entertainment Expo. E3 has given us the chance to play the games that matter most to us, meet key figures in the industry, and make friends for life.
Be sure to check out part one and part two if you missed them, and once again to the hundreds of incredible people that have volunteered their time and skills to keep Zelda Universe running and thriving for two whole decades:
Thank you.
Chelsea Reed
While my time with Zelda Universe has not been long, I can remember visiting the site and others like The Grand Adventures, Exploding Deku Nut, North Castle, and Legends and Adventure in the fan community since 2004, when I was a teenager. Back then I enjoyed reading fanfiction and Zelda news articles a great deal, sometimes spending hours well into the night to sneak in another chapter. I remember when TheMissingLink got together with DarthCitrus and the other folks to create Zelda Blog, and that was truly something special to see. Blogs were a very new thing in those days.
I used to dream about writing Zelda news articles of my own one day. That dream was finally realized when I joined the ZU team in April 2020!
Today, I am a professional blog writer and copywriter who has written all kinds of things for international clients. Web content, social media, blog posts, you name it. But I will never forget those times in my youth with the grassroots Zelda community that encouraged me to keep reaching for my dreams. I am now developing a sci-fi fantasy novel that I hope will inspire young people with dreams of their own. It’s so thrilling to be part of the ZU team in this exciting time on their 20th Anniversary, and the 35th Anniversary for The Legend of Zelda series itself. I can’t wait to see what will happen next!
Chelsea is a news reporter at Zelda Universe and author of an up-and-coming sci-fi fantasy novel. All credit of her nerd prowess goes to a dear friend, the true master of Forsaken Fortress.
Alex Trevino
One of my favorite memories from ZU is being able to attend E3 in the summer. I’ll forever be grateful to be given the opportunity to see fellow leaders and team members from the Zelda Universe team. Each trip gets better when you’re able to interact with the people you work with for years.
In addition, our trip to E3 in 2017 was a memorable one, especially as that was the year Breath of the Wild had released. Our team had made plans to meet up with some of the voice actors from the game, namely Patricia Summersett (Princess Zelda) and Bill Rogers (the King of Hyrule), and the both of them were a delight to meet face-to-face.
Breath of the Wild is well known for being a unique Zelda experience, with the inclusion of voice acting in the main series of Zelda games. So being able to meet up with and interact with the talent behind the iconic characters was what made my E3 that year. Ultimately, it was thanks to ZU and the opportunity I was given to be able to meet friends both old and new.
Alex is a UNT graduate, majoring in Theatre. He has been working at ZU since Fall of 2013 as a former media director and ongoing content creator in both media and marketing. He’s the lead director and video editor for the English dub adaptations of various Zelda games.
Brandon Acosta
I’ve always been obsessed with Zelda, and I’ve always loved to act. So when the casting call for ZU’s Hyrule Warriors: The Movie went up, I went out and bought a Blue Snowball microphone and auditioned on the very last day. That was almost six years ago.
Since then, I’ve gotten serious about voice acting, been in a ton of cool projects, and actually been paid for my work! Yet I attribute all of my progress back to that audition; to Mr. Trevino picking that clip of me screaming into a mic with poor sound quality and saying, “That’s him, that’s our guy.” I’m immensely proud of having been there for the first of our many voice-over and fandub projects, and to be continuing to play a part in them.
Almost two years ago, I had the wonderful opportunity to fulfill a childhood dream of mine. Alongside the ZU crew, I was able to fly out to Los Angeles for the first time and go to (what may have been the last) E3. It’s one of those things you grow up reading about, watching on YouTube, hungering for — and I was able to breathe all of it in. That week was an amazingly fun time and I could sit here all day recounting the highlights: drunken Jackbox games, Kelly swooning over Jack Sparrow at Disneyland, getting to play the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo, Amanda and I having a slurpee-drinking contest, Charles Martinet going through the media line and taking selfies with us, meeting several voice actors I look up to, and live reacting with everyone to the reveal of the Breath of the Wild sequel. It was truly special, and something I have missed deeply since we’ve been dealing with COVID.
Zelda Universe is special to me for many reasons. I’ve met some of the best people in my life all because I took a chance and screamed into a microphone all those years ago. I’m immensely grateful for it and hope to contribute more in the days to come. Thank you!
Brandon is a voice actor who has lent his voice to many of Zelda Universe’s dub projects, including Hyrule Warriors: The Movie, Wind Waker: The Movie, and Majora’s Mask: 20th Anniversary Tribute. You can also find him on Twitter!
Meredith Lord
I actually didn’t discover you guys until I stumbled upon the Twilight Princess Dub casting call. That project was my proudest achievement as a voice actor, and it inspired me to try creating my own Zelda fandubs.
When I realized that I lacked the skill set necessary to truly accomplish my goals, I went to audio engineering school! So you guys more or less changed the trajectory of my life!
Meredith is an audio engineer with a serious passion for animation and music. She also fancies herself a Japanese folklore expert and will never stop searching for obscure references in the Zelda series.
Caitlin Johnson
The Legend of Zelda has long been a part of my life. In 1998 (I’m dating myself here) I distinctly remember watching a friend’s dad face Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time, and thought “well, that looks cool.” We rented the game a short while later, and the rest is Zelda history.
