#KondoQuote
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Today is the 40th anniversary of Zelda 1!

Of all the Zelda titles, this is the one we know the MOST about; they've discussed it in interviews for years. Let's go down memory lane with some fun quotes

#Zelda
#TheLegendOfZeldaQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #TezukaQuote, #NakagoQuote, #KondoQuote
The Japanese logo for the first Zelda game, The Hyrule Fantasy
February 21, 2026 at 9:43 PM
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Kondo on where he usually begins soundtracks, and his first piece for Mario, 1991.

Source: Shmuplations

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#KondoQuote

shmuplations.com/supermariowo...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 29. Composer for Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. QUOTE: Kondo: I first wait for the game concept and image to be decided on, and for some actual in-game screenshots to be finished. I then start thinking about the music based on that. Normally, I try to write the main theme of the game first. With Super Mario Bros., though, I had a really hard time finding that theme, and the first thing I finished was actually the water level theme. I felt a waltz would be the right sound for an underwater level. That idea came to me in a flash of inspiration, but that’s an exception for me.
September 29, 2026 at 1:12 AM
hyruleinterviews.bsky.social
Linktober #1: Love
Yokota on being a Zelda fan, 2011.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda, #Linktober
#OcarinaofTimeQuote
#YokotaQuote, #KondoQuote, #IwataQuote

iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3...
PEOPLE: - Mahito Yokota, age 37. Composer for Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time 3D, and Skyward Sword. - Koji Kondo, age 49. Original Zelda composer, composer of numerous Zelda titles. - Satoru Iwata, age 51. President of Nintendo. QUOTE: Iwata: Compared to Kondo-san, you may not have worked on development of The Legend of Zelda that long, but you've been playing it forever, right? Yokota: You can say that again! Talking about it could take forever! [laughs] I love The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time beyond all reason! I have, of course, played all the Zelda games since the first one, and played them all the way through, but Ocarina of Time was an eye-opening experience to how great video game music can be. I played song after song on the piano.
October 1, 2026 at 10:05 PM
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Kondo on the type of game he prefers creating music for, 2014.

Source: Gamespot

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaSeriesQuote
#KondoQuote

www.gamespot.com/articles/cre...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 53. Composer for The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, & more.. QUOTE: Q: Is there any particular type of game you prefer creating music for? Kondo: Maybe for The Legend of Zelda. Because of the variety of the worlds and the landscapes that you encounter within the game, it allows me to imagine musical types that I’ve never heard before. I get to work with a lot of different genres to meet the variety of the worlds and landscapes I’m seeing within the game. So I really enjoy working on that franchise a lot.
September 27, 2026 at 5:59 PM
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Miyamoto on the Super Mario Bros. underground theme being "a masterpeice", 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #KondoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/29a41fe961fd...
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Creator of Zelda. Producer and Director of Super Mario Bros.. - Koji Kondo, age 64. Composer for early Zelda titles and for Super Mario Bros.. QUOTE: Miyamoto: I think that the expression of the underground theme [in Super Mario Bros.] is a masterpiece! [Laughs] I was thinking, “So you're gonna bring in a bass slap here, huh?” I was surprised how it turned into a proper song even though it was made with sound effects. I was cognizant of how it would feel cold if you went underground, so I thought it would be better to use black for the background, and when I heard those sounds, the feeling of cold was amplified, and it was like, “Whoa! It works!” [Laughs] Kondo: … I wanted to give the underground BGM a quiet feeling, so I included slap-bass phrases that were popular at the time.
December 13, 2025 at 8:52 PM
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#Linktober 21: Music
Kondo & Miyamoto on Ravel’s Bolero and 'The Copyright Incident', 2016.

Source: Nintendo.com

#Zelda
#TheLegendofZeldaQuote
#KondoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.notion.so/469330b1cf92...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 55. The Legend of Zelda (1986) Composer. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 63. The Legend of Zelda (1986) Producer & Co-Director. QUOTE: Kondo: The Legend of Zelda has an opening crawl, so I wondered about what should play during that too. Tezuka-san's written request simply says, ‘title music.’ [laughs] For quite a while, it just played Ravel's Bolero. It really matched the opening crawl! Miyamoto: You rearranged it for the NES, right? Kondo: Right. But immediately before finishing The Legend of Zelda, we learned it was still under copyright. Miyamoto: Oh, I remember that! (laughs) The Copyright Incident! … Kondo: So I pulled an all-nighter to compose the opening song.
October 21, 2025 at 11:23 PM
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Kondo on arrangements hidden in Hyrule Field theme, 1998.

