As Nintendo makes history with its first commercial music release outside of Japan, is it safe to say the publisher is testing the market?

Today is the one-year anniversary of Nintendo Music, the well-received app for smart devices that gives you access to some of the most notable OSTs from the publisher’s history. At launch, the app provided us all with a way to listen to music from the likes of Animal Crossing New Horizons, Wii Channels, Star Fox 64, Metroid, Mario Kart, and more.

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen Nintendo slowly but surely adding more music to the app, bringing franchises like Fire Emblem, Kirby and more into the service. In a world of muddy legal rights and in which Nintendo doesn’t particularly like handing out full credit to devs that worked on its games, Nintendo Music represents something quite pure, and – importantly – helpful for fans of older games.

But when it comes to physical releases of its music, Nintendo has always been a bit more protective. Yes, it is possible to get some Nintendo OSTs on CD in the West, but it’s always been a bit of a chore – these releases have either been tied to promotions, packed-in with games at retail (such as the release for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword back in 2011), or locked behind MyNintendo points redemptions, or similar. The company has long seemed reticent to provide fans with a legal and approachable way to own physical versions of its music. Until this week.

On Wednesday, Nintendo and Laced Records announced a collaboration that will see the record company launch a couple of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild vinyl soundtrack collections – the first time, ever, that the 136-year-old company will issue products like this outside of Japan.

Releasing 19th June, 2026, Laced and Nintendo are bringing multiple versions of the Breath of the Wild soundtrack to market. The collections come in the form of both two- and eight-LP sets, and will retail at £36 (or $50) and £145 ($195), respectively. The two-disc set will contain a curated tracklist of 34 songs, whilst the bigger eight-disc set will house a massive 130 tracks from the game. The songs are arranged by mood and theme, meaning each side should present a soundscape and tone familiar to anyone that’s played through Link’s Hyrule adventure.

“When I founded Laced over 10 years ago, I could have only dreamt about partnering with such an iconic game company as Nintendo,” says Danny Kelleher, founder and CEO of Laced Records. “To bring these beautiful vinyl products to life for The Legend of Zelda franchise has been a dream come true for me and the team at Laced. We worked closely with Nintendo to ensure these vinyl releases were of the highest quality, from the design and packaging to sequencing the tracklists for the two LP and the eight LP.

“The fan and video game vinyl community response has been incredibly positive. After months of hard work behind the scenes with Nintendo, it’s a real honour to finally share these products with the world.”

I’m sure it’s been no small feat getting Nintendo on-board with this deal; the fact that a relatively small British company has managed to get Nintendo to play ball on a release like this is a watershed moment, and perhaps – per comments given to the Washington Post by Bill Trinen, Nintendo of America’s vice president of player and product experience – represents Nintendo testing the market ahead of more releases in a similar vein.

“As we’re looking at Nintendo and our intellectual property, one of the things we’ve really started to zero in on is there’s a lot more opportunity around music and we’ve got a broad music library,” Trinen said to the outlet. Official Pokémon vinyl, anyone?

As for Laced, as an avid collector of video game music and records, I can say that the company produces incredibly well-made products, and its Hotline Miami OST collection is one of the records I’m most protective of in my collection. Laced’s Tekken 3 print is just behind it (at least when it comes to VGM). The asking price may be quite steep, but I think the quality is there, and – for any of you waxheads out there – this stuff tends to accrue value at a ludicrous rate, too, so it’s always going to be a decent investment.

I look forward to seeing where this collaboration takes us. The gaming audience, in particular, seems hungry for ownership of its purchases, and a move towards more readily-available physical media can only ever be a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’ll be watching this space with anticipation.