After the official Nintendo NSider forums disbanded in the early 2000s, I needed a place to discuss with others why Majora’s Mask is arguably a better story than its predecessor, and how although Ocarina of Time is simple in premise it too still holds a wealth of wonder and plenty of room for great storytelling. The Zelda Universe forums met those needs shortly after (ask Cody Davies to dig up my old cringey posts; he loves that).
Wanting to put my journalism degree and skills to work in some form of the gaming industry, I became a ZU news writer in 2018. Covering the surprising amount of Zelda news at E3 2019 continues to be one of my career highlights, and I’m grateful not only for the chance to experience it firsthand as a reporter (something I’d dreamed about since high school), but also because it solidified my relationships with some of the coolest people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with. I’m proud to be part of such an awesome, talented team and am excited to see what the future holds for Zelda Universe and its fantastic community. Here’s to another 20 great years!
Caitlin is a news reporter and editor, and one of Zelda Universe’s leaders. Her love for Zelda is matched only by her love for food and bad jokes, and especially appreciates Breath of the Wild for its cooking mechanics and sand seal puns. You can follow Caitlin on Twitter (but don’t say she didn’t warn you).
Lyss Laurxn
The room was buzzing, loud, and anxious.
It was the last day of E3 2017 and we had more work to do, so the team decided we’d get up early and be at doors for the day. If you know me at all, you know that is a feat. We somehow made it early enough to get to the very front, and plopped ourselves down to wait for 45 minutes. I looked in my bag for the cupcakes I swore I threw in for Amanda and me, and then realized I left them at our Airbnb. That was a problem for Later Lyss though. I was at E3. I had work to do.
Later Lyss caught up to me pretty quickly. After being trampled in the rush for the Nintendo booth (seriously, Polygon caught it on video), the team made it and got a decadent place in line. For a moment, it looked like we might actually be able to eat lunch and not spend the day in line. We moved about six inches, and then I fainted.
Yup. Fainted.
Nintendo reps happened to see me fall back, and Connor, part of our graphics team that the time, caught me. The next thing I remember, all 10 of us were being plucked from the line, and were given a private tour of the booth. “Stunned” did not begin to cover it. At this very point in time, I was not a huge Zelda fan, but something broke in me that trip, seeing the love and care that Nintendo put into that booth and those setpieces. Some of the photography for the Breath of the Wild announcement on ZU is mine and I could not be any prouder of the work I did on that trip. And now, having put 800 hours into Breath of the Wild and running four marathons, I’m proud to call myself a Zelda fan now, and proud of the work I continue to do for ZU with ZUThon.
Lyss is Zelda Universe’s former event co-ordinator and Twitch assistant. She’s now a content creator and variety streamer with a focus on Overwatch.
Jason Rappaport
I haven’t always owned ZU — I joined in 2004, when I was 14 years old, as a regular member, and didn’t become the owner until 2007. It’s crazy to think that I’ve now been a member of Zelda Universe for 17 years, which is more than half my life.
As many staff members have already recounted, our annual staff trip to E3 is full of crazy stories. And with the death of E3 fast-tracked by COVID, this special ZU anniversary also feels like the right time to reminisce about E3 and the fun we had there.
E3 2013 was a crazy year — maybe our craziest. A Link Between Worlds was announced that year and we interviewed Eiji Aonuma about it. We hung out with Koei Tecmo. And we were also snuck backstage onto the under-construction show floor days before the show officially began.
An acquaintance was working for one of the companies that design and build booths and other trade show sets. It turned out that he was on the show floor supervising the construction of a booth that year, so we decided to meet up and say hello. When Cody, Hombre de Mundo, and I met up with him a few days before the show started, we were not expecting him to ask us if we wanted to check out the show floor — but he did, and we obviously said yes.
We signed a construction assistant waiver, making Hombre de Mundo’s open-toed sandals officially a liability, and after catching up with our acquaintance and getting a look at his company’s booth, we had some time to walk around freely.
Every booth was completely covered in white tarp, but none were as buttoned-up as Nintendo’s gigantic space in the back corner of the hall. It looked impossible to see inside. Of course, that wasn’t going to stop us from trying to catch a glimpse of whatever we could through the tarps. We walked the perimeter several times before nearly giving up. We started walking back.
Then, from a distance, we saw it: The tarps blocking the entrance to the booth briefly opened a small crack — just enough to see a sliver of what hung from the ceiling of the booth.
There was the logo of a new Mario game, “Super Mario 3D World.” And then the familiar logo for the then-untitled upcoming 3DS Zelda.
Except that it wasn’t untitled. Below the familiar “Legend of Zelda” text was something new: “A Link Between Worlds.”
Once we’d left the building, we told the on-site team what we’d seen. Of course, we couldn’t leak the name — but for a few days, we knew something that the internet didn’t, and that was a feeling I’ll never forget.
It’s only because of ZU that I’ve been able to have these sorts of experiences in my life for 17 incredible years, and I can’t wait to make more memories in person with everyone once the pandemic is over.
Happy 20th birthday, ZU — let’s go for 20 more.
Jason is the owner of both Zelda Universe and Zelda Maps, as well as the founder of Zelda Wiki. Elsewhere, you can usually find him under the name GoldenChaos.
Zelda Universe is now celebrating its 20th birthday! Be sure to check out more of our memories from the site’s two-decade history.
