Gruber

The Legend of Zelda – Overworld Music

Added 2018-05-21 14:01:00 +0000 UTC

Pico-8 carts and sheet music attached! Thanks to Egor Dorichev for the request!

Writing in triple time isn’t very elegant in Pico-8.

Each SFX is 32 rows, so it takes three SFX to make 66 rows (divisible by three).

This means subdividing anything by three requires using either extra resources, or a time keeper SFX (which restricts you in other ways).

The overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda (NES) adds an extra layer of difficulty because beats are subdivided by three AND four (triplets 8ths and 16th notes occurring simultaneously).

When porting this NES music into Pico-8, my goal was to make it sound as close to the original as possible. So one beat of triplet 8ths or 16th notes requires 12 rows (12 is the first common multiple or three and four) Plus, to get as close to the original tempo as possible, each SFX’s SPD = 4.

As you can imagine, resources ran out very quickly, and this short theme needs two full Pico-8 carts!

This opens up the topic of ‘idiomatic expression’ – especially in relation to how we use certain tools to achieve certain things.

For example, a hammer is used to hit nails - It’s not used for eating soup. If you were to TRY eating soup with a hammer, you might have some success, and you might learn something in the process, but generally, eating soup is not idiomatic to using a hammer.

Neither is writing triplets in Pico-8 (among other things). It’s possible, but it’s an uphill battle. I don’t discourage anybody from fighting these battles, you can learn a lot. But keeping this idea of ‘idiomatic expression’ in mind is always relevant when using/learning new tools and skills!