Zelda + Metroid Calendars 2020

It's time to look at the calendars for the upcoming year and like for 2019 we again get two different Zelda calendars. One by Abrams (to the left), who have been releasing these calendars for many years now, and one by Pyramid (to the right).

For 2019 the Abrams calendar focused entirely on Breath of the Wild, where in 2020 they "broaden" their spectrum again to all six 3D Zelda games. Wow. If you're also a fan of topdown Zeldas, the Pyramid calendar might be the better choice here, because it also features The Minish Cap and A Link Between Worlds in addition... Which isn't much, but better than nothing.

Pyramid's selection of motives is again a lot more vanilla, though, where it all feels very familiar if you had some of the Abrams calendars from the past. The new Abrams calendar is a little bit more interesting on that regard, at least for its Breath of the Wild motives, where it probably would have been a good idea to simply make a second calendar exclusively featuring the game, instead of posting the cover of Skyward Sword again.

On the other hand the Pyramid calendar has the much nicer design for its months:

This all looks like a beautifully crafted Zelda calendar, while the one from Abrams feels a lot more blank in comparison with only the motive on the top page and rather lackluster template with some random background color on the lower page:

So, it's ultimately your choice what calendar you're going with. Or just get both and hang them in different spots.

But if you only have the one spot available and you want a calendar done right, then it might be worth considering the official Metroid Calendar 2020 instead:

This seems to be the first Metroid calendar (at least I haven't seen one in the previous years) and it was also done by Abrams, which is quite surprising, because they have done an uncharacteristically good job here when compared to their Zelda calendars. It already starts with the selection of motives, which are covering absolutely all Metroid games (except for Prime Pinball):

Counting the two remakes, there are currently twelve Metroid games in total, which fits perfectly for a twelve month calendar. The games are even covered in their order of release, so it starts with the classic NES Metroid and ends with Metroid: Samus Returns. This is perfect!

It mainly uses the cover arts of the games for this, but for a first Metroid calendar this is completely fine. (For a second one in 2021 it won't be.) It's a nice journey through 33 years of Metroid and you'd wish that Abrams would also consider using arts from some older or less popular Zelda games for their calendars as well for a change.

Surprisingly, the only game that has been featured twice here is actually Metroid: Other M, where the Bottleship is used for the 2019 section, which features the months between September and December. You might not ever see that one on your wall, however, so that's fine in any case.

The design of the calendar is also quite nice and fits the futuristic feel of the games:

I like how the top pages fades in the background of the second page, because it makes it look more wholesome, while the last Zelda calendars by Abrams make a clear visual cut between the two pages. So, yeah, this is definitely a good start and I will be proudly hanging this calendar in 2020 somewhere where I can see it. (Not that I'm hanging any calendars where you can't see them... You know what I mean.)