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The musical innovation and creativity in the world of video games and interactive media

owes an unpayable debt to Koji Kondo and the music he wrote for the legend of Zelda.

This is The Soundtrack Show.

Welcome back to The Soundtrack Show. I'm your host David W. Collins and this episode is all about the music from The Legend of Zelda.

A video game or more accurately a powerhouse video game series that first debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES in North America on August 22nd, 1987.

This episode is our second look at video game music and not coincidentally our second episode about composer Koji Kondo who wrote the music for multiple games in the Zelda series.

In our previous episode about Kondo-san, we discussed his groundbreaking music for the game of Super Mario Brothers.

We also discussed a brief history of video games, home consoles, the musical limitations that composers and sound designers faced, imposed by the synth hardware within those consoles at the time,

and we had a discussion about the power of video game music.

If you haven't had a chance to listen to my episode about the music of Super Mario Brothers, now is a great time to check it out as it definitely functions as a companion episode to this series on The Legend of Zelda.

In this episode, we're going to talk about the creation of the first Legend of Zelda game, discuss its musical themes, do some musical breakdowns, and then talk about some of the other installments in the series, ultimately leading to another episode.

Because it's not just about the music in the first game, but the creative evolution and musical breakthroughs that happen over the course of a decade across several titles that make the music to The Legend of Zelda so special.

This series on The Legend of Zelda will culminate in what I think is ultimately one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of video game music.

1998, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time.

And rather than discussing the power of video game music again, if you recall from my Mario Brothers episode, I discussed the limited amount of music times the hour spent playing, times the copy sold to illustrate how important just one melody could be.

I'm going to share a bit of my own history with this title and this series to illustrate a real world example of that phenomenon, the power of video game music.

But first, a bit of history. The Legend of Zelda is the first major game in the action adventure puzzle genre, carefully balancing role playing and strategy elements with fast action puzzles and most importantly exploration.

It features a much more robust story and world than the Mario series does, though both have grown over the years in their complexity.

And in many ways, as a game, The Legend of Zelda is the opposite of Mario. Super Mario Brothers and many arcadey platformers like it is pretty linear.

You go from point A to point B to point C. The direction is clear, the objective is clear. Go from left to right. Jump, throw fire, jump, get to the castle at the end of each level, save the princess. That's it.

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