 | Frequently Asked Questions |
| Frequently Asked Questions |
Q) How do I download these sounds, and is it legal? A) How to download them? You must be new to the Web! That's okay, we all were at some point. Depending on what browser you use and what software or plugins are installed, clicking a sound link will either bring up menu asking if you want to save it, or it will automatically play either inside the browser or with an external program that will open up. To make sure the files get saved, just click the sound links with the right mouse button - I believe for Mac users this is done by holding the Option button when you click - and then select "Save Link As", or "Save Target As", or whichever similar option that your browser displays. Choose the location on your computer and press OK! Terms of Use: If you use any of these sounds for any public project, please give credit to the creators (The Big N) and the provider (HelpTheWretched). Also, please do not download all sounds at once. Help us save bandwidth by taking some and coming back for others later. Is it legal? Not really. While I encourage the use of these sounds for whatever creative purposes you can think of, I don't encourage actually downloading them. However, the chances of legal troubles for any visitor who downloads sounds from here are virtually nil, so there's really nothing to worry about. Using any of these sounds in advertisements or for-profit projects is a much greater risk. For what it's worth, a recent episode of South Park featured a sound from Ocarina of Time and so far there's been no trouble. Q) Why don't you have Zelda music as well? A) Because there are plenty of other places to get Zelda music. Lots of Zelda-related websites have entire soundtracks available in MP3 format. One of the most popular is Galbadia Hotel, which has music for thousands of different games, although they have been having bandwidth problems and the site is often down. Another site with soundtracks for many different games is Kingdom Hearts Insider. Some other equally generous sites with Zelda music for download include The Hylia, Zelda Power, Zelda Dungeon, and Rauru's Return. These sites do a huge and risky service to fans by hosting entire game soundtracks, so please support them in any way you can; spread out your downloads among the sites and check out their affiliate sites, which may include even more direct music downloads. I am planning to open a music section to this site soon, however it will be for "Tribute Music". It will include remixes, creative medleys, and also original music inspired by Legend of Zelda games, submitted and rated by you, the viewers! And a little bit by me, as well. For now, check out some of the amazing remixes available for free at OverClocked ReMix, and the massive collection of remakes at Zelda Reorchestrated. Some of the most popular music requests I've received are the various "Item Fanfare" sounds from when Link picks up new items or weapons. While these are technically music and can be found on most of the game soundtracks, I will try to include some here since they are item-related and fairly short. Most BitTorrent sites will also have some soundtracks available, and downloading using torrents helps cut down on individuals' bandwidth costs by connecting you to many other users simultaneously. If you're unfamiliar with BitTorrent and don't know where to start, do a Google search for "bittorrent clients", and download any one of the popular programs which appeals to you. µTorrent is a good one. Then, just do a Google search for the name of a Zelda game, and add the words "soundtrack torrent" or "ost torrent" to the end of your search. Because an actual, perfect-quality rip of the Twilight Princess soundtrack is so hard to find, I can recommend looking for a 495 MB torrent made by a user named "Prime Blue". He's done a massive amount of work and hacking to extract all of the game's songs and edit them together into a soundtrack. If you'd prefer a lossless (FLAC) copy, follow the link to this forum and click the four MegaUpload links; this version totals 1.5 GB but is worth the download! For MIDI renditions made by fans of the games, try Video Game Music Archive, which has hundreds of MIDI songs at very small file sizes, including several made by yours truly. Although the sound quality of these files depends on both the skill of the sequencer (the person who created the file) and the MIDI sounds that your computer creates, you may find some excellent music there. A Zelda fan and talented sequencer by the name of "tssf" has many of his MIDI files archived at this link (which may soon change since he appears to be updating his website). Just scroll about halfway down to find the Zelda folders. Finally, you can find actual rips of the music from many Zelda games. These are not audio files like MP3, but rather the music extracted directly from the games' data. Since most Zelda games use waveform or MIDI-based music, the file sizes will be relatively small. The best place to find these rips is Zophar's Domain, although for SNES and N64 soundtracks, SNESmusic.org and Halley's Comet Software may be more up-to-date. In order to play these files, you can try some of the players available at this section of Zophar's Domain, but I personally recommend downloading Chipamp, an all-in-one collection of Winamp plugins that will let you play virtually any format of ripped music. Q) I can't find a certain sound. Where is it? A) For games with many sounds available, I've divided up the sounds into categories, but some sounds could fall under more than one category and I've made a judgement call to put them where it seems most appropriate. For example, in Ocarina of Time, the sounds of Link's equipment jiggling while he runs could go under "Misc. Link" sounds, but I decided