Hyrule Historia

I've seen screens of the Japanese one in the past. I won't buy it, but it's cool that we'll get to see an officially translated Zelda timeline.

Glitterberri had previously translated the Japanese version into English, with a translation of the Zelda timeline to boot. For those interested/curious, the actual timeline goes something like this:

[spoiler]

1: Skyward Sword - Before the game: After the world was created, monsters began to appear and the goddess Hylia put the remaining hylians on a floating island.
During the game: the ancient evil Demise is destroyed, while Link, Zelda, and their friend Groose remain on the surface. However, Demise promises that an incarnation of him will appear... The Master sword is created during the game.

2: The Minish Cap - Before the game, people fight over the Triforce, so the king has it sealed away in the sacred realm/golden land. Kinstones and force gems become all the rage.
During the game: an evil picori named Vaati appears and tries to gain ultimate power by killing Zelda. However, her friend Link saves her with help from a cap (former picori) named Ezlo. The four sword is created during this game. Vaati debuts into the timeline here.

3: Four Swords (the first one) - The Minish Cap literally makes up the backstory to this. During the game, Vaati is once again defeated by a Link weilding the four sword, except this time it is literally four Links that the sword creates.

4: Ocarina of Time - Before the game: rather than argue over the Triforce, now people are fighting over the entrance to the dimension where it resides. Two orphans are born from the chaos: First a Gerudo named Ganondorf, then a Hylian named Link decades later. While Ganondorf is raised to watch desert take over his land, Link is hidden away in a forest.
During the game, Ganondorf makes an attempt to enter the sacred realm, and in two out of three different tangents (a and b), actually succeeds and takes over Hyrule. In the other tangent, Zelda gets him arrested and later orders his execution.
This game marks the debut of Ganon into the timeline.

Tangent A: Adult Timeline

5a: Wind Waker - Before the game: Ganondorf takes over Hyrule, but Adult Link defeats him in an epic battle, while Zelda and the sages seal the guy away in a void. Zelda sends Link back to his own time (childhood), unaware that Ganondorf would break free later. With Link unavailable, the people become desperate, and eventually Hyrule is flooded as a seal.
During the game: An island boy (Link) ends up entangled in Ganondorf's plot to assemble the Triforce, and answers the call. However, Hyrule is lost forever in the process. Link decides to sail with Tetra/Zelda and her pirates to find new land.

6a: Phantom Hourglass - Before the game: see Wind Waker, as this is a direct sequel.
During the game: Link and Tetra basically hit a snag on the journey, and now Link has to defeat an ancient evil deep beneath the waves in order to break a spell on her.

7a: Spirit Tracks - Before the game: Link and Tetra eventually found land, and this became the next Hyrule. However, this place had some dark secrets of its own.
During the game: generations later, a guard in training (Link) has to help Zelda when her body and spirit become disconnected. Somehow trains are involved, and said dark secrets are resolved.

Tangent B: Child Timeline

5b: Majora's Mask - Before the game: After defeating Ganondorf as an adult, Link is sent back to his childhood, but claims to the Triforce pieces transcend time, and realizing this, Link warns Zelda of what will happen. Now with a claim to Wisdom, Zelda gives Link the Ocarina of Time and tells him to flee Hyrule with it, before she has Ganondorf arrested and executed.
During the game - Events of this game have little bearing elsewhere, but I digress. Link has an odd little adventure chasing down his horse and his Ocarina, while saving another world from a moon that is being dragged into a collision course with it. He returns to Hyrule when this is over. Though it isn't clear what becomes of him after this, his fate is not *entirely* a mystery...

6b: Twilight Princess - Before the game: Zelda accuses Ganondorf of treason, and successfully has him arrested. He is sent far north of the Desert Colossus, to the Arbiter's Grounds, where he is to be run through with a sword of light. However, his claim to the Triforce of Power renders the execution ineffective, and he takes out a sage before instead being imprisoned in the Twilight realm, much to the ire of some of that land's residents...
During the game: A pawn named Zant strips Princess Midna of her abilities and has her turned into a diminutive shape. When Zant extends his reach towards Hyrule, a ranchhand named Link becomes a wolf, and teams up with Midna to send him back. Ganondorf eventually returns to Hyrule and reigns atop the castle, but after a vicious battle between hero and villain, Ganondorf is run through once more, and with aid from ancient deities, is killed off.
Along the way, Link receives training from a phantom knight known as the Hero's Shade. The apparition implies throughout the game that he too was once a Link. Hyrule Historia confirms not only that this is true, but that he is specifically the player character from Ocarina of Time, the Hero of Time. During his life he was unable to find a proper pupil to pass his skills onto, and now there is a successor for him to finish his obligations.

7b: Four Swords Adventure - Before the game: due to events in Twilight Princess, relations with the shadow realm are very, very strained in the distant future.
During the game: Zelda grows concerned about Vaati, who hasn't been heard from since before Ocarina of Time. When she and her friend Link go to check on the seal, Dark Link appears and kidnaps her. Link has no choice but to draw the four sword and use its power to give chase, releasing Vaati in the process. To add onto this, worshipers of the dark lord anticipate this all to be a ploy to resurrect Ganon. By the end of the game, Link must defeat ALL THREE of these villains.

