Interview:Iwata Asks: Ocarina of Time 3D (Sound): Difference between revisions

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==Orchestral Sound on the Nintendo 3DS System==
==Orchestral Sound on the Nintendo 3DS System==


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{{Interview/A|Iwata|This time, you dedicated yourself to recreating several songs that Kondo-san had made over 10 years ago.}}


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{{Interview/A|Yokota|Yeah. But I also put in a song recorded with an orchestra. Only one, though.}}


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{{Interview/A|Iwata|As Nintendo’s head man in charge of orchestral music, you just couldn’t hold yourself back?}}


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{{Interview/A|Yokota|Yeah…you got me. (laughs) You’ll have to play the game to find out which song it is, though.}}


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{{Interview/A|Iwata|You have the job every game fan can dream of! (laughs)}}


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{{Interview/A|Yokota|Yeah, thankfully! (laughs) The orchestra sounds great on the Nintendo 3DS system, so I want people to hear it.}}


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{{Interview/A|Kondo|I was actually involved with the hardware design for the Nintendo 3DS system’s speakers and amps.}}


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=="I'm Envious of First-Time Players!"==
=="I'm Envious of First-Time Players!"==

Revision as of 16:33, May 31, 2012

This interview does not yet have standard formatting or is otherwise incomplete. It should follow the format established in other interviews.
Iwata Asks: Ocarina of Time 3D (Sound)

Date

June 1, 2011

Interviewee

Interviewer

Source

The Ever-Changing Music of Hyrule Field

Iwata: Thank you for coming today.
Kondo and Yokota: It’s our pleasure.
Iwata: This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Legend of Zelda . Today, I would like to ask you about the music in The Legend of Zelda. You have both appeared in “Iwata Asks” before, but would you please introduce yourselves?
Kondo: I’m Kondo from the Sound Group in the Software Development Department of the Entertainment Analysis & Development Division (EAD).
Iwata: In our session of “Iwata Asks” covering the twenty-fifth anniversary of Super Mario Bros., you said that the second game you worked on was Super Mario Bros. Does that mean your third game was The Legend of Zelda, for which you worked on the music?
Kondo: Yes, that’s right.
Iwata: It’s amazing that a new employee at Nintendo would make the music for Super Mario Bros. as the second game he worked on, and then for his third game, make the music for The Legend of Zelda.
Kondo: I remember the development periods were right next to each other, with only about three months in between.
Iwata: Nintendo practically made Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda at the same time.
Kondo: Yes.
Iwata: The Legend of Zelda was for the Family Computer Disk System, which came out after the Famicom system, so you could use a new sound source.
Kondo: Yes. We could only use three sounds with the Famicom system, so that was hard.
Iwata: It went from three to four, and with the new sound source it was possible to output sounds that were completely different than before.
Kondo: Yes. We mostly used the new sound source for sound effects, but just having one more was a big help, so I had a good time as I worked.
Iwata: Alright, and Yokota-san?
Yokota: Yes?
Iwata: Compared to Kondo-san, you may not have worked on development of The Legend of Zelda games that long, but you’ve been playing it forever, right?
Yokota: You can say that again!
Iwata: Oh? (laughs)
Yokota: Talking about it could take forever! (laughs) I love The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time beyond all reason!
Iwata: Go on, tell me about it! (laughs)
