ReMix:Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon "Only Link Can Do the Duck Walk" 3:11

Zelda. A legendary series filled with unforgettable adventures... and those wonky CD-i games...

Dem cutscenes. You're too late if you want to remake the games in HD, but if you want some next-level music, we've got something juicy for you. Thanks to the magical powers of Hylian Lemon (Benjamin Hoffman), we now have our first CD-i ReMix on the site (only took 18 years!) AND our first musical tribute to The Wand of Gamelon & Tony Trippi's soundtrack. Ben lays down the true truth on the mix title:

"I was going to call it "Zelda Does the Duck Walk," but it turns out she doesn't use that term in her tutorial! It is written, only Link can do the duck walk. Link is the only person known to have mastered the duck walk. When he's in trouble, it's up to Zelda to save this ancient art!

I'd been wanting to arrange this tune for a while, but I didn't have any solid ideas until I started a spreadsheet to keep track of all my past and future Zelda ReMixes. First I thought, "Well, hey, what if I change the rhythm to something a bit peppier?" After that, the pseudo-80's-pop-chiptune aesthetic just kind of leaked in unintentionally. It's not a big leap from the style of the soundtrack as a whole, but maybe a little goofier."

Let it be known that while the game's cutscenes are notoriously malformed and the overall game itself is not particularly "fun" in the way that so many Zelda games are, the music ain't half bad, so there's kind of a Cheetahmen II thing going on, to a lesser extreme. Don't be hatin' on the Trippi. This is slightly poppier/rockier, a bit less chippy, and somewhat goofier than Lemon's other jams, but no less delicious; Gario writes:

"Listened to this song about 100 times after hearing it on the WIP boards, and I can't get it out of my head. It's so goddamn cheezy that I can't help but love every bit of it. There's quite a bit of solid composition in this, to boot - really good blending of the Zelda 1 overworld with the Wand of Gamelon theme. I can't say that I don't love that you stuck with my naming suggestion, either, lol. Not much to say other than my praise, but my ears may have just gotten used to it over time. I think it's high time for our first Phillips CDi remix on OCR, and this is the perfect candidate for it."

MindWanderer echoes that:

"Ah, The Wand of Gamelon. Along with Link: Faces of Evil and Zelda's Adventure, the only reason anyone's even heard of the CD-i. And this is a suitably ridiculous remix for that ridiculous game. I love how it tries to be anthemic around 1:11, but it's just too goofy to even take itself seriously and quickly falls apart. I don't have much to add either. Lemon has this style down to a routine production-wise, and while this arrangement is a little random and strange at times, that's a big part of its charm. Let's get the CD-i added to the remix database for the very best of reasons."

Life gave us all the lemons that were the CDi and its Zelda titles, and now Hylian Lemon has made lemonade. Musically, I mean. Okay. Listen, just do the duck walk, alright? Fun stuff :)