Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Mini Game / Guessing-Game House

Kooky saloon

Of course you can make a theme that is both catchy and dissonant or memorable and ugly. And by bringing back that ambiguity present in many tracks of the soundtrack even the innocent seeming mini-games carry that little shade cast upon them.

A smaller and simple game within a game; gaming inception. Saving Hyrule can wait while Link tries to get some kind of prize or at least some amusement. They have been a staple for making money since the very first game which had a single luck based gambling game in some hidden tree (as always, the black sheep of the series, Zelda II, wanted to be so different that it was the only one that ditched mini games altogether). Here we pretty much got more elaborate gambling games, now that the Super Nintendo allows the technology of actually having things be inside treasure chests as opposed to items just being in the open—there are no more chests in the future of Hyrule belonging to the decline era apparently—which is pretty much the new version of that proto mini-game from the original; another luck based game with the shovel and the first ever skill based game in the debuting shooting gallery that will be a staple from now on in the series—sadly not the guy hitting the drums whenever you succeed—Most of the mini-games are optional.

Musical Analysis

Just like the mini-game music from Ocarina of Time has some ties to way more modern carnivals, circus and fairs this one seems to get most of its influence from saloons and bars where gambling or other skill based activities such as darts take place; anything where you can get a quick buck. And back in those days or in Western films you had the pianist sitting at the tack upright piano with some detuned strings due to bad maintenance and prolonged use which progressively debilitates the tension on some strings making the notes sound funny, playing frantic pieces with quick left hand movements known as the stride style for accompaniment trying to imitate oom-pah rhythms without a bassist while the gambling inevitably devolved into a bar fight. Based on the official name of the piece, it was specifically composed for the treasure chest guessing game, the OG mini-game of the series.

Some of that energy is here and also, like in Ocarina of Time ,there is some reliance on functional fast tempo to match the fact that there might be a time component and a stress component to the games, communicating that you need to think and act fast. It also relies on that Mixolydian feel but as usual this one is more ambiguous due to mixing this profile with some dizzying whole tone scales that confuse you and tell you that you don’t know what you will get.

The cue opens with monolithic fifth chords based on that Mixolydian movement of the I to bVII, the equivalent to the clock start intro of the Ocarina of Time main mini game theme. This one is Ab to Gb. Then you get the frantic left handed oom-pah rhythms while the melodies play in the different triplet fashion. The composer could have perfectly still maintained that I to bVII and the low bass notes points to that but by leaving the second note of the chord untouched as a pedal the second chord ends with a major sixth interval, making the progression slightly less playful, a I to v; still Mixolydian but darker. So Ab to Ebm. During this part the F note of the melody stays as a pedal note.

But then the Whole Tone profile begins to pop its confused head out, the vamp being transposed now to E and the triplet based melody taking on this more dissonant scale that emphasizes the tritone. The vamp remains the same but transposed, so E to Bm. The idea is to make it more bluesier so the feeling is closer to E7 to D7; yet, again that strange major sixth interval creates some dissonances, specially with the melody notes which go at a different pace than the oom-pah accompaniment. As in, sometimes we get the notes B, C and D sounded at the same time. An appropriately confusing piece all around. The game wants you to miss.

The Section 2 returns to the monolithic fifth chords now with the expected I to bVII but with a strange rhythm where the second phrase begins on the upbeat before each bar. The melodies now unambiguously emphasize the whole Tone profile. Once again the phrases are transposed to E.

With this mix of Whole Tone profiles on the melody with Mixolydian ones on the accompaniment this short composition piece ends up surprisingly sounding very jazzy and sophisticated. Still, at the end of the day, its rhythmic displacements, frantic pace and strange intervals are meant to stress you out and confuse but also convey the bounciness and playfulness of a mini-game sequence. It ends up as an addictive yet strange cue.

Any other insights about this music? Share in the comments.