Source: GlitterBerri's Game Translations

#Zelda
#OcarinaofTimeQuote
#KondoQuote

www.notion.so/0e093b226205...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 37. Composer for Ocarina of Time. QUOTE: "Kondo: I arranged songs from all the Zelda games up to now in the score to [Ocarina of Time’s] Hyrule Field. It looks like not many people have recognized them! In fact, there were even people on staff who didn’t notice! [laughs]"
January 21, 2025 at 8:31 PM
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Linktober #1: Knight
Kondo on his favorite song from Ocarina of Time, 2011.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#OcarinaofTimeQuote
#KondoQuote, #YokotaQuote

www.notion.so/39d16d85bfa1...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 49. Ocarina of Time Composer. - Mahito Yokota, age 37. Ocarina of Time 3D Orchestration Director. QUOTE: Kondo: As I was playing the Nintendo 3DS version [of Ocarina of Time], there were several [tracks] that struck me as well-done. Although, it's a little embarrassing to say so myself! [laughs] One plays when you go to Zelda's castle and hide in the garden so the guards can't find you. I forgot the title, though. Yokota: That's ’The Courtyard Game at Hyrule Castle.’ Kondo: It sounds like a game of hide-and-seek. It represents that feeling of final relief you get when you're able to hide from the guards by carefully making stealthy steps. I thought, ‘I did a pretty good job!’ [laughs]
October 1, 2025 at 10:14 PM
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Miyamoto on Super Mario Galaxy music, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioGalaxyQuote
#MiyamotoQuote, #KondoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/29a41fe961fd...
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Creator of Zelda & Mario, Producer of Super Mario Galaxy. - Koji Kondo, age 64. Original composer for Zelda & Mario, and Super Mario Galaxy. QUOTE: Miyamoto: For Super Mario Galaxy, we had other team members make the music. And the music was good, but there were times where I felt it wasn’t “Mario” enough. And when Kondo-san composed the music for the observatory where Rosalina is, I felt like, “Oh, now THAT’S Mario.” No one else seemed to get it though. It makes you wonder. Kondo: At the time, you didn’t come out and say, like, “That’s bad,” or anything, Miyamoto-san, but I don’t remember getting praise. Today, though, you’re really laying it on. Miyamoto: I’m the type of person who gets better when he gets praise, but I think I haven’t given much praise. [Laughs]
November 7, 2025 at 11:42 PM
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Kondo on the inspiration for some Majora's Mask themes, 2014.

Source: Gamespot

#Zelda
#MajorasMaskQuote
#KondoQuote

www.gamespot.com/articles/cre...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 53. Composer for Majora’s Mask. QUOTE: Kondo: When I saw the very first mask you see in Majora … it really brought to mind for me, for whatever reason, a type of Chinese opera. The kind where the performers wear masks and the music is all percussive, and there’s a lot of cymbals and bells and what not. Those two linked up when I first saw Majora’s artwork, and I thought a Chinese-influenced theme would be the way to go. Something else I remember is in the scene where the mayor is sitting and you have the two sides having a discussion. … You have the people on the left talking about something, and then the people on the right, and there’s this discussion back and forth. I had a lot of fun making the music feel like that argument so that you’d have music pouring in from the left speaker and then music coming in from the right speaker.
September 5, 2026 at 9:13 PM
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Kondo on the kind of level he always wanted to make, 2023.

Source: Ask the Developer

#SuperMarioBrosWonderQuote
#KondoQuote

www.notion.so/321b536b1fee...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 62. Sound Director of Super Mario Bros. Wonder. Sound & music for most of the early Zelda games. QUOTE: "Kondo: I’ve always wanted to try something along the lines of having the entire course come alive like a musical. To begin with, we tested it out [in Super Mario Bros. Wonder] by having Piranha Plants come out of their pipes in sync with the music, and the level designers created a course where the pipes and the platforms move. This went down well with the development team, so we adjusted it so that various enemies and stage elements would move to the rhythm. "
March 7, 2025 at 4:34 AM
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Iwata & Kondo on game music bringing people closer, 2010.

