Tag Archives: The Legend of Zelda

The world is turning beneath you, the sun is coming up over its edge, and a choir is singing before you have founded a single city. You could click through to the game. For a little while, though, Civilization IV makes waiting at the menu feel like a perfectly good use of your evening. The song is Christopher Tin’s Baba Yetu. Its words are a Swahili setting of the Lord’s Prayer, the… Read more

The Moon theme from DuckTales already sounds as though it has somewhere wonderful to take you. David Ortiz heard a trumpet carrying that melody, violins chasing the runs, and guitars and bass filling out the rhythm underneath. In 2015, he called in some friends to read the arrangement. That first experiment became Mariachi Entertainment System. The San Antonio ensemble brings familiar game music to a full mariachi lineup: trumpets, violins, flute, guitars… Read more

Before Epona carried Link across Hyrule, Nintendo had talked about giving Mario a horse in Super Mario 64. Picture that for a moment: the plumber, the cap, the overalls, and a horse waiting outside Peach’s castle. Yoshi would have had questions. It never happened. But Yoshiaki Koizumi hadn’t lost interest in the idea, and when he worked on Ocarina of Time, he was determined to make horse riding happen there. Mario went… Read more

Link never needed a fedora, but Indiana Jones helped get his adventure started. Shigeru Miyamoto wanted some of that excitement in a game: the ruins, the danger and the feeling that something worth finding was waiting inside. Years later, he named the films when Nintendo asked him about the beginnings of The Legend of Zelda. Once you know that, it’s hard not to think about it when you enter a dungeon. There’s… Read more

In 1991, Philips put a disc player beneath the television and asked families to buy a piece of the future. It played music. It could show pictures, video, and encyclopedias. It even played games. The machine looked as if it belonged in a hi-fi cabinet, and its pointing controller seemed perfectly happy with a menu. Then someone asked it to be a Nintendo rival. The first American CD-i player cost $899, according… Read more