Welcome to a musical guide to your forest ridden past, even though you probably haven’t spent more than a total of four hours outside in your life (if you’re anything like me at least). The wonderful world of the Legend of Zelda series takes us on may wonderful journeys throughout our many trials and our oh so many errors. There is a certain nostalgia that comes along with high and low pitched beeps that accompany our travels across Hyrule. If the name Koji Kondo means nothing to you, then read my last blog post because you’re in the wrong damn place. Read in order, please. If you can beat any of those wretched water temples, I KNOW that you can follow directions and an order to an absolute T.
Any why, I guess our quest begins with the first instalment of the series The Legend of Zelda. The technology at that time was somewhat limited in what it could do. While the technology to create something rather involved did not exist, the peppy tunes of the overworld still haunt my dreams and the funky and grungy bops of the dungeons still find their way on a hiking playlist from time to time. This first game shows the bare bones of what a game can do. There are no backup vocals to accompany the frequent beeps, and no instrumental gimmicks either. The only thing that is present in this games’ soundtracks is the constant beeps that are not so adventurous. Kondo plays it safe as to not scare away people. And trust me, he needed not to help the frustration any. The evil Ganondorf stalks the forest and the caves making life awful for the people of the towns in the area. And no matter how hard you try not to get attached to the poorly designed denizens of the towns, they still tug at your heart strings when they ask for help.
It isn’t until the third installation of the series that we see any major changes in the way that the music is performed. Here we can see I direct change in the way that music is structured. We begin to see the music mimic the sounds of an instrument and have more structured harmonics. The rifts in the third game A Link to the Past begin to shape the rest of the games in a way that brings more joy to the stale and often times repetitive nature of 8-bit music. This is a benefit for the gaming community as a whole, not just for Zelda fans. So, rejoice you Cheetos-loving fools, Kondo has helped you even if you dislike the Zelda games, which I doubt you do. I am yet to meet someone who has a dislike for those games. Even if you say you don’t want like them, you’ve probably never played them or you have only played one of the bad ones. We can all forget about the Minish Cap and that would be ok.
Link to the Past has a synthesizer running in the background that gives the game a smoother sound to it. This is also the game that gives us the Overworld music that we all know in love. There are also actual sound bites from trumpets playing in the background of some of the tracks in this one too which is super cool. There is something that needs to be said about the incorporation of actual instruments and how extremely fascinating and groundbreaking that is. Kondo has taken the sound of what people generally take for music and placed it in something people often times over looked. Here is one of the first games to do something different and pave a path for other people to follow.
Moving on forward (or backwards depending on how you really look at it) the chronological path of Zelda and getting to the Ocarina of Time, this is the first game in video game history that a game has the player use music in gameplay "[one of the] first contemporary non-dance title[s] to feature music-making as part of its gameplay" as stated in an interview with GameSpot, we can see that the members of the gaming community who have way more influence than I, agree that this is a milestone game in the series.
The magic purple potato of time sends us all across the timeline and we can see the beautiful layering of sound that is found throughout the rest of the series. This is seen perfectly with the drum machine playing in the background in some songs alongside a flute that is being played all on top of the smooth funky beats Kondo is known for. This title veers away from the 8-bit funk and more towards actual instruments with the occasional interruption of the electric instruments. Only when need be do the machines come out to play.
This is again showing off the great craft of the Zelda series as a whole and how it gradually evolves along with the people who play and enjoy them. It is not something that happens all of a sudden, but takes time to notice and truly appreciate. The subtlety of the games music allows for the player to truly relax when something is truly frustrating. For the times that we all need a break, this is a series that should make an appearance on any lyric-less peaceful playlist. Filed almost completely under “Relaxing study tunes,” This series is sure to have anything that will give any student something to listen to.
If you’re not into these games, you should be and you’re probably lying. If you haven’t heard of these games, just call me Father Abraham because here I am coming to witness to you about the masterful work of these games and the beauty found in their music. Take some time out of your day and just listen. You might enjoy what you find.
(McDonald, Glenn (February 26, 1999). "A Brief Timeline of Video Game Music". GameSpot. Archived from the original on October 18, 2007. Retrieved April 6, 2008.)
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