Analyzing Musical Mario-media:

Variations in the Music of Super Mario Video Games

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Guillaume Laroche
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Department of Music Research
McGill University, Montréal

January 2012
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A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment

of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts in Music Theory

© Guillaume Laroche, 2012

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 Table of Contents

Abstract (English) iv
Résumé (Français) v
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
Section I. Sweet Participation: Mario’s Gameplay and Creators 8
The basics of Super Mario 8
Game audio development 11
A snapshot of Koji Kondo 13
Section II. A Topical Guide to Game Audio Literature: A Review 18
Section III. Not Very Classical Form: A Primer on Analyzing the Music of Mario 28

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The role of music in Super Mario games 28
On technology 32
On transcription IE 34
Section IV. Styles and Ideas: Analyzing Mario’s Many Melodies 36
A closer look at the methodology 38
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Analysis 41
Super Mario Bros. Theme 41
Underground Theme 54
Super Mario World Theme 70
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Super Mario 64 Theme 87

Super Mario Sunshine Theme 97
Section V. GMIT: Trends in Mario’s Music 104
Defining series themes 105
Defining game themes 114
Synthesizing Kondo’s aesthetic 120
Conclusion 124
Bibliography 127
Appendix of Scores 131
Editorial Note 131
Table of Contents of Scores 132
Scores 134

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 Abstract
Responding to a severe lack of score-based music-theoretical analyses in the
academic discourse surrounding video game music, this study proposes such an analysis
of several tunes from the Super Mario video game series written by series lead composer
Koji Kondo. Specifically, this study offers a variational analysis of those musical tunes
featuring common motives and/or themes. The study divides tunes into two categories:
series themes, in which a melody recurs in multiple tunes excerpted from several Super
Mario games; and game themes, in which a melody recurs in multiple tunes within a
single Super Mario game.
Following reviews of the design of Super Mario video games, the life and music
of Koji Kondo, and the existing principal literature on video game music, the study

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analyzes 26 works composed by Kondo between 1985 and 2002. Series and game themes
are analyzed in terms of variational technique, designating the most plausibly earliest-
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written tune as the ‘original’ theme and deeming other tunes that came afterwards
variations upon this original. In reviewing the results of these analyses, the study
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concludes that the musical features of series themes, and by extension the variational
approaches used in developing them, are unlike those of game themes. Series themes
feature an unchanging musical parameter (often the melody), the essential element, that
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Kondo refuses to modify in any variation; rather, variation is applied to musical events
surrounding the essential element. Game themes are much more flexible, and constructed
from smaller motives which develop themselves into larger chunks of music through a
process which is generally analogous to Schoenberg’s concept of the developing
variation. In all, the study shows that Koji Kondo purposefully differentiates his
compositional approach to both themes and variations depending upon whether the theme
in question is a series theme or a game theme.

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 Résumé
Répondant à un manque d’analyses à base de partitions dans le discours
académique portant sur la musique de jeu vidéo, cette étude propose une telle analyse de
plusieurs oeuvres musicales de la série Super Mario du compositeur principal de la série,
Koji Kondo. Spécifiquement, ce mémoire étudie la variation dans les pièces présentant
des motifs et/ou thèmes musicaux communs. Il divise ces pièces en deux catégories: les
thèmes de la série, c’est-à-dire les thèmes qui se présentent dans plusieurs jeux de la série
Super Mario ; et les thèmes de jeu, c’est-à-dire les thèmes que l’on retrouve seulement
dans un seul jeu de la série Super Mario.
Suite à des survols de la conception des jeux vidéo Super Mario, de la vie et
musique de Koji Kondo et de la littérature actuelle portant sur la musique de jeu vidéo,