Yokota: What about my self-introduction?
Iwata: Oh, I forgot! (laughs) By all means, introduce yourself!
Yokota: I’m Yokota from the EAD Tokyo Software Development Department. I appeared in the session of “Iwata Asks” about Super Mario Galaxy 2, but some people may wonder why I’m here talking about The Legend of Zelda.
Iwata: I suppose so.
Yokota: I’ve been totally immersed in The Legend of Zelda this past year.
Iwata: Immersed in Zelda?
Yokota: I’ve only been working on The Legend of Zelda series. Two games at the same time!
Iwata: Huh? Two at the same time? I didn’t know that!
Yokota: One is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D and the other is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Iwata: After development of Super Mario Galaxy 2 ended?
Yokota: Yes. That’s about the time. At E3 last year, when we were going to exhibit Skyward Sword for the first time, we talked about using orchestral music. But (Shigeru) Miyamoto-san said it wasn’t necessary.
Iwata: We were going to have attendees of last year’s E3 try out the new game’s operability, so he said orchestral music wasn’t necessary right away.
Yokota: Right. Then, toward the end of summer break, they finally decided to put in orchestral music and I joined the development team.
Iwata: You’re sort of the orchestration director for the Legend of Zelda music, aren’t you?
Yokota: Yes. I was in charge of the orchestral songs for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess as well.
Iwata: Now pour out your love for Ocarina of Time! (laughs)
Yokota: Okay! (laughs) I have, of course, played all the Zelda games since the first one, and played them all the way through, but Ocarina of Time was an eye-opening experience as to how great video game music can be. I played song after song on the piano.
Iwata: I feel like I heard something similar when we talked about Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition in “Iwata Asks”. (laughs)
Yokota: Really? I talked about that? (laughs) When Ocarina of Time came out, I was working at a different company, and I went around haranguing everyone about how amazing the sound was.
Iwata: I feel like I’ve heard that, too. I’ve got déjà vu! (laughs)
Yokota: Oh, sorry! I’m like a repeating record! (laughs) I may have said the same thing about Super Mario Sunshine.
Everyone: (laughs)
Yokota: Getting back to Ocarina of Time, the music was different every time you went out to a dungeon on an adventure and came back to Hyrule Field, the main setting of the game. The general feeling of the music itself didn’t change that much, but the melodies came along at a different tempo. And even if it was the same song, if you were fighting an enemy, the tune would become more thrilling. Then, when the battle was over, it would return to the usual majestic music. When Link stood still, it would grow quiet. The music was constantly changing.
Iwata: It didn’t always play the exact same music.
Yokota: Right. In the land of Hyrule, the music changed between three patterns, normal, battle and quiet.
Iwata: Back then when there were still strict restrictions in the amount of memory that you could allocate to sound, it was common to stream pre-created music tracks. But by taking advantage of the ROM cartridge of the Nintendo 64 system, it was possible for the music tracks to be combined and generated depending on the situation. That is why in Ocarina of Time, music was constantly changing throughout the entire game. But even though Kondo-san did that for the sound on Hyrule Field, I doubt many people back then noticed and could talk about it.
Kondo: Not many people noticed.
Iwata: Yeah, I bet not. So, aren’t you a little happy that Yokota-san did? (laughs)
Kondo: (looking really happy) I’m so happy! (laughs)
Iwata: (laughs)
Kondo: He noticed! He really noticed!!
Iwata: Is it like, “Please say that again!”?
Kondo: Yes, I’m ultra-happy that he noticed it! (laughs)

