Who wrote the Zelda theme song?
30035#8
"The Legend of Zelda Theme" is a recurring piece of music that was created for the first game of the franchise. The composer and sound director of the series, Koji Kondo, initially planned to use Maurice Ravel's "Boléro" as the game's title theme, but was forced to change it when he learned, late in the game's development cycle, that the copyright for the orchestral piece had not yet expired. As a result, Kondo wrote a new arrangement of the overworld theme within one day. The "Zelda Theme" has topped ScrewAttack's "Top Ten Videogame Themes Ever" list.
The Legend of Zelda
165820#14
The score to "A Link to the Past" was composed, arranged, and produced by Koji Kondo. The overworld theme of "The Legend of Zelda" ("Hyrule Overture") returns in "A Link to the Past", redone in S-SMP style. The theme is also featured in "Light World Overworld" and in "End Credits". "A Link to the Past" helped to establish the musical core of the "Zelda" series. While the first game originated the "Hyrule Overture", many recurring motifs of the "Zelda" scores come from "A Link to the Past", including "Zelda's Lullaby" (Princess Zelda's Theme), "Ganondorf's Theme", "Hyrule Castle" (Royal Family Theme), "Kakariko Village" and "Select Screen/Fairy Cave". These themes have been used in subsequent "The Legend of Zelda" games. A soundtrack to "Kamigami no Triforce", entitled "The Legend of Zelda: Sound and Drama", was released by Sony Records in Japan on June 22, 1994. The first disc is 44 minutes long and features rearranged versions of a selection of the game's themes, along with a bonus drama track. The second disc features 54 minutes of the original arrangements for the game and those of the original NES game, "The Legend of Zelda".
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
219026#6
In the first "The Legend of Zelda", Kondo juxtaposes the game's overworld theme with the theme that plays in dungeons. Kondo remarked on the importance of projecting distinct characters through music, so that the player knows almost immediately where they are within the game. Justin Daniel Sextro, a student at the University of Missouri, wrote that when compared to the overworld theme of "The Legend of Zelda", the dungeon theme gives "no pleasure in listening", saying that as the tune is "not lyrical", it ends up sounding "constantly unresolved". He further writes that while there is motion in the music, it was "without direction" in contrast to the "stable surety" of the overworld theme. Kondo used this contrast in other games he worked on, including "Super Mario Bros." The "Underwater Theme" from the same game has also been considered a watershed moment for video game music because it was one of the first to established canon of musical tradition.
Koji Kondo
165824#27
The music was composed primarily by Koji Kondo, with three tracks written by Toru Minegishi. The soundtrack largely consists of reworked music from "Ocarina of Time", complemented with other traditional "Zelda" music such as the "Overworld Theme" and new material. Kondo describes the music as having "an exotic Chinese-opera sound". As the three-day cycle progresses, the theme song of Clock Town changes between three variations, one for each day. IGN relates the shift in music to a shift in the game's atmosphere, saying that the quickened tempo of the Clock Town music on the second day conveys a sense of time passing quickly. The soundtrack was released on June 23, 2000, featuring 112 tracks from the game over two compact discs.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
219026#1
Kondo was the third person hired by Nintendo to create music and sound effects for their games, joining Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka. However, he was the first at Nintendo to actually specialize in musical composition. The first game he worked on was the arcade game "Punch-Out!!", although it was before he had officially joined Nintendo. Despite creating mostly jingles and sound effects, he was able to overcome the challenges of early arcade sound hardware. As the Famicom had become highly popular in Japan, Kondo was assigned to compose music for the console's subsequent games at Nintendo's new development team, Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development (EAD). Kondo also wrote an instruction manual on how to program Japanese popular music into the Famicom using the peripheral "Family BASIC". To conclude his first year at Nintendo, he created the music to "Devil World" alongside Akito Nakatsuka. In 1985, Nintendo started marketing the Famicom abroad under the name the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to capitalize on the 1983 video game crash that devastated Atari, Inc. He composed the music for the hit releases "Super Mario Bros." (1985) and "The Legend of Zelda" (1986), which helped the system to sell 60 million copies in total and established some of the most well-known melodies in the video game industry.
Koji Kondo
219026#2
"Super Mario Bros.", for many years the best-selling video game of all time for a single platform, was Kondo's first major score. The game's melodies were created with the intention that short segments of music could be endlessly repeated during the same gameplay without causing boredom. Kondo's soundtrack to "Super Mario Bros." gained worldwide recognition, and is to this day the most well-known video game score. The main theme is iconic in popular culture and has been featured in over 50 concerts, been a best-selling ringtone, and been remixed or sampled by various musicians. Kondo's work on "The Legend of Zelda" scores has also become highly recognized. He produced four main pieces of background music for the first installment of the series; the overworld theme has become comparable in popularity with the "Super Mario Bros." main theme. After the success of "The Legend of Zelda", he provided the score for two Japanese-exclusive titles, "The Mysterious Murasame Castle" (1986) and "Shin Onigashima" (1987). He also created the soundtrack to "" (1987), which was later rebranded outside Japan as "Super Mario Bros. 2" in 1988.
