Uploaded September 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
I wanted to challenge myself: what would Koji Kondo have produced in 1998, if he’d arranged his most famous Zelda theme for Ocarina of Time’s overworld?
For the series’ first 3D adventure, Nintendo's genius composer wrote an epic orchestral theme that references the iconic tune at several points, but deliberately goes its own way.
I absolutely love that piece, so I hope this pays respectful homage to it, as well as to the other incredible music I drew from for this arrangement.
But in 2000, Kondo took the original theme and reimagined it for Termina Field in Majora's Mask – that's what I wanted to do for Ocarina of Time.
In order to do this properly, I set two rules for myself:
1. No help from MIDI files, so it’s all by ear or from sheet music.
2. It had to be my best shot at what Kondo might really have done, so all the source material I used had to make sense and be from 1998 or earlier.
I let myself use one element from Termina Field, because it made sense to me that the man himself might have had that same idea two years previously if he’d been working on this theme. And there’s a reference to the version in Link’s Awakening DX too, which actually came out 3 weeks after Ocarina of Time in December 1998 – but I thought it sounded good, and I guess… maybe he might have heard it in the office while Totaka, Hamano, and Ishikawa were working on it?!
Check out my original, custom overworld theme for an upcoming romhack called Master of Time Revisited:
youtube.com/watch?v=OmPkNObTMiw
This video features materials protected by the Fair Use guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All rights reserved to the copyright owners.
Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Composers: Koji Kondo, Kazumi Totaka, Minako Hamano, Kozue Ishikawa
Arrangement: robotsonn
I wanted to challenge myself: what would Koji Kondo have produced in 1998, if he’d arranged his most famous Zelda theme for Ocarina of Time’s overworld?
For the series’ first 3D adventure, Nintendo's genius composer wrote an epic orchestral theme that references the iconic tune at several points, but deliberately goes its own way.
I absolutely love that piece, so I hope this pays respectful homage to it, as well as to the other incredible music I drew from for this arrangement.
But in 2000, Kondo took the original theme and reimagined it for Termina Field in Majora's Mask – that's what I wanted to do for Ocarina of Time.
In order to do this properly, I set two rules for myself:
1. No help from MIDI files, so it’s all by ear or from sheet music.
2. It had to be my best shot at what Kondo might really have done, so all the source material I used had to make sense and be from 1998 or earlier.
I let myself use one element from Termina Field, because it made sense to me that the man himself might have had that same idea two years previously if he’d been working on this theme. And there’s a reference to the version in Link’s Awakening DX too, which actually came out 3 weeks after Ocarina of Time in December 1998 – but I thought it sounded good, and I guess… maybe he might have heard it in the office while Totaka, Hamano, and Ishikawa were working on it?!
Check out my original, custom overworld theme for an upcoming romhack called Master of Time Revisited:
youtube.com/watch?v=OmPkNObTMiw
This video features materials protected by the Fair Use guidelines of Section 107 of the Copyright Act. All rights reserved to the copyright owners.
Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Composers: Koji Kondo, Kazumi Totaka, Minako Hamano, Kozue Ishikawa
Arrangement: robotsonn