Koji Kondo Upends the Tea Table

Yokota: It’s nothing special now, but as far as I recall, no games before The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time switched seamlessly to the fight music when you were on an adventure and a fight scene began.
Iwata: That was new.
Yokota: When a fight started, the enemy motif would start. Then, when the fight was over, it would go back to the original music. I thought the transition was really smooth and clean. The feeling of plunging into adventure was so strong that - and I’m not saying this because I was not working for Nintendo at that time but - I thought Ocarina of Time was a great masterpiece to me.
Iwata: After a long history of loving Ocarina of Time, how did you come to work on the Nintendo 3DS version?
Yokota: In or around March last year, they were asking if anyone was available to work on the music for it. At first, I was going to leave it to the younger guys, but Kondo-san asked me to keep an eye on them.
Iwata: Kondo-san tapped you for the job?
Kondo: Yeah. They were really new guys, so I wanted him to teach them all about video game music.
Yokota: At first, I was involved as a supervisor.
Iwata: But I bet you couldn’t bear to just look on! (laughs)
Yokota: Yeah. You got that right! (laughs) I told them to run everything by me.
Iwata: Because you love it. (laughs)
Yokota: Earlier, we talked about how back then games could only stream sound in most cases, and we were under technological constraints this time, too, so at first we decided to stream it. It was difficult technologically to change the music in real time to fit different game situations. For that reason, at first I decided to spruce it up by arranging slightly more up-to-date music. But when I’d done about half, Kondo-san suddenly said, “Make sure you stay faithful to the Nintendo 64 sound.”
Iwata: Oh. (laughs)
Yokota: It was really sudden! He upended the tea table.
Kondo: Is that really an upending of the tea table?
Yokota: It sure was! (laughs)
Iwata: Kondo-san doesn’t remember it that way. (laughs)
Yokota: So I gathered together the development team and said, “We’ve got to remake all the music. We need to recreate the Nintendo 64 sound, so let’s do our best!” Then we set about redoing it all.
Iwata: You decided to faithfully recreate the Nintendo 64 sound.
Yokota: Yeah. By the way, Kondo-san, why did you have the music for Hyrule Field change each time?
Kondo: When I first heard the plan for Ocarina of Time, I thought, “This is going to be a really big game!” There was this big field in the centre, and you needed to ride a horse to reach the other side!
Iwata: Yes, Hyrule Field was big enough that you were thankful for your horse!
Kondo: But if you went to all these dungeons and came back and the same old music was playing…
Iwata: You’d get sick of it.
Kondo: Right. I wanted to avoid players going to a dungeon and coming back to find the same song droning on. I thought about what I could do to have different music playing whenever you listened to it, and eventually I created several eight-measure “components” to play randomly.
Iwata: They shared a certain chord progression, so the music could shuffle them around.
Kondo: Right. Each group of eight measures ended with a chord that would lead nicely into whichever group started next. It sounded natural even when you played them randomly.
Iwata: How many of those “components” did you make?
Kondo: About 20. They’re in battles, too.
Iwata: So even if the general atmosphere of the music is the same, it sounds different each time.
Kondo: Right. In your regular RPG, when an enemy appeared, the music would suddenly switch.
Iwata: The pattern for RPGs back then was for the screen to change, a fanfare to play, and fight music to start.
Kondo: Yeah. But in Ocarina of Time, you can see the enemy from far off. If the music suddenly went into fight mode, you would listen to the music for the fight mode even though you hadn’t started the fighting, and when you went away, the music would switch back right away. The flow of the game would break down.
Yokota: It would be hard to get into the game.
Kondo: So I made eight-bar patterns for the fights, too. As you got closer to an enemy, they would smoothly transition into fighting music.
Yokota: And when the fight was over, the music smoothly transitioned back.
Iwata: You could compose music by thinking to that extent as early as in 1998, and I think you could do so because you had been making games together with Mr. Miyamoto.
Yokota: Yeah. In the case of movies, the lengths for the safe scenes, fight scenes and calm scenes are predetermined.
Iwata: Movie music is compartmentalised at the start and made in line with the pre-determined length of the video. In the case of games, players interactively move the character, and the music interactively responds.
Yokota: What Kondo-san was most insistent about this time for Ocarina of Time 3D was that interactivity. He said, “You absolutely must recreate that!”
Kondo: That’s right.
Yokota: So even though you were arranging new music…
Iwata: He overturned the tea table! (laughs)
Yokota: Yep! (laughs)
Kondo: But I didn’t have any intention of overturning any tea tables! I mean, if you changed the sound like that, it wouldn’t be Ocarina of Time!
Yokota: Yeah…you’re right. I’m glad we fixed it!
Everyone: (laughs)

