The first real big hitter for GaMetal, The Ocarina of Time is one of the longest GaMetal songs at approximately 13:24. It was the 1,000 subscriber special on the old Youtube channel.
The songs in this medley, in the order they appear, are as follows:
1. Zelda’s Theme
2. Enter Ganondorf
3. Ganondorf’s Theme
4. Hyrule Field
5. Lost Woods
6. Kokiri Forest
7. Hyrule Field
8. Market
9. Shop
10. Windmill Hut (Song of Storms)
11. Temple of Time
12. Bolero of Fire
13. Minuet of Forest
14. Nocturne of Shadow
15. Serenade of Water
16. Kakariko Village
17. Lon Lon Ranch
18. Gerudo Valley
19. Kotake and Koume’s Theme
20. Hyrule Field
21. Escape from Ganon’s Castle
22. Ganondorf Battle
23. Zelda’s Theme
Even though I just listed 23, there are actually only 20, Hyrule Field makes 3 appearances (although it is 3 different parts) and Zelda’s Theme is both the intro and outro.
I wanted my first 1,000 subscriber special to be really.. special, so I picked a really, sorry for sounding repetitive, special game to do. OoT is one of the most popular games of all time, so the choice to use it as my 1,000 subscriber special was an easy one.
My original intention was to do only about 10 songs from the game. So I sat down with the soundtrack and started listening and listing good songs to put in the medley.
At first I came up with a list of about 30 songs. Then I started to axe a few away that I didn’t think were really necessary.. but still had about 20 songs. Since a lot of these songs are short (for example, the ocarina songs that teleport you to different places), I decided it wasn’t really a problem, and the list above is the list I finalized..
..almost.. let’s talk about some songs I left out. I really only get asked about 2, but there are a few others I think are worth mentioning. I was fully intending to have the Boss Battle theme somewhere in the medley, but didn’t really find a good place for it, so it got cut. Middle Boss Battle didn’t make it past my first round of cuts, although I probably should have squeezed it in somewhere. Most of the dungeon themes are mood-setting, ambience type songs. They do a great job of setting the mood, but there’s not much there to turn into a remix (Spirit Temple is a slight exception). Anything else I’ haven’t mentioned just wasn’t memorable or iconic enough to make the list.
Now the 2 I get asked about. I dropped the Requiem of Spirit because I didn’t want that part of the song with the teleporting themes to go on for too long. Looking back, I should’ve put it in there anyways, cause this remix is long as hell either way.
And last but not least, the Last Battle theme. I’m going to have to be honest here.. I just don’t like it. Aside from the intro, it’s kind of boring. Don’t get me wrong, it fits the mood of the final battle well and is great in the game, but if you seperate it from the game, there really isn’t that much to it. True, the point would be to add stuff to it, but even just now I had to actually pull up the final battle theme cause I couldn’t remember how it went.
Unlike Legend of the Seven Stars, I was rather loose with the song order here, I wasn’t really aiming for a perfect timeline as far as in-game appearance was concerned. For instance, in OoT you learn Bolero of Fire after the Minuet of Forest, but I felt Bolero sounded better coming out of Temple of Time and opening up that whole teleport song segment, and Escape from Ganon’s Castle certainly doesn’t come before the Ganondorf Battle, but again I liked it coming out of the pseudo-ending after the last Hyrule Field.
Speaking of Hyrule Field, a song that has already had the GaMetal treatment, in the planning phase I had already decided to use it as a transitional piece multiple times if I hit any transitional roadblocks, which apparently I hit a couple of times. I also wanted to do the ‘Dire’ parts of Hyrule Field, which show up in the last apperance of it, because I hadn’t done these bits in my old Hyrule Field cover.
Like the SMRPG ultra-medley, I put a little more into the really popular songs than the songs with lesser popularity. Zelda’s Theme, Lost Woods, Windmill Hut (Song of Storms), Temple of Time, Kakariko Village, Lon Lon Ranch, and Gerudo Valley are examples of this.
Difficulty-wise, only one song gave me a hard time. A really hard time, in fact. Can you guess which one? It was actually the very last one, Ganondorf Battle. The time signature in Ganondorf Battle is some wacky time sig that I can’t even tell you what it is at the moment. I had a really hard time coming up with a drum line that fit, it took me probably a good hour or 2 to come up with one. The guitar line was easier to remember, and I ended up just kind of following it till I came up with something.
Overall, this remix was very popular and attracted a lot of much needed attention. However, looking back, I can see a lot of ways it can be improved. The sound quality is a bit sub-par, especially compared to todays GaMetal standards, and I could’ve thrown a couple more songs, like Requiem of Spirit, into the mix. Few issues aside, Ocarina of Time remains one of the most popular GaMetal songs and is still a fun one to listen to. A small piece of it, Zelda’s Theme, appears in Blast from the Past to represent the OoT medley, as song #15.