Zelda Universe was founded on February 20, 2001. That’s 20 years ago today!
The web was a completely different place in 2001. Many Zelda fan sites existed in the early 2000s, but unfortunately most of them have gone offline or become inactive over the years. Social media, YouTube and Twitch have also provided alternative outlets for creators of Zelda content, but these weren’t around back then! Thankfully, our wonderful community and a team of volunteers have kept Zelda Universe strong for two decades now.
Like most Zelda fan sites back then, Zelda Universe began as a one-person project. I am certain that the founder of Zelda Universe, Lars-Christian “AnakiN” Simonsen, had no idea that it would still be around two decades later or become as large as it is today. Lars stepped down from the website more than 10 years ago now, but today, Zelda Universe is maintained by around 100 volunteers!
This is the oldest remaining copy of Zelda Universe, circa June 2001.
There were multiple iterations of this blue website layout in 2003.
The Temple layout was crowdfunded by the community in 2008.
We would like to thank the hundreds of past and current volunteers, and hundreds of thousands of community members on our forums and our across social media platforms that have helped to make Zelda Universe a success.
Can you believe that there were only 6 Zelda games when Zelda Universe was founded?
At the time, the community had only been playing The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask for a few months and were eagerly anticipating the releases of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages. Of course, in early 2001, Zelda GameCube or ZeldaCUBE was also a hot topic, but the community was still riding the hype from the Spaceworld 2000 Zelda demo. It was still a few months before the community saw the cel-shaded graphics of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for the first time.
When Zelda Universe was founded, everyone believed SpaceWorld 2000 Zelda tech demo was showing us the next 3D Zelda game.
Since then, our community has been here with us to celebrate the releases of 13 new Zelda games, 6 remasters of past Zelda games, and 11 spin-off Zelda games.
It has been an incredible journey. The 35th anniversary of The Legend of Zelda series is tomorrow. I hope you will join us in celebrating both the Zelda Universe 20th anniversary and The Legend of Zelda 35th anniversary throughout the rest of 2021. We have already published several articles as part of this celebration, and we will have much more to share in the coming months.
We cannot thank you enough for your support.
I am going to close this message with a piece of history that I discovered while exploring the oldest copy of Zelda Universe that is still online. It’s a sign-off from our founder, written in June 2001, and I am going to use it again today.
Please help us secure that ZeldaUniverse.net will keep growing by coming back, and telling your friends about the site.
Thank you for visiting.
Lars-Christian Simonsen
On behalf of the entire Zelda Universe team, thank you.
Joshua Lindquist
Joshua is one of the webmasters of Zelda Universe and previously founded Zelda Relic. He works behind-the-scenes to build collaboration in the Zelda community. If there's Zelda somewhere, keep an eye out, because he might be there.
by Joshua Lindquist on February 20, 2021