The Sound of an Ocarina Drifting from the Forest

Iwata: In addition to making the music on Hyrule Field interactive, what was difficult in recreating the music for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for the Nintendo 3DS system?
Yokota: In the first place, it was really difficult recreating the sound of a home console like the Nintendo 64 system on a handheld like the Nintendo 3DS system.
Iwata: Different hardware doesn’t make the same sounds.
Yokota: Right. I have remade other games, but I was surprised how difficult it was this time.
Iwata: How so exactly?
Yokota: Like recreating distinctive sounds.
Iwata: Distinctive sounds?
Yokota: Take, for example, the song for the Forest Temple. You can hear this odd sound like “hooit-hooit-hooit-hooit”…
Iwata: Right, right.
Yokota: I wanted to recreate that distinctive sound as closely as possible, but it just wouldn’t sound the same as on the Nintendo 64 system. But I retuned it over and over for the Nintendo 3DS system’s speakers, and in the end it turned out close to how I imagined it.
Kondo: Yeah. You recreated that song with a great deal of precision. The sound quality may be a little better, though.
Yokota: Yeah. I upped the quality a bit.
Iwata: It gets the Kondo seal of approval? (laughs)
Kondo: Absolutely. (laughs)
Yokota: Phew! (laughs) He did put in some requests, though. When I made the title background music, he wanted me to make some adjustments.
Iwata: The title background music plays during the very first images when Link is trotting around Hyrule Field on Epona, right?
Yokota: Yeah. It’s a really mellow song featuring an ocarina melody and piano accompaniment. Kondo-san said the volume of the ocarina was too high. I thought I had followed the original, so I thought, “Huh? How’s it any different?” I had him listen to it over and over, and he said, “Ah, there’s no reverb.”
Kondo: Oh, that’s right.
Yokota: Reverb is that echo-like effect you get in a concert hall. There wasn’t any of that in the song for Ocarina of Time 3D, so the ocarina really stood out.
Iwata: You could hear the ocarina too clearly.
Yokota: Yeah.
Kondo: I had the idea of the sound coming from far away. I wanted to create the atmosphere in the title BGM of someone you can’t see in the forest playing an ocarina. When I heard the music Yokota-san had made, he had faithfully recreated the length of the notes, but it didn’t sound like it was coming from somewhere off in the distance.
Yokota: That’s right. I almost gave up. There was a fear that putting reverb into the Nintendo 3DS music would make the game too heavy and it wouldn’t run right.
Iwata: Is adding reverb really that heavy?
Yokota: Yes. But Kondo-san had told me to faithfully recreate the sound of the Nintendo 64 system, so I somehow managed to make it sound like it was coming from inside a forest. And, like we discussed earlier, we made the music on Hyrule Field interactive, so we ended up assigning a lot more of the CPU to sound than we usually would.
Iwata: In other words, you used more of the CPU for sound than in any other Nintendo 3DS game.
Yokota: That’s right. It’s probably heavier in sound than any other game. I think we’ve pushed the capacity of the Nintendo 3DS system as much to the limit as is possible today - we are using lots of power. When it comes to the music on Hyrule Field, the music shifts seamlessly depending on the scene. And I think we were able to make the title BGM sound as if an ocarina is coming from inside the forest.
Kondo: I think so, too.
Yokota: Also, I think it’s really important in faithfully recreating the sound of the Nintendo 64 version to generate the same sense of tempo as with the Nintendo 64 ROM cartridge. For example, when collecting the Gold Skulltulas.
Iwata: You have to collect 100 spiders hidden within the world.
Yokota: Right. When you find a Gold Skulltula hidden in a dark spot and defeat it, a token appears that you can pull to you with the Hookshot. The flow of the sound when you pull it in is really satisfying. The tempo as it goes “shwi-wi-wi-whip” and then ends with a fanfare is great!
Kondo: But if we didn’t adjust it just right, the tempo would break up.
Yokota: Exactly. The play speed would be out of sync. And the frame rates of the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo 3DS systems - the number of times the image is refreshed over the course of one second - are different.
Iwata: For the Nintendo 64 system, the frame rate was about 20, while it’s 30 for the Nintendo 3DS system.
Yokota: Yes. That throws off the timing of sound effects and other sounds. When the frame rates are different, how you handle the sound is different, so we adjusted each one until they were just right.
Iwata: So it will feel just right even to people who played the Nintendo 64 version.
Yokota: I think so. With regard to that, something really memorable happened. Early in the year, I went to Nintendo World 2011.
Iwata: You performed on stage.
Yokota: Yeah! I played music from The Legend of Zelda on the piano. We exhibited Ocarina of Time 3D in the hall, and later I got to see the responses from those who had tried it out. Someone said they were happy that the music was the same as in the Nintendo 64 version!
Iwata: The fans must have been happy that the sound in the Nintendo 3DS version hadn’t changed from the Nintendo 64 version. It calls up memories of playing it back in the day.
Yokota: Yes. Reading that comment encouraged me. With the technology for transplanting games today, like emulation, many people think it’s only a matter of course that games turn out the same.
Iwata: But this time, you put your nose to the grindstone making adjustments in order to recreate the Nintendo 64 original for the Nintendo 3DS version.
Yokota: Yes. So when I read that comment about how the music was the same, I felt like my hard work had paid off. I was also glad I hadn’t done anything dumb like arrange new songs!
Iwata: So the upending of the tea table was a good thing? (laughs)
Yokota: I have to say it was! (laughs)

Orchestral Sound on the Nintendo 3DS System

Iwata: This time, you dedicated yourself to recreating several songs that Kondo-san had made over 10 years ago.
Yokota: Yeah. But I also put in a song recorded with an orchestra. Only one, though.
Iwata: As Nintendo’s head man in charge of orchestral music, you just couldn’t hold yourself back?
Yokota: Yeah…you got me. (laughs) You’ll have to play the game to find out which song it is, though.
Iwata: You have the job every game fan can dream of! (laughs)
Yokota: Yeah, thankfully! (laughs) The orchestra sounds great on the Nintendo 3DS system, so I want people to hear it.
Kondo: I was actually involved with the hardware design for the Nintendo 3DS system’s speakers and amps.

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"I'm Envious of First-Time Players!"

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Our Favourite Songs

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Bonus: Zelda 25th Anniversary Symphony Concert

This portion of the interview was withheld until after E3, as Iwata explains below, and released on as a bonus section of the volume "Mr. Shigeru Miyamoto."