Source: Iwata Asks

#IwataQuote, #KondoQuote

www.notion.so/f3b47633d283...
PEOPLE: - Satoru Iwata, age 50. President of Nintendo. - Koji Kondo, age 49. Original composer for the Zelda series. QUOTE: Iwata: A friend of mine who's a little bit younger than I am graduated from a music university. During student teaching to become a music teacher, he played video game music for the students. They were intensely interested, and the distance between them suddenly closed in. Kondo: When I was overseas once, I met a Japanese person who was traveling from country to country. He said that wherever he went, if he played the music from Mario, everyone would recognize it and was able to make friends because of it. I was really happy about that.
September 11, 2025 at 10:43 PM
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Kondo & Yokota and how they wanted to do a symphony concert for Zelda's 25th, 2011.

Source: Iwata Asks

#Zelda
#KondoQuote, #YokotaQuote, #AonumaQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/ac7d17268a56...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 49. Original composer for the Zelda series. - Mahito Yokota, age 37. Orchestration for Twilight Princess. Composer & Orchestration for Skyward Sword. - Eiji Aonuma, age 48. Director or Producer of many Zelda games. QUOTE: Kondo: Aonuma-san was thinking about events for the twenty-fifth anniversary and suggested a concert for The Legend of Zelda. … Yokota: In fact, I've actually been saying I want to hold a Legend of Zelda concert ever since I joined the company. I kept getting turned down, but it finally becomes a reality on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary. Kondo-san, you've also been saying for some time that you want to do an orchestral concert, haven't you? Kondo: Yeah. Yokota: They said it wasn't our ‘main business’! [laughs]
December 30, 2025 at 3:16 AM
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Kondo & Miyamoto on re-using short musical phrases in NES music, 2025.

Source: Nintendo Museum

#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#KondoQuote, #MiyamotoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/29a41fe961fd...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 64. Composer for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.. - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 72. Producer and Director for The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros.. QUOTE: Kondo: The Famicom has little memory, so I remember thinking about reducing the size as much as possible for the music. It was hard work. For example, I thought that if I created a single group of phrases as a block, I could use that over and over again. By repeating that process, I think I ended up with a melody that stuck in players’ memories. Miyamoto: In the end, the player will hear those repetitions over and over, even though there are individual differences. … Because I myself started out by developing arcade games, the idea of people walking down the street hearing the music and sound effects coming from the arcade and immediately recognizing it was important.
November 24, 2025 at 11:51 PM
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Kondo on loving arcade games before he was hired by Nintendo, 2007.

Source: Wired

#KondoQuote

www.hyruleinterviews.com/fb9d09af59d4...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 45. Original composer for the Mario & Zelda series. QUOTE: Kondo: You're supposed to apply to many different companies, but I saw the Nintendo ad, and had a love of making synthesizers, and loved games, and thought—that's the place for me. I interviewed with one company, Nintendo, and that's where I've been ever since. Q: What games did you play in college? Kondo: I played arcade games—Space Invaders, Donkey Kong 3, the Donkey Kong series in general… there was a coffee shop I went to quite often that had the tabletop style arcade games, so I played on those a lot.
December 12, 2025 at 10:31 PM
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Miyamoto and his years-long quest to get proper flute or ocarina music in Zelda (1998, 2001, 2003)

Via GlitterBerri's Game Translations, Shmuplations, and Nintendo Prime

#Zelda
#TheLegendOfZeldaQuote #OcarinaOfTimeQuote
#MiyamotoQuote #KondoQuote
PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 46. Producer of Ocarina of Time. QUOTE: Miyamoto: I like international music such as Inca or Latin. I really wanted to put in an ocarina [in Ocarina of Time], it seemed really Zelda-esque. Playing an instrument is a much more enjoyable way to accomplish things than just casting a spell. PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 39. Composer for The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 48. Producer and Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). QUOTE: Q: Did Miyamoto have any requests for The Legend of Zelda (1986)? Kondo: I remember he had me make a lot of different sounds for when you use the flute [when you warp]. He was very particular about that one sound. “It shouldn’t just be ‘pretty’. I want it to evoke something more mysterious”, he told me. PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 50. Creator of the Zelda series. Producer of Ocarina of Time. QUOTE: Miyamoto: Ocarina has the most, not magical, but the most Zelda-like music theme; it immerses you completely into the game. I had been looking forward to music with a flute or an ocarina, but it wasn’t possible to fully use them until now. That game gave us the possibility of including those instruments.
May 7, 2025 at 3:23 AM
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Two quotes on Miyamoto's particular affinity for flute music in Zelda

