The original Legend of Zelda Link’s Awakening on the Game Boy was my first foray into the adventures of Link. I was taken to wondrous places, fought dangerous beasts, and strove to uncover the mystery of Link and the island. Throughout the many adventures, 8-year-old me was accompanied by the game’s 8-bit score. While limited in its ability to produce a wide variety of sounds by the hardware of the time, my young imagination gobbled up the different melodies and helped transform them into more epic soundtrack versions within my mind.
My favorite track from the game was the Tal Tal mountain range. It was a dangerous area, and required dexterity and proper weapon technique to deal with the enemies and puzzles within. The soundtrack, with its fast repeating bass line, flute-like melody, and driving percussion track really promoted the Epic Adventurer Spirit that Link embodies. I remember frequently traveling to the mountains just to listen to the track. I’d clear an area of enemies and simply lay the gameboy on a table, running the batteries down to death just to bask in the glory of that particular soundtrack. So when I heard that Nintendo was making a remake, I got super excited.
Will it live up to my memories?
Will I be able to relive some of the greatest gaming moments of my childhood?
Yes. But, also very much no.
While updated graphics and mechanics really helped with adding visual eye candy and thematic juice to the game, I have some very hard reservations about the soundtrack direction. Let me explain…
What They Did
A snippet of the “overworld” theme from the Remake at 4:40
The Link’s Awakening Remake is treating the soundtrack in a very unique way. Almost all of the tracks are orchestrated (or written for) a very small collection of instruments, in the style of a small chamber orchestra. This frequently means that each melody line in a track is played by a single (or pair) of instruments. A great example of this is the classic “overworld” theme from Legend of Zelda. The main melody is played by a single violin, which is accompanied by another violin and a viola. A cello takes duty for the bass. It’s a simple, classic quartet. This follows in the footsteps of the limited instrument bandwidth of early NES and SNES consoles, which could only play 3-5 sounds at a time. However, does it provide the desired dose of epic adventure? I’d argue not.
The original Gameboy Version of the Overworld Theme at 5:32
There is no doubt that the classic Link Adventure theme is essentially preserved in this updated version. The rhythm and melody are very obvious and recognizable. It is the context of the “classic quartet” that is an issue. In the standard classical music world, a quartet is frequently and historically thought of as an intimate instrumentation that finds itself in the intimate settings of one’s home. It has been this way for hundreds of years. If you listen with a trained ear, you can hear that the reverberation on those instruments is very short, reminiscent of a small room. In fact, listening to the majority of the soundtrack in headphones gives off that “small room” vibe. Therefore, I believe that the intimate setting that these recordings provide, coupled with the generally soloist nature of the instrumentation, and the sometimes out of place “retro” electronic bits hurts the sense of grandeur and adventurism that playing a Legend of Zelda game calls for.
What does this mean for my favorite track?
Tal Tal mountain range soundtrack for the Remake apparently has two versions: a flute version, and a orchestrated chamber version that mimics the minimal instrumentation of the rest of the game.
Flute Version at 1:08:12
The flute version consists of 3 or 4 flutes that follow the general structure of the song, keeping the necessary driving rhythm of the adventure’s spirit intact. However it’s really hard to imagine doing anything epic while being accompanied by a generally weak instrument like the flute.
Orchestrated Version
The orchestrated version is quite different. We hear the addition of a few more instruments than expected, including a bit of strummed acoustic guitar, some percussion, as well as the addition of a small woodwind section to punctuate some notable lines. The original Game Boy track also finds its way for a brief moment to add some nostalgia. I will admit, that tiny hit of nostalgia really did work a bit of magic. The greater usage of instruments helps inch towards that cohesive sense of grandeur to the overall experience, and I can see how it can help the gameplay seem more epic at times. However I would argue that this “inching” is not frequently found throughout the entirety of the new soundtrack.
How does this relate to the overall Legend of Zelda Franchise?
I feel that that last point shows a departure from the anticipated musical direction when compared with the previous games in the series.
For the longest time, the soundtracks to Zelda games were plagued with hardware limitations. The NES and Game Boy games era had a limited sonic palette of just a few basic sound waves. The SNES allowed for “A Link to the Past” to have a soundtrack created with more “real sounding” orchestra instruments, and the greater voice count created larger/denser orchestrations. N64 ushered in an even more lifelike sound collection, and the classics of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask attempted to create as much of an “epic orchestra sound” as the hardware would allow. I’d argue that Gamecube’s Twilight Princess was the epitome of an “epic sounding” soundtrack for a Zelda game. The use of mass amounts of instruments in a large high-quality sounding hall space made all of the action on screen seem much larger than life, and the Wii’s ability to play back greater quantities of CD quality music helped Skyward Sword in a similar vein. Breath of the Wild on Switch utilized fewer instruments but still frequently referenced the concept of vast space. The world instruments and solo piano melodies still had quite a bit of reverb and ambiance to them, promoting a sense of magnificence for the world.
The soundtracks to all of these titles work together with the their art, story and level design to consistently advocate a sense of grand exploration and adventure through a majestic world.
And so we are left with the odd one out, the Link’s Awakening Switch remake:
Small Instrumentation and small/intimate sounding space.
The original game had a hardware limitation that dictated its soundtrack’s simplicity. All nostalgia aside, the simplicity of 8-bit music allows for the possibility of imagining something more grand within the mind of the player. Hearing a chamber orchestra in a small sounding room offers a specific, concrete connotation of “smallness” that is very difficult to escape. Because of this, I feel that the remake’s decision to mimic the hardware limited minimalism doesn’t align with the franchise’s consistent drive to promote the sense of an “epic adventure”, and ultimately hurts the overall gaming experience, especially for those who have previously played the original and allowed their imagination to run wild on their grand adventures.