Legend of Zelda sound effects - Presented by HelpTheWretched



Hey, you there!
Want to help contribute to the sound collection?

Fantastic, I very much appreciate your assistance, just like our task guide Beedle over here. This website has been a one-person operation since its beginning, and working to keep it up to date has been more difficult lately, thanks to some personal developments and setbacks. So, please check this list of tasks and see how you'd like to contribute! They're mostly just little things, apart from the more dedicated help needed with the site's current focus, but every bit makes a difference.


The Little Things
Chu Jelly for our squeaky wheels

These are mostly just requests for site maintenance tasks - things that some visitors have already been doing on occasion. I'll list the tasks in point-form with short descriptions, and there's no need to contact me before getting underway.
However I would appreciate if you e-mail me (at the address listed below) rather than using the chatbox when you have something to tell me or send to me. Let's not point out the dirty corners while I'm trying to sweep them, okay?

  • Broken Links - If you click on any sounds or other links in the sound collection and they don't work, let me know! I try to be careful about this, but when the database is updated manually by typing in all the file names and desciptions, sometimes mistakes happen.

  • Labeling - Some sound descriptions might be improperly labeled by mistake. Some sounds also have multiple uses which might not be listed in the descriptions. Sometimes that's on purpose when the alternate use is obscure or unimportant, but sometimes I don't even know about it. Also, if you think any sound descriptions are strangely worded or don't make sense, feel free to suggest another way to describe them.

  • Game Investigating - More of an on-your-own-time thing, trying to find places in games where sounds could be recorded. This is most useful for Majora's Mask where most background music can be removed with a GameShark code (the unfortunate exceptions are music during cutscenes and battles), and situations can be found where certain sounds can be heard no background noises and little to no echo.

    For GameCube and Wii games, this task serves a different purpose. I can remove any music and sounds from the game, which can let me record sound sequences such as the jingles when you get rupees or make menu selections. The only help I need is for people who can tell these sequences apart from regular, single sounds, to compile a list of places to record them from.

  • Reference recordings - Quite a bit of the "Current Focus" below can be done simply by having access to reference recordings. These can be gameplay sound recordings, but more useful are videos from YouTube or similar sites. The sound quality needs to be fairly high and it's most helpful if the sound is heard several times, since some enemies and characters make different voices at random, or the same voices in different pitches.

    These recordings don't need to be just for your own requests. If you know of anybody else looking for certain sounds or requesting in the chatbox, maybe you can find a video where it's heard so that I can pick it out of my ripped sounds.


    Current Focus
    Twilight Princess Archival Project

    Lately, Twilight Princess has been my main focus for collecting new sounds. It's currently the most vital game in the series, with lots of slick vocal sounds to boot, and I don't want to fall behind with new sounds for the collection and end up with almost no time for it. You know, like what happened with The Wind Waker. So I'm asking for a little help to speed things up!

    So, whaddya need?

    I need lots and lots of saved game files for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - the North American (NTSC-U) Wii version. And of course, some brave and kind volunteers who have a bit of spare time to make them and send them to me.

    Saved game files? You can get those anywhere!

    That's true, but virtually all the saves you can find on the web are for notable locations in the game, like the beginning of a dungeon or the start of a major quest segment. Maybe you should have asked first why I'm in need of these save game files.

    Oh, right. What's this all for?

    It's to help me sort, label, and eventually add to the Zelda Sounds collection, all of the ripped sounds I have from the game. Thousands of voices and sound effects just waiting to be uploaded for all of you.

    But first they need to be proplerly identified, and in many cases edited to correct the pitch. I just can't do that by playing Twilight Princess on a console; I need to use an emulator to be able to hear the sounds more clearly, make recordings for reference, and use save-states to repeat certain portions of the game where only one sound out of several is played randomly. And emulators run so slowly on my PC that there's no way I could play through the entire game without losing my mind.

    So, I'm in need of saved game files where each Quest Log is saved right before any location or scene where new sounds are going to be heard. That should be once every few minutes, assuming that you know the game well. Making a save at every new area of the overworld is not necessary since you often just hear the same enemy sounds again. Likewise, multiple saves in the same area could be helpful when there are several objectives you need to do in the quest, and new things can be heard (items obtained, changes to the environment, new character reactions, etc.) after each step.

    I'd like to have saved games at each of those points in the game, so I can load them up quickly and get right to the sound recording process. Saves within a dungeon aren't necessary because they always take you back to the start when you reload, and because I can find the dungeon saves easily on the Internet.

    Well that sounds fine. How about an example of the saves you'd like?

    No problem at all. By starting with a game saved right after the Goron Mines boss is defeated, these are the saves I made on my way to the Lakebed Temple.

    Saved game file #1
    Quest Log 1: In Kakariko Village, after the post-Mines cutscene.
    Quest Log 2: In Hyrule Field (Eldin), before entering Twilight.
    Quest Log 3: Before entering Hyrule Castle Town

    Saved game file #2
    Quest Log 1: At Telma's bar, before heading to the Light Spirit.
    Quest Log 2: After falling into the depleted Lake Hyrule.
    Quest Log 3: After being flown up to Zora's river.

    Saved game file #3
    Quest Log 1: In Death Mountain, before warping the meteorite.
    Quest Log 2: Back in Lake Hylia, before seeing the Light Spirit.
    Quest Log 3: Before the battle for the final Tear of Light.

    Saved game file #4
    Quest Log 1: In Lake Hylia, with light restored to Hyrule.
    Quest Log 2: Before entering Hyrule Castle Town again.
    Quest Log 3: Beginning to escort Prince Ralis to Kakariko.

    Saved game file #5
    Quest Log 1: In Kakariko, before following Queen Rutela.
    Quest Log 2: In Kakariko, before setting out to Lakebed Temple.
    Quest Log 3: At Zora's River during item-fetching.

    Interesting. So how do we give you the saved game files?

    First of all, you'll need an SD memory card. After you've saved three Quest Logs in Twilight Princess, put the SD card in the slot on the front of the Wii and go to the Wii Options menu (the bottom-left button on the main Wii menu). Select Data Management, then Save Data, then Wii. Click the Twilight Princess icon then select Copy to save it on your SD card. Plug that sucker into your computer (if you don't have an SD slot, you can try putting it in a digital camera and then connecting that) and browse to the folder:
    /private/wii/title/RZDE/
    You'll find a file called data.bin - this is what you need to copy to your computer. You might want to rename it to describe the portion of the game it covers and/or number it if there will be more saved game files to come. For example: data_GerudoDesert01.bin. When you've got all your saved game files ready, just e-mail them my way! The next time you play Twilight Princess, start with the most recent Quest Log and save over the old ones as you progress.

    One more suggestion which I would really appreciate is to include a text file that describes the exact location of each Quest Log in each file. Even better would be a short list of which characters or background sounds I may encounter in that area. Anything to help speed up the process!

    Sign me up, I suppose...

    Thanks a lot! And hey, don't look so glum. I'm not asking any individual person to cover the entire game this way, just do as much as you feel like doing - every contribution helps.

    It would be a good idea to notify me by e-mail before you start, so we can make sure there isn't already somebody working on the same parts. And for the record, I've already made my own saves of everything up to the start of the Lakebed Temple. You can download this save to start from there, or search that site for other saves by the same author if you want to start from other dungeons.

    Anyone who contributes in this manner will be credited in the Twilight Princess sounds section. Do something that really pleases me (which shouldn't be very hard at all) and I'll even post a link to your own website, or if that's not applicable, you'll get some other kind of reward.



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