Sources: Shmuplations, Nintendo Prime

#Zelda
#TheLegendOfZeldaQuote, #OcarinaofTimeQuote
#MiyamotoQuote,#KondoQuote

www.notion.so/c398f122dc10...
www.notion.so/12641fe961fd...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 39. Composer for The Legend of Zelda (1986). - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 48. Producer and Co-Director of The Legend of Zelda (1986). QUOTE: "Q: Did Miyamoto have any requests for The Legend of Zelda (1986)? Kondo: I remember he had me make a lot of different sounds for when you use the flute [when you warp]. He was very particular about that one sound. “It shouldn’t just be ‘pretty’. I want it to evoke something more mysterious”, he told me." PEOPLE: - Shigeru Miyamoto, age 50. Creator of the Zelda series. Producer of Ocarina of Time. QUOTE: "Miyamoto: Ocarina has the most, not magical, but the most Zelda-like music theme; it immerses you completely into the game. I had been looking forward to music with a flute or an ocarina, but it wasn’t possible to fully use them until now. That game gave us the possibility of including those instruments."
November 18, 2024 at 6:44 PM
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Kondo on the dynamic sound effects for each character’s jumps in Super Mario Bros. Wonder, 2023.

Source: Ask the Developer

#SuperMarioBrosWonderQuote
#KondoQuote

www.notion.so/321b536b1fee...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 62. Original composer for Zelda & Mario. Sound Director for Super Mario Bros. Wonder. QUOTE: "Kondo: We wanted to give [Super Mario Bros. Wonder] a fresh feel by integrating the sounds of musical instruments into the sound effects, so in this game, we used an electric ukulele made of Yezo spruce for Mario's jump sound. Using strings to accompany the traditional action of running before jumping to increase jump distance has enabled us to add sounds of varying dynamics to better express the feeling of ascending. This is the first time the jump sound changes based on how the player jumps, just like how string instruments make different sounds depending on how strongly or softly a musician plucks the strings."
March 28, 2024 at 4:13 PM
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Kondo on how he and Tezuka see a broader definition of "Mario" than the younger developers.

Via Ask the Developer, 2023.

#Mario
#SuperMarioBrosWonderQuote
#KondoQuote, #TezukaQuote

hyruleinterviews.notion.site/Ask-the-Deve...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 62. Original Zelda composer. Sound for Super Mario Bros. (1985), Sound Director for Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023). - Takashi Tezuka, age 62. Co-creator of Zelda. Assistant Director of Super Mario Bros. (1985), Producer of Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023). QUOTE: "Kondo: There was mention of Tezuka-san ‘asking the impossible’ [during Super Mario Bros. Wonder development]. I felt like there might have been a disparity between the world of Mario that Tezuka-san and I envisioned and the world of Mario that the rest of the team had in mind. … For the development staff who grew up playing Mario games, they see the world depicted in those games as the world of Mario. And they try to carry that over to future games. But the world of Mario that Tezuka-san and I think of is actually much broader, and we're allowed to incorporate anything we think would be fun. So maybe that's why they thought we were ‘asking the impossible.’"
November 4, 2023 at 5:21 PM
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Kondo describes how he came up with the Super Mario Bros. theme.

Via Shmuplations, 1991

#Mario
#SuperMarioBrosQuote
#KondoQuote

hyruleinterviews.notion.site/Koji-Kondo-1...
People in quote: -Koji Kondo, age 29. Composer for Super Mario Bros. & The Legend of Zelda. Quote: "Q: How did you end up writing Mario’s main theme? Kondo: My first image was of ‘walking around an open grassy field.’ That got me thinking about how carefree it must feel, and I wrote a relaxed, light melody to match. However, when I played it back alongside the actual game, it didn’t match the speed of the game or its rhythm at all! I tried adding a swing feel to it, but many people told me this made the melody sound weird, so that was out too. After trying this and that, I came up with the idea of a ‘cha cha cha’ melody, and it all expanded from there."
September 21, 2023 at 3:31 PM
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Kondo's musical influences in middle & high school, 2007.

Via Wired.

#KondoQuote

www.notion.so/fb9d09af59d4...
PEOPLE: - Koji Kondo, age 45. Legendary composer for Mario & Zelda. QUOTE: "Q: What were your other musical influences? Kondo: In middle school, I was into hard rock: Deep Purple, Yes. In high school, jazz and fusion: Cassiopeia, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock."
December 5, 2023 at 4:45 PM