The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s inclusion in Nintendo Music was a given, but we were curious which version of the iconic Fire Temple theme would make the cut. Would it be the original, which Nintendo swiftly replaced after discovering that a religious chant was sampled in its mix? Or would it be its chant-less replacement, which was ushered in on 1.2 cartridges alongside Ganondorf’s newly greened blood? Well, it’s neither.
The Fire Temple theme listed in the app’s OOT library is only 41 seconds long, providing the percussion-heavy opening and two rounds of the twinkly motif before fading out. Things wrap up right around where the chanting would normally begin, and there’s no option to extend the track, either.
According to The Legume of Zelda (great name, by the way) on BlueSky, this isn’t the first time that Nintendo has released a shortened version of the theme. The 1998 Pony Canyon CD soundtrack album featured a similar ~40-second cut, abrupt ending and all.
Nintendo removed the original version of the track for the cartridge’s 1.2 release to avoid clashing with its own censorship rules about the presentation of religious symbols or themes. Koji Kondo apparently wasn’t aware of the chant’s Islamic prayer origins when sampling it for the soundtrack, leading to a swift rewrite where the vocals were replaced by a fluctuating chant-like instrumentation.
The original and updated tracks can be found on YouTube, if you want to listen for the differences.
Aside from this strange rendition of the Fire Temple, the Nintendo Music app is home to 82 different OOT tracks, many of which can be extended — you know, if you really wanted to replicate the feeling of being stuck in The Water Temple for an hour…