Zelda Versus: Best Soundtrack Tournament — Round 1 — The Legend of Zelda Vs. Link’s Awakening

Our best soundtrack tournament continues with the first one-on-one match-up. As the Zelda side games duke it out in yesterday’s poll, The Legend of Zelda and Link’s Awakening step into the fray.

The Legend of Zelda Vs. Link’s Awakening

Our inaugural head-to-head contest places Zelda‘s first console game against Zelda‘s first handheld game.

The original Legend of Zelda was a groundbreaking video game, proving that the medium was capable of epic adventures and grand worlds to explore. And the game’s music had a lot to do with that. As soon as the now-iconic Overworld theme kicks off and Link is dropped into Hyrule Field, the player is met with a sense of wonder and excitement. Even on the NES’ limited hardware, the environments of The Legend of Zelda were perfectly scored by Koji Kondo’s masterful melodies. The Dungeon theme, the Death Mountain theme, and even the Game Over theme were instant classics.

In a way, the soundtrack of Link’s Awakening is a reaction to, or perhaps a subversion of, the music heard in the first Zelda. The Overworld theme of the Game Boy title starts the exact same way as the Overworld theme heard on the NES title, but gradually morphs into something completely new. Awakening‘s OST does this all the time, providing an almost familiar tune just assert its own identity in the end. It’s fitting to the game’s inherent weirdness, I suppose. This handheld adventure also brought us two of my favorite Zelda tracks: The Ballad of the Wind Fish and Link is Awake.

So, it’s time to decide which game had the best soundtrack: The Legend of Zelda or Link’s Awakening

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Here’s some important tournament information:

• If you receive a “Failed to Verify Referrer” message and you are logged into a version of WordPress, try logging out.
• We will post a new Round 1 voting page each day, Monday through Friday.
• Voting for each game will be open for exactly one week.
• Every Saturday, we will post a wrap-up article explaining the results of the prior week.
• Once voting pages for all Round 1 bouts have been posted, there will be a one-week break before Round 2 begins.

See you tomorrow!

Rod Lloyd

Rod Lloyd is the Editor-In-Chief at Zelda Dungeon, overseeing the news and feature content for the site. Rod is considered the veteran of the writing team, having started writing for Zelda Informer in 2014 as a Junior Editor. After ZD and ZI officially merged in 2017, he stepped into the Managing Editor role and has helped steer the ship ever since. He stepped up to lead the writing team as Editor-In-Chief in 2023.
You can reach Rod at: rod.lloyd@zeldadungeon.net