to put them in the "Steps" category because they're heard most in conjunction with footstep sounds. Another example is the "Song Correct" sound - while it's sometimes used instead of the "Found a Secret" sound when a dungeon door is unlocked, it's most commonly associated with playing an ocarina song, so it's gone in the "Menus, etc." category rather than "Other Sounds". Check the different category titles and try to consider where else it would be. If certain categories get too large, I may try to divide them up further. Feel free to e-mail suggestions to me. If a sound has multiple uses, I will try to make sure to write that in their descriptions. The search feature on your browser will pick up any word from the description or the file name, and the Quick Sound Search will search through every game and category at once. (Note: The search is still under construction; it's searching through slightly outdated copies of the database, and still needs some code tweaks.) If all else fails, don't use fire; it's entirely possible that I haven't ripped or recorded it yet. See below for the completion status of each game. The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link: Both complete to the best of my knowledge. A Link to the Past: Complete to the best of my knowledge. Link's Awakening: Complete to the best of my knowledge. CD-i Series: Yes, I would include these if I could, but CD-i emulation is difficult and hasn't worked for me yet. Ocarina of Time: Nearly complete; a few obscure background sounds are all that remain. However, some sounds loop or fade in strange ways that make them impractical or even impossible to supply. Majora's Mask: These sounds are recorded from gameplay, so there are probably a few more that I can record, but not many. It requires using GameShark codes to mute some music and background sounds, and a technique called Actor Hacking which replaces objects and characters with others, but the process is difficult and doesn't always work - many characters don't act properly outside of their normal rooms. Enemy and boss sounds in particular are impossible since they always make battle music start playing. Oracle of Seasons/Ages: Complete to the best of my knowledge. The Wind Waker: I have hundreds of perfect-quality sound rips from this game, but they're unlabeled and randomly sorted, plus most of them need pitch correction. To ID and fix the sounds, I need recordings of the game in action so I can compare them to the sound rips. Please note that sounds made up of a series of notes, such as getting rupees, menu functions, and the "Secret sound" are created in real-time by the game and don't exist as single sounds. The non-rips section are in-game recordings with no background noise, and I've already done as much as possible with it. Four Swords: Many sounds are re-used in The Minish Cap, with higher quality. There are some unique noises in this game which I might try a to record sometime, but it's difficult to play in an emulator without another player willing to help. Four Swords Adventures: Most sounds seem to be taken from The Wind Waker and several other games. I haven't had time yet to play through and identify new sounds which could be ripped. The Minish Cap: Complete... practically. There are still a few sound effects found in the game's data which I've never heard during the game, so I may add them later. Twilight Princess: Same answer as The Wind Waker, except there are thousands of ripped sounds to sort through. There may be several more sounds available for the non-rips section. Link's Crossbow Training: I couldn't find or record any sounds that aren't taken from Twilight Princess, except for two fanfares when medals are earned. DS games (Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Tingle series): I've only recently learned how to and rip and record sounds from DS games. The set from Tingle's Balloon Fight was completed to test these capabilities, and new sounds from other games are on their way. I've skipped Phantom Hourglass for now because Spirit Tracks has more original voices, and will probably start Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland next. Soulcalibur 2 (GCN): Link's voices are complete. Other related sound effects are more difficult to record and might not be possible. Super Smash Bros. Series: Brawl is probably missing a sound here or there, but nothing important, so I'm calling it Complete. Melee is as complete as possible unless I can access some more item and common fighter sounds, but those sounds are probably the same as the ones in Brawl. The original Super Smash Bros. doesn't have many Zelda-related sounds worth recording, but I've placed a few in the Melee section. I might re-record them if a sound test with no echo becomes available, otherwise, the series is basically complete to my liking and probably wont be updated anymore. BS The Legend of Zelda: Complete. Zelda Game & Watch: Complete. Q) So, can I make some requests? A) I'd prefer if you ask them in the form of "suggestions". This site and all the sound recording and updates are managed by just one person (this guy, right here) and it takes a lot of time out of real life. Also, I'm sorry, but the sounds that I work on will NOT be decided by how badly or soon your may need them. So in other words, feel free recommend new sounds that you'd like to have available, and I'll try to get to them eventually. I would also appreciate if you read the next question, which explains how I get the sounds, so you'll have an idea of what's possible for me to supply and just what kind of work you're asking me to do! Any time that I'm simply too busy to work on this site or otherwise unable to go sound-collecting, you'll find a large notice explaining why on the Home page above the menu of games. If it's clear to me that you