The Best Legend of Zelda Soundtrack! (Ticket Winners Announced)

Welcome to the end of Top Shelf Gaming’s Zelda Symphony Week. From all the great content to our first ever giveaway, this has truly been a very memorable week for TSG. Speaking of our giveaway, to enter everyone had to vote for their favorite Zelda soundtrack.

The Legend of Zelda series is known for its powerful storytelling, purposeful gameplay and captivating soundtrack. This week we tackled one point of this ‘Gaming Triforce’, the music. There is no alternative to end Symphony of the Goddesses week, than to discuss the music. And with this in mind, we asked all of you one simple question.

“What is your favorite home console Legend of Zelda soundtrack?”

Our staff weighed in with their own thoughts. Here’s what we had to say.

Renz Lorenzo

This is like asking a parent to pick their favorite child. This is like choosing where to eat before date night. This is like answering the question “How are you doing?” on a bad day. It’s not impossible to decide and you sort of have a response in mind, but you still choose not to answer completely to avoid being locked into a decision because you know it can change at anytime.

I wholeheartedly cannot decide, but at the moment, I would say the soundtrack from Twilight Princess is currently my favorite. It makes sense, Twilight Princess is my favorite game in the Legend of Zelda series. What really attracts me to the music is how it clearly draws from the sober and calm tone of the game itself. Not only does it play alongside the action, but it also adds different shades to the different experiences in the game and somehow makes the morning more serene and the nighttime more mysterious. Also very few things are more epic than riding horseback with a sword in hand and the Hyrule Field theme playing in the background.

*I wanted to make a Twilight joke here, but I realized I’m probably not the first to draw a connection between their matching titles or notice they both share the idea of a brooding teen wolf. God bless my self-control.

Liz Walcher

I really enjoy the Wind Waker soundtrack! I appreciate how well the music ties in with the game and with the gameplay– the short songs you conduct in-game with the Wind Waker are incorporated artfully well into songs in the soundtrack!

Steven Porfiri

Full disclosure, I didn’t play any of the console Zeldas except for Twilight Princess and a little bit of Skyward Sword. I know, I’m some kind of abomination, I’m really very sorry for it. That being said, the Lost Woods theme is my jam.

Devin Valdivia

Hands down, my favorite Zelda console soundtrack has to be Ocarina of Time. The music WAS my childhood (along with Pokemon Red/Blue’s soundtrack). Few things can hit me with as much nostalgia as the Kokiri Forest or Gerudo Valley tracks, and I’ve literally had dreams set to the Hyrule Field theme. My favorite parts of the soundtrack however, are the more reserved, folkier pieces, like Kakariko Village and Zelda’s Theme. Beyond having some of the most memorable and pleasant melodies I’ve ever heard, they contain a real, tangible sense of presence and culture.

There’s just something about the Ocarina of Time soundtrack that is so evocative of that era of gaming, and yet so perfectly relevant today, nearly two decades later. Fitting, I suppose, for a game about transcending the limitations of time. These songs transform Hyrule from an environment worth playing in, into a kingdom worth saving.

Marcus Garrett

I am in love with the music from Wind Waker. I listen to the entire 2 hour soundtrack on YouTube once every couple of months. While music is integrated into the gameplay of almost every Zelda game, I feel that Wind Waker did such a great job of it. This was the first Zelda game to use musical hits as sound effects when striking an enemy. The baton is also my favorite instrument of the series.

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And sure we can get into the music itself, the different motifs, the styles, and the orchestration, as well as the symbolism behind some of the pieces, but all in all what really makes the soundtrack so wonderful to me is how every piece of music frames the world so perfectly. It is a world that I revisit frequently and the music is a major part of the reason why.

Contest Results

Now the moment you’ve all been waiting for! If you read through everything to get to this part of the article then congratulations! But I’m sure most of you just skipped straight down to the bottom. There’s no shame in that either!

First, the winner of your favorite Legend of Zelda soundtrack! 102 of you voted and the winning game received 53 of those total votes. This may not come as a surprise to most of you, but Ocarina of Time is the viewer’s choice for best Zelda soundtrack. Wind Waker came in second with a mere 17 votes. Needless to say, the iconic Ocarina of Time won by a landslide!

Without further adieu, the winner of the drawing. Let’s pretend that you already didn’t look at the winning name below. It is my pleasure to announce the winner of two free tickets to The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess for tomorrow night in San Diego: Phong D! Congratulations to you! I hope you know who your real friends are because I have a feeling a lot of them are going to be hitting you up today.

You have until noon, that is, 3 hours from the time this is posted to claim your tickets or another winner will be selected.

Top Shelf Gaming’s Zelda Symphony Ticket Giveaway!

Thank you so much for everyone who participated. We received so many more entries than we could have ever imagined or hoped for. For such a small site it means the world to us. For all of you who visited us this week because of the giveaway, we hope you’ll stick around for some more culturally conscious conversations about video games as well as more shenanigans like this!

Any favorites? Post them in the comment section below. We would love some recommendations. Also check our other articles about the Symphony of the Goddesses!

Please check out the other QOTW’s after enjoying this one!