Aonuma explains how it’s decided when to include an instrument in a Zelda game

This is another except from the latest Iwata Asks we previously posted about…

Iwata
By the way, about the “Whistle of the Wide World” pan flute… Why is it that every The Legend of Zelda game has some sort of sound item in it? I’ve wondered about it for years. Is it because the sound staff is in on making the puzzles, too?

Iwamoto
There isn’t a sound item in every game. There wasn’t one in the last one.

Iwata
Oh, that’s right. There was one in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina and in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, but I suppose there isn’t always something.

Aonuma
As you’d expect, when the sound team takes a firm line and tells us, “We want to try doing this this time”, we often do use that as our jumping-off point. So I think that they do feel as though, since it’s The Legend of Zelda”, we should use some sort of sound item. In this case, the pan flute was brought up fairly early in the game. Then, too, the mike input capabilities are featured pretty prominently in this game, so the two concepts meshed together neatly.