haven't read or considered these things, then your request will probably be ignored. Q) How do you rip these sounds? A) It's a process that's taken a lot of experimenting, and varies by the system each game is for. For NES, Gameboy, and Gameboy Advance, I use emulators (VirtuaNES, TGB Dual, and VisualBoyAdvance, which also plays Gameboy games but has difficulties with Zelda titles) that allow me to turn off certain sound channels, leaving only the waveforms used in the sound effects that you hear. Then I use the wave-logging features to record the gameplay with no loss in quality. Save-states also help to record a sound several times, since waveform sounds aren't always perfect. After that, I open the recordings in a sound editor, GoldWave, and cut the sounds to the right length. These sounds are typically best at 22.05 kHz. For SNES games, I haven't found an emulator with a working wave-logger, so I actually start a blank sound in GoldWave, hit record, and play the game as the sound is recorded. My settings for the best results are to use ZSNES for Windows, with a sample rate of 48 kHz and cubic spline interpolation, then record a new 32 kHz sound with GoldWave. Once recorded, try resampling to 22.05 kHz, since some sounds can be reduced without losing quality. SNES and GBA games often use pre-recorded samples as well. For SNES games, these can easily be ripped using a program called Snessor. For GBA games, try loading the ROM directly into Goldwave; with the right settings you may be able to find the sound bank and cut them straight out of there. The correct settings differ for each GBA game but they're usually 8-bit mono sounds, with a sample rate of 12 to 16 kHz. The process for ripping from N64 games has evolved as I experimented and found new techniques. The first step is to try programs such as SRip or Sound Lib Extractor, which rip samples from some, but not all N64 ROMs. It doesn't work for Zelda games because they have specially encoded sounds. So if the game doesn't have a sound test or options to turn off sound or music, the next step is to try to find locations in the game with no background music and minimal noise or echo, then use Project64's wave-logger. I found a GameShark code to remove some of the music; it also helped to use some codes to try reaching areas or performing actions that are normally impossible. Eventually I found a copy of the Debug version of Ocarina of Time: Master Quest, which has a hidden sound test mode that can be accessed by GameShark. This allows every sound to be played clearly, but they're all unlabeled and out of order, and as mentioned above, some sounds loop in strange ways. Majora's Mask has no such mode that I know of, so I need to rely on the older techniques of music-muting and Actor Hacking. I've also learned a few tricks with wave editors that help to reduce or remove any slight echoes, background noises, or traces of music that remain in the recordings. For GameCube and Wii games, I don't have the support of emulators or GameShark codes (GCN and Wii emulators exist but compatibility is still low), so if direct sound rips aren't available, I need to rely solely on finding silent locations in the games, then plug the console's sound cables into my computer and record whatever sounds I can. This results in good sound quality but a limited selection of sounds. Thankfully I've discovered ways to rips sounds from some of these games, and visitors have supplied some rips as well. Q) What is this "BS The Legend of Zelda"? A) In short, it's a 16-bit version of The Legend of Zelda that was never released on a game cartridge. The "BS" stands for Broadcast Satellite, referring to the Satellaview, an add-on to the Super Famicom only available in Japan which could download games via encoded satellite radio signals that were "broadcasted" on certain dates and times. BS The Legend of Zelda was one of the first games on the service, broadcasted in four segments throughout in August 1995. Despite being a 16-bit upgrade, the graphics weren't quite on par with A Link to the Past, and some sound effects were genuinely 8-bit. The gameplay was nearly identical to the original Legend of Zelda, with a few notable exceptions. Instead of Link, you would play as one of the unnamed Satellaview mascots, a boy or a girl. The overworld map was shrunken to 8x8 screens, rather than 16x8, though an attempt was made to include many of the original game's geographical features. The game featured an on-screen clock that actually showed the real time, and live narration and voice acting was broadcasted directly into the game along with orchestrated background music. At various times, the game would pause while the "Old Man" spoke and gave players hints about new shops, items, discounted prices, and locations becoming accessible, or delivered temporary power-ups such as unlimited bombs, upgrades to weapons, and instantly killing or freezing all enemies on the screen. Each week's broadcast was about an hour long and included two dungeons; the timeline would continue the following week with more of the overworld and an additional two dungeons available. Ganon could only be fought at the end of the fourth week if all 8 Triforce pieces were recovered. Because of the game's "live action" and downloadable nature, playing a copy of the game on an emulator was basically impossible. However, groups of dedicated hackers and patchers have managed to piece the game's segments together and make the necessary modifications and translations in order to play BS The Legend of Zelda as its own complete game. Patches are also available for cosmetic purposes such as changing the mascots back into Link, or removing the in-game clock. I will not be providing a link to the game's download site because I don't completely agree with their legality reasoning (yes, I realise the irony here), but you can find it very easily with a web search. There were three other BS Zelda games also broadcasted. The first was "Map 2" of BS The Legend of Zelda, which simply had rearranged dungeons like the "2nd Quest" in The Legend of Zelda. Next was "Ancient Stone Tablets", a similar 4-week concept using content from A Link to the Past to create an all-new adventure, and finally "Triforce of the Gods", the complete Japanese version of A Link to the Past and the only BS Zelda game that could be saved and played outside of regular broadcast hours. Q) Can't you Zip more sections into single files? A) I prefer to Zip sections of sounds only when I feel that section is complete. If there were many updates to come, then a lot of bandwidth would be used by people downloading the entire Zip again each time it gets updated. Because of many requests, I will try to complete some of the more popular sections and make Zip files available, but please note the completion status just above; games with a limited availability of sounds (such as Twilight Princess) will probably not be considered "complete" for a long time. Q) What's with these "Starting and Loopable portions"? A) These are for sounds where only a certain portion loops when heard in a game. The beginning of the sound is different, so I can't just supply one sound and call it "loopable". With both portions, you can make your own sounds by loading them in a .wav sound editor (as always, I recommend GoldWave) and copy-and-pasting them together as many times as you wish, then adding a fade-out or any other effect to finish the sound. In some cases I've also supplied "Fade-out" versions, such as the Bombchu, where you only hear the loopable portion a short number of times in the game. Q) Is there any way I can help you get sounds? A) Yes! Thanks for asking! First of all, please read all of the above FAQs about the sound-obtaining process and the completion status of each game. This is quite important! Also, if you want to and can be of assistance, please contact me by e-mail to keep the Shoutbox un-cluttered and to make discussion and file transfers easier. That way it will also be easier for me to provide credit. There are 4 ways you can help me. 1) Finding broken links. Sometimes I update in a hurry and type the wrong names for some sound files. That doesn't mean you should click every link to see if they work, just let me know if you find any that don't! 2) Identifying missing sounds. Yes, I know a lot of sounds are missing because I just haven't tried to get them yet. But for games or categories that have "complete sets", or sections that I'm clearly trying to complete and skipped over a sound by mistake, feel free to tell me about it. 3) Experiment with "Actor Hacking". At this point, it's only useful for Majora's Mask, but it could help me record some new sounds from that game. There are several programs around the web that generate GameShark codes to replace objects and characters with different ones, but these programs are incomplete and not very useful. Instead, search for a copy of the post on a forum where the Arwing was discovered in Ocarina of Time; that post includes a list of some objects from Majora's Mask and the codes used to replace them. I also discovered a GameShark code to silence the music and some of the background sounds. What's left is to find areas in the game with no echo or other noises, and experiment! I've used North Clock Town as my room for most of the Actor Hacking, but a lot of characters don't behave as they normally do in certain rooms. Any new ideas or discoveries would be much appreciated. 4) Perhaps the most useful way that you can help this site's collection is to send me reference recordings for GameCube, Wii, and DS games. Although I've obtained nearly-complete sound rips for all of them, the files are unsorted and unlabeled, and many of them need pitch-correction to match how they actually sound in the games. You can send me recordings of yourself playing the games (feel free to convert these recordings to MP3 or any other high-compression format since they're only for reference) along with details of what's happening in the sounds. It's important to remember that some characters and enemies make a variety of different sounds for the same actions, and sometimes even at different pitches, so record as much as possible. Or, even easier, you can seek out links to videos on YouTube or other similar sites, which show clear examples of sounds not yet on this site. If you can find any relatively short video clips that would be good for sound reference, either from gameplay or cutscenes, please e-mail the links to me. If possible, also tell me the approximate time in the videos where they can be heard. If you have the ability to record and upload your own videos, that would be even better! As I mentioned, it's best to take your time with enemies or other characters in order to let them make as many sounds as possible in a variety of different pitches.
Q) You are awesome. How can we get in touch? A) My e-mail address is listed just below this frame. Look down! See it? No, not the Dayjo address, the other one. Feel free to use it for any questions or comments - you'll probably get a more effective response that way than if you use the Shoutbox. If you'd like to contact me via Wii, here are my console and friend codes. Just send me an e-mail or instant message with your own codes (and screen name) so we can connect. I'd prefer to exchange codes only if you intend to keep in touch or play Wi-Fi games, at least on occasion. HTW's Wii Console Code: 5854-4086-3085-7359 I also use Windows Live Messenger (MSN) on occasion but my address for that is different. Please e-mail me if you have a mighty need for real-time chat and I'll tell you the address. |