Koji Kondo
9785797#16
The script for cinematic scenes was written by Naoki Mori, who joined the project for one and a quarter years in his role: the cinematic director was Shigeki Yoshida, who was brought on at the same time as and worked on the storyboards with Mori. The initial script was proposed by Fujibayashi based on his perception of the game's structure. As the game's theme was the use of the sword, and the sword most associated with the series was the Master Sword, the team decided to make it an origin story for the weapon. An early element was whether to incorporate the creation of Hyrule, while also needing to explain the creation of Skyloft: this initial stage of story development ended up being difficult as their initial story plans were full of contradictions to established series lore due to them wanting to create an origin story for the entire series. These issues were further complicated by the third year of development with the necessity of finalizing the gameplay and environments. Feigning illness, Fujibayashi shut himself away in a hotel room and wrote the synopsis in a single day. Mori wrote the dialogue based on Fujibayashi's synopsis, who needed to work out the fine details with Fujibayashi. A scene Fujibayashi was intent on including was where Zelda jumped from the edge of Skyloft and Link caught her: this was fitted in for the two characters after the end of Link's exam. The early part of the story was quite different from earlier "Zelda" games, playing out in a similar way to a school drama. Once the script was finished, it was handed to Yoshida so his team could create the cinematics. The total number of cinematics was estimated as 79, coming to over 120 minutes.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
22132698#21
The music in the game was composed by Toru Minegishi, Manaka Tominaga, ands Asuka Ota. Minegishi wrote the main overworld music and shared the work on field, character and event themes with Tominaga. Series sound composer Koji Kondo contributed the ending theme, while Ota was responsible for some of the music in the multiplayer mode.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
165798#11
Koji Kondo (credited as Konchan) composed the game's five music tracks. He had planned to use Maurice Ravel's "Boléro" as the title theme, but was forced to change it late in the development cycle after learning that the copyright for the orchestral piece had not yet expired. As a result, Kondo wrote a new arrangement of the overworld theme within one day, which has become an iconic motive echoing throughout continued entries of the series.
The Legend of Zelda (video game)
9785797#24
Using the orchestra enabled a greater expression of emotion, which meant that they used it when creating scores for environments, cinematic scenes, and emotional moments within the story. Conversely, the team were given less freedom to adjust tracks as they had been able to with synthesized tracks. Something new they did for "Skyward Sword" was producing unique themes for specific characters such as Link and Zelda. They also added people singing songs, another element new to the series. One notable element was the game's main theme "Ballad of the Goddess", which was actually a reversed version of the recurring tune "Zelda's Lullaby". Due to the use of an orchestra and the sheer amount of extra work going into the sound design, the music team doubled in size from the standard five-person group, and became the largest sound team at the time to have worked on a Nintendo game. The positive reception of the orchestral score within the company led to the creation of " The Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Concert", a celebratory concert featuring orchestrated versions of classic "Zelda" themes. Music was also woven into the story and gameplay through the use of the harp Link receives, using a recurring theme within the series of music being a central part of the experience. In contrast to previous games, the instrument could be played at any time rather than at specific times and places.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
35339502#7
Valtonen had previously written the "Legend of Zelda" arrangement featured in the touring concert act "PLAY! A Video Game Symphony", but was eager to create an arrangement that would be able to take advantage of the entire Zelda universe, from character themes, situations and emotional elements often found in the series. It took Valtonen about five months to create the arrangement, with three months used for researching the Zelda universe, and two months for the actual writing. Valtonen also expressed that he wanted the arrangement to create “discussion” within the Zelda fan base.
Symphonic Legends – Music from Nintendo
356690#15
The music for "Link's Awakening" was composed by Minako Hamano and Kozue Ishikawa, for whom it was their first game project. Kazumi Totaka was responsible for the sound programming and all sound effects. As with most "Zelda" games, "Link's Awakening" includes a variation of the recurring overworld music; the Game Boy arrangement of this theme, titled "Field", was created by Ishikawa. The staff credits theme, "Yume o Miru Shima e" was later arranged for orchestra by Yuka Tsujiyoko, and performed at the "Orchestral Game Music Concert 3" in 1993. "Super Smash Bros. Brawl" includes a remix of the game's "Tal Tal Heights" theme.
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening
219026#3
Kondo returned to the "Super Mario" series to produce the scores to "Super Mario Bros. 3" (1988) and the SNES launch title "Super Mario World" (1990). Koichi Sugiyama directed a jazz arrangement album of "Super Mario World"s music and oversaw its performance at the first Orchestral Game Music Concert in 1991. After finishing the soundtrack to "Super Mario World", Kondo was in charge of the sound programming for "Pilotwings" (1990), while also composing the "Helicopter Theme" for it, and created the sound effects for "Star Fox" (1993). In 1995, he composed for the sequel to "Super Mario World", "Yoshi's Island". Until the early 2000s, Kondo would usually write all compositions by himself on a project, with "" being the last one Kondo worked on alone. Since then, he has been collaborating with other staff members at Nintendo, advising and supervising music created by others, as well as providing additional compositions for games, including "Super Mario Galaxy", "", "" and "Super Mario 3D World". In 2015, he served as the sound director and lead composer of "Super Mario Maker".
Koji Kondo