Back before the poster sets on Club Nintendo jumped up in point price, I ordered myself three of the sets - the Mario, Zelda and Zelda 25th Anniversary collections. It wasn't too long before I found myself with nine brand new posters - three featuring Mario and six featuring scenes from several Zelda games. "These are too good to gunk up with blu-tack or skewer with drawing pins", I thought. Framing was the only option.

All of the posters are extremely nice, and had I the funding and the available wall-estate I would have had every single one of them framed. Instead, I had to choose between my three favorites. Surprisingly, the same style of gold frame seemed to match the artwork for all three that I chose. I apologize in advance for the angled photography, but with the windows and light source positioning it was the best I could do without direct camera-flash flare on the glass frames.

The majority of the main Mario cast. They're all here, and--wait. How'd Birdo get in there?

The Mario set contained a group shot of the main cast, a large red Mario closeup with some smaller images above him and a timeline showing his evolving artwork over the years set on a NES Super Mario Bros. backdrop.
I had the red one framed as a birthday present for my soon-to-be 5 year old nephew, whom I've successfully brainwashed into Mario fandom since he could first talk.
For myself, I chose the group poster. I was particularly impressed with the inclusion of Wario and Waluigi in the shot, and Bowser's pouty dismissal of the whole thing was hilarious. The background color was a little glaring, but it could have been much worse.

The classic Zelda poster collection featured a very nice Twilight Princess scene of Wolf Link and Midna doing battle with Shadow Beasts under profiles of Zelda, Zant and Ganondorf, a jolly Phantom Hourglass scene of Link and Linebeck sailing along, and an evolving artwork timeline much like the Mario one. This one was a tough choice as they are all very cool, but I went with the timeline. I so wish Nintendo would make a new game featuring a classic 2D art style, maybe with LttP Link...

That border hides something special.

Anyway, this one actually had an amazing secret. The gold pattern around the border of the picture was actually tiny Hylian print. As the nerdiest of Zelda fans know, the Hylian that appears in the games can actually be translated into (depending on the game it's in) Japanese or English. This particular script turned out to be Twilight Princess Hylian in which the symbols correlate to the English alphabet, and the Professor Layton in me took over. "In the tranquil kingdom of Hyrule..." it begins - this was actually a real message! I won't spoil the entire contents of the message as those with the curiosity will have much more fun translating it themselves, but the story that unfolds is worth the effort.

Finally, the 25th Anniversary set. Featured here are two Skyward Sword posters that have a very similar layout and some of the same art, but one contains a new pose for Link and many more characters, including fan-favorite Groose. But lastly, and possibly most impressive, was the poster that adorned the music halls during the 25th Anniversary Symphony concert. It is a compilation of just about every incarnation of Link from across the entire series, including all four of his mask transformations from Majora's Mask, his wolf form and his alternate costumes from Wind Waker and Spirit Tracks. To top it off there's also every single type of fairy seen throughout the series floating amongst them, even spunky little Tatl and her brother Tael. The artwork has been slightly rearranged from the concert's square posters to fit more into a portrait layout, but it doesn't look cramped at all. The artist's interpretation has the same style across the whole piece and yet somehow still manages to match the original artwork from each game perfectly. It is, simply, a work of beauty.

Jeez, Ganondorf is screwed.

So those are the three I've decided to hang for now. I may be moving house in the near future and if I find myself with some extra space I'm surely going to get some more of these wonderful art pieces framed, especially the Mario timeline or the Twilight Princess scene. These posters are well worth the club nintendo coins they cost. Check the gallery below for the hi-def photos I took and images of the remaining posters.