I haven't typically posted about guide books that I've picked up, but this one was unusual and worthy of comment. Normally, major Nintendo games receive official guides at the same time that the games themselves release. For instance, the Breath of the Wild strategy guide was available alongside the game when the Switch launched in 2017.
I have a tradition of picking up the official guides for more complicated games dating back all the way to Yoshi's Island on the SNES, which I probably got around early 1996. After that I was picking up 3D Mario and Zelda guides (and ultimately other game guides) alongside the games starting with Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Yet, for some odd reason, the official guide for Tears of the Kingdom did not release alongside the game. In fact, numerous people (myself included) weren't even sure if a guide book would be released. However, close to the game's launch, Piggyback (the company that published the Breath of the Wild guide), announced that Tears of the Kingdom would get an official guide - around June 16, over a month after the game's May 12 release. As far as I'm aware, this was unheard of, at least for a Zelda game.
Nonetheless, I preordered the guide from GameStop, but then the release date was suddenly pushed back to July 7. In another unexpected move, the guide was then released about two weeks before the new July 7 date, and I actually received my copy just yesterday. I have always preferred the paperback versions, so that's what I went with.
The guide is absolutely massive, and although I haven't compared them directly, I think the Tears of the Kingdom guide might be around twice as thick as the Breath of the Wild guide. The organization is pretty good and everything seems to be explained quite well, but I'm finding that it's a little easier to use the dynamic website maps to find certain locations rather than flipping through several pages. Other than that though, the guide book is preferable to online guides.
It seems like the video game industry is trying to kill off physical media for a variety of ridiculous reasons, but hopefully Nintendo keeps supporting it and keeps releasing strategy guides, at least for Zelda games. After Nintendo Power stopped releasing Player's Guides around late 2006, Prima pretty much took over, but apparently they no longer make any printed guides. We'll see if Piggyback goes the way of Prima and Nintendo Power, and if any new company springs up to fill in the void.
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