Secret of the Arid Sands

February 28, 2021

This song is the perfect theme to accompany a quest through the desert. The steel drum-style percussion offers an exotic backbone for the mysterious melody. The 16-bit [synthesized] clapping accent also gives the song a ’90s flavor…

Tim Turi, gameinformer

This is the Kakkara Desert theme. The score is in AB form in 6/8 meter with a strong accent on the last beat, and with marked syncopation in the second section.

The remake completely reimagined this piece with dramatic shifts in character, extending it to almost seven minutes. A mallet instrument plays the background against string phrasing, eventually leading to a chorus of flutes playing the melody.  The B section is more intense than ever, a sort of dramatic, dynamic shift in the tune that would have been welcome in other places on the remake’s soundtrack.

The chord structure is embellished throughout, along with effective percussion in some of the finest scoring that this version of the game had to offer.