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"Zelda is a completely different animal," Schartmann tells me. "Its music is atmospheric—it is designed to capture the vastness of Hyrule, and of Link's quest. Unlike the music to Mario, there is little that is flippant or comedic.Zelda's soundtrack was a new kind of music, really—something that had never been heard before. —Andrew Schartmann
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Even now, as the series grows increasingly visually and conceptually brave, the Zelda soundtracks retain what Schartmann loves and respects about them. "I've always appreciated Kondo's bare-bones technique," he muses. "Despite having the option available to him, he doesn't use technological bells and whistles to prop up his music. He relies instead on a solid craft and basic musical features: rich harmonies, jostling rhythms, and, of course, tunes we just can't forget."And boy, is that true. In fact, with the Zelda series, Kondo created perhaps the perfect music for sensory memory, paired not just pleasantly but meticulously with stories we didn't just watch but fully experienced. Hell, I found myself at 18 with a stick-and-poke Triforce tattoo on my ankle and still unable to rid my head of those themes, which led to my obsessing over the recording of an unfortunately guitar-heavy medley of the lot of them. This can still be heard below, under an equally embarrassing moniker—which is fine, because we were all awful teenagers at one point.With the Zelda series, Kondo created perhaps the perfect music for sensory memory, paired not just pleasantly but meticulously with stories we didn't just watch but fully experienced.
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The author's own medley of Zelda tunes, recorded several years agoBeing, effectively, the game through which I discovered games, it was specifically the revolutionary 3D visuals and, at the time, unfathomably epic nature of Ocarina of Time that held and holds the most resonance for me, and many others. Based on Schartmann's comments on its astonishing soundtrack, this is fairly unsurprising."In Ocarina of Time, Kondo proved himself a master of reinvention. Not only did he re-orchestrate the music we all know and love (from previous, arguably less-ambitious Zelda titles), but he also created several new tunes to fit with the old ones. It's hard enough to reinvent the same themes over and over again, let alone supplement them with new ones—and all of that without sounding derivative."Ocarina was also the first game in which specific environments became firmly wedded to specific tunes. Yes, there was consistency between previous games, but Ocarina really set things in stone. With Ocarina, Kondo gave us the sound of Hyrule—something we could rely on from game to game for information about our surroundings. And that sonic consistency helped to position The Legend of Zelda as a mythology fit for the 21st century—a world around which we can roam freely, as its sounds wash over our ears."Follow Merlin on Twitter.