Spirit Tracks - Spirit Pipes?

[Mases]

Whether it be the the Flute, the Wind Waker, the Ocarina of Time, the Harp of Ages, or even the Whistle from the original Legend of Zelda, musical instruments have always been a part of the Legend of Zelda series and it appears that Spirit Tracks will be no exception. According to the Official Nintendo Magazine, Link will be able to play the Spirit Pipes, which will be used to summon special powers.

To play them you blow into the DS microphone while cycling through different colored pipes with the stylus.

Before you're able to visit a temple, you have to search for one of the land's guardians, called the Lokomos, who will teach you a song which restores the tracks to the temple. You'll then be required to listen to the metronome to keep to the rhythm.

Nintendo is surely interested in the idea of implementing the Nintendo DS microphone as much as possible with the upcoming Zelda title. An entire item, the Whirlwind, is already completely based around the Microphone, and now it seems like a second item will heavily involve the use of the Microphone. I personally have no issue with blowing into the microphone, but I'd like to get my hands on the game and try it out for myself before giving my final judgment. Spirit Tracks is set to release on December 7th here in North America and on December 11th for our friends in Europe.

 

[Jetter]

What do they mean when they say special powers? Are they talking about putting the tracks back? I guess I'll just have to wait for it to come out.

 

[Crazyfreak]

And we have officialart and a screenshot

 

[Petman1325]

Nice, we get to play something like an ocarina by blowing into it! Now, I wonder if things like the strength of your blowing can alter the pitch that it makes. The only problem I had with blowing was that you had to be up close for it to work (and I'm a seasoned saxophone player, so that is saying something). Perhaps microphone sensitivity can be altered or enhanced in this game?

 

[blackice_cc]

Ooh, this looks interesting! It sounds a little bit like what I had in mind for playing the ocarina on a DS remake of OoT. Not only that, but I missed not having and instrument in TP and PH. Although, like Petman said, you have to be pretty close to the DS to get it to register blowing into the microphone. I guess that's something we'll just have to work around.

 

[Dungeon killer]

Hey this is great, that instrument that they introduced looks cool and you finally get to actually use the microphone than to get a salvage arm.

 

[ケンジ]

This item really reminds me of one thing, OoT.

It says and i quote:

[I]Before you're able to visit a temple, you have to search for one of the land's guardians, called the Lokomos, who will teach you a song which restores the tracks to the temple. You'll then be required to listen to the metronome to keep to the rhythm.[/I]

The finding a tune to enter a temple to get a track to appear sounds like Getting the OoT songs to enter the Sage temples.

Anyway, this is really getting interesting. If this game lives up to a better game than PH, it would be fantastic.

 

[Zenox]

Wow, I'm actually really excited for this game now, we haven't had a decent musical instrument from a game for awhile. Twilight Princess, pressing A to play the whole song ... that doesn't really appeal to me, as you can't fool around with that. And the howling? ... no, just no ...

Hopefully they don't screw up the Spirit Pipes, although it looks like they won't, there's a good chance they will.

 

[Ver-go-a-go-go]

Pretty cool, I'm glad they're bringing it back after being absent since MM. I just hope the songs you can play with it are as memorable as the ones in OoT and MM, just because it would make the game so much better to me. I also hope, like Zenox said above, that we'll be able to mess around on them. I have no idea why, but I always found entertainment in playing MM songs in OoT, even though it didn't do anything.

But my biggest hope is that we'll see other songs from past games. I LOVED the moment when Link howled the Song of Healing in TP (One of the best moments for me), and the other sings you got to howl from other games made it very memorable. If ST can remain unique and play to my inner nostalgic fanboy, I'm sure to love it.

 

[0o0oAdamo0o0]

Hooray! I absolutely loved the Ocarina in OoT and MM and the Wind Waker in WW. I'm so happy that they're bringing back musical instruments after them being gone for basically six years. Here's a pic of Link actually playing them:

Six notes, that's one more than the Ocarina had. December 7th can't just get here fast enough.