"House at the Bay" from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch (2019)
Original Themes By:
Composed and Arranged by: Ryo Nagamatsu
Album: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Original Sound Track
Label: Columbia
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Grezzo
"The Ballad of the Wind Fish" is an amazing theme for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, and it is liberally peppered throughout the game, so the likelihood that I'm going to land on a song that is some variation of that theme is very high. With that in mind, having mostly played the original Link's Awakening on my Game Boy sometime after it came out (thanks again, Sharad), I have a strong affinity for that original music played out of the Game Boy's mono speaker. So I was a bit surprised when "House at the Bay," originally titled "Ghost's House," came up, and was just floored by the amount of emotion instilled in only two instruments (marimba? and chimes/bells in the beginning). Then about 30 seconds in, those two instruments are joined by, I think, a clarinet and violin/cello/viola (I can't tell).
The softness of this arrangement of "The Ballad of the Wind Fish," coupled with how forlorn the ghost acts after Link takes it back to its desolate house by the cove, can be pretty heart-wrenching. Who was this ghost? Is there significance in what they look at in the house before asking Link to be taken back to their grave? Was the one bed a shared bed, or did the ghost live when they were alive? Was the ghost an adult or a child? Does the chime/bell carrying the melody have any significance to the ghost, or was it what Ryo Nagamatsu wanted to use for this particular scene?
Whatever the reason behind the arrangement decisions and the significance of the ghost, I love this song and how it's effectively used in this one short scene. Another instance of less is more.
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