Tangent C: Hyrule's Darkest Hour

5c: A Link to the Past - Before the game: The Hero of Time confronts Ganondorf in his castle, but is killed in battle, and Ganondorf wins to continue his plot, but upon gaining a claim to all three fragments, returns to the sacred realm and cannot escape. He now has full access to the Triforce and reign over this other world, but at least Hyrule will be safe.Centuries later, evil forces spread from the seal's location and the king has a group of wise men close it off while knights protect them (Imprisoning War). Later still, a mysterious priest named Aghanihm sets right many wrongs plaguing the land and is given a high seat in Hyrule's court, before assassinating the king and taking the throne. Then, the wise men's descendants start to disappear...
During the game: The last of these descendants, Zelda, calls to two descendants of said knights in their sleep. One of them tries to save her, but is killed in action. The other, his nephew Link, takes up arms and continues on to learn of the Master Sword, obtain it, free the maidens, Enter the perversion of the Sacred Realm known now as the Dark World, slay Ganondorf, and use the Triforce to set right what went wrong, undoing all the damage and tragedy this game saw.

6c: Oracle of Ages/Seasons - Before the game: Link is now a hero, but is seeking more experience and knowledge, in the face of the next big threat. The Triforce basically finds something for him to do in Labrinnya and Holodrum.
During the game: two agents of chaos, Onox and Veran, are defeated by Link. However, this is merely a gambit by reincarnations of Kotake and Koume from Ocarina of Time, to help them revive Ganon, using Zelda as a sacrifice. All efforts fail in the end though, as both Twinrova and again Ganon are destroyed by Link, bringing a finality of sorts to this young man's battle against the dark lord. After some time in whatever land was last visited, he leaves on a ship, either back to Hyrule or one more adventure... ...but...

7c: Link's Awakening - Before the game: A storm destroys the ship, and Link, although clinging to floatsam and breathing, is rendered comatose.
During the game: In a dream world where a leviathan entity known as the Wind Fish has become trapped in a deep sleep within a giant egg, Link must help him wake up to get off the island. However, the island and thus prison are products of the being's own mind, and along with its inhabitants ceases to exist when the two of them awaken. However, one of these inhabitants, Marin, either is manifested as a seagull in the waking world, or was one all along, also trapped in the dream. Nobody knows what becomes of Link after this.

8c: The Legend of Zelda - Before the game: Hyrule became a very glorious place after the Oracle games, and seemed to be on a very successful path, as the royal family used the Triforce to bring about the prosperous ages prophecized by Zelda in Ocarina of Time. However, during a changing of hands and inheritance, a jealous Prince tries to obtain the Triforce all for himself, although his father had hidden Courage away. The Prince's wizard casts the Princess Zelda into an unending sleep before dying, and the Prince lives out the rest of his days in grief and remorse. He orders that now every princess ever born into Hyrule royalty be named Zelda (not just every once in awhile, so no this event didn't occur at the very beginning.) Many many centuries later, Hyrule has effectively gone down the shitter, due in no small part to a reincarnation of Ganon, although this one is far more beast than man, if he even remembers his life as Ganondorf...
During the game: After Ganon takes back the Triforce of Power, Zelda splits Wisdom into eight pieces and orders Impa to flee the castle and find a hero. Although Impa is ambushed, a very clever child named Link draws her attackers away and learns of her plight. His origins are not clear, as he appears to have been a roaming orphan (he may have descended from the Link of Link's Awakening), but he reassembles the Triforce of Wisdom, ends Ganon, saves Zelda, and takes the Triforce of Power in the process.

9c: The Adventure of Link - Before the game: It has been six years (according to HH itself.) and Link is being constantly hunted by vengeful followers of Ganon, who believe they can revive their fallen master with Link's blood. Then one day, Link discovers the familiar Triforce crest on his hand, but doesn't know what it means. When he shows it to Impa, she takes him to the Northern Palace and tells him about both the sleeping Zelda and her father, as Link appears to be the one he chose to find the Triforce of Courage. Link and Impa decide that with the full Triforce, they will make their wish on the sleeping princess and have it granted. The Zelda from the previous game is curiously not mentioned, although she is presumably the ruler of the land.
During the game: In order for Link to collect the last Triforce, he must return six crystals to six temples, so he can enter the temple where Courage rests. After a grueling climax against his own shadow, Link returns to the North Palace with the final Triforce in hand and wakes the ancient princess. How and whether or not this ends Link and Hyrule's problems with vengeful monsters is not known, but it appears to put Hyrule at peace until the next threat (whatever that will be) comes down the line...

[/spoiler]

I agree with most people though...killing Link was a cop out. I kind of remember arguing for AND against it, but I don't remember why. Haha.

Yeah, it's not the third timeline that's bogus, it's just the explanation; there's at least one other explanation for it that would actually allow it to exist and make sense. Nintendo's explanation is utter garbage. But as for the Historia itself, nice. I know it exists online, but I want that book. Have wanted it. Gonna pick it up on day one if I can.

I've already pre-ordered a copy. Too bad its a 5-6 month wait to Jan 31st.

Yeah HH is awesome.