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cette étude présente une analyse de 26 pièces composées par Kondo entre 1985 et 2002.
Les thèmes sont analysés en fonction des techniques de variation, où l’oeuvre la plus
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probablement composée en premier est désignée «l’originale» et toutes les autres sont
comprises en tant que variations développées à partir de cette originale. En révisant les
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résultats, le mémoire conclue que les caractéristiques musicales principales des thèmes de
la série, et par extension leurs développements variationnels, sont dissemblables à celles
des thèmes de jeu. Les thèmes de la série sont marqués par un paramètre musical
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inflexible (souvent la mélodie), nommé ici l’élément essentiel, que Kondo refuse de
modifier dans ses variations ; ce sont plutôt les événements musicaux qui enveloppent cet
élément essentiel qui sont variés. Les thèmes de jeu se montrent davantage flexibles, et
sont construits à partir de petits motifs qui se développent en plus grands fragments par
un processus généralement semblable à la variation développée telle que conçue par
Schoenberg. En fin de compte, l’étude démontre que Koji Kondo différencie son
approche à la composition d’un thème et de ses variations dépendant de si le thème en
question est de la série ou de jeu.

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 Acknowledgements
This project would never have come to fruition without the help of many people.
First and foremost, I wish to thank Prof. Jonathan Wild, who provided many helpful
comments and perspectives on the thesis. His extensive knowledge of harmony and
rhythm in a wide variety of musical styles (and especially in jazz and latin music) was
especially helpful in uncovering some of the subtler details of the music of Super Mario,
and his sharp ear proved exceptionally useful in reviewing transcriptions. His willingness
to take over the principal supervision of the project halfway through was much
appreciated. My thanks also go to my co-supervisor, Prof. Don McLean (now at the
University of Toronto), who supervised the preliminary stages of the thesis and provided
substantive and editorial suggestions near the end of the project as well. His enthusiasm

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for this project at times seemingly exceeded even my own, and his great many ideas about
directions in which the project could go never failed to impress. Finally, I wish to thank
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my external reviewer, Prof. Nicole Biamonte, for her useful comments and suggestions.
I also wish to thank Prof. Laurier Fagnan of the University of Alberta, whose
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mentorship in the world of music academia and continued involvement in my
development as an artist and researcher has always been deeply appreciated. Prof. Henry
Klumpenhouwer, also of the University of Alberta, deserves many thanks for first taking
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on the risk of mixing music theory with video game tunes with me, and then later for his
encouragement in further pursuing the ideas emerging from this strange cocktail. This
thesis is in no small part the result of the time and energy he dedicated in 2007 to an
undergraduate summer research project.
The Marvin Duchow Music Library staff members also deserve high praise for
their help. Cynthia Leive and her team stocked video game music books at my request,
kept an eye out for new publications related to my research that I was unaware of, and
resolved an uncountable number of minor crises. I am grateful to all library team
members for their assistance.
I also wish to acknowledge the funding provided by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council for this project, as well as the financial support offered by

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the Department of Music Research, the Schulich School of Music and McGill University.
The opportunities offered by the various scholarships and teaching assistantships I
received during my time at McGill allowed for a rich engagement with its intellectual
culture in both teaching and research.
I also wish to thank my friends who repeatedly ascertained for me that I indeed
had the coolest thesis ever, and then said over and over again that they wanted to read the
completed project. Regardless of whether you sit down with this thesis or not, your
enthusiasm towards my academic interests was a powerful motivational factor in getting
the work done. Many thanks also go out to my fellow students in the music graduate
program at McGill, who made grad school all the more enjoyable by their camaraderie
and inquisitive nature. Special thanks go out to Dana Gorzelany-Mostak for her assistance

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in proofreading and formatting the footnotes and bibliography.
Certainement que mes parents n’auraient jamais cru en 1991 qu’en achetant une
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console de jeux vidéo pour moi et mes frères, il y avait là la toute première étape d’un
cheminement qui se clorait 20 ans plus tard par le dépôt de mon mémoire de maîtrise ; on
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aurait bien plus raisonnablement cru exactement le contraire, qu’il s’agissait là d’une
menace envers les études plutôt qu’un moteur! Certainement, je n’avais aucune idée moi
non plus à ce moment-là que la musique offerte par Super Mario World et d’autres jeux
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deviendrait un jour une composante de projets de recherche subventionnés par deux

universités de calibre international et un conseil de recherche national. L’insistance de
mes parents sur l’importance de la musique comme activité, dans les succès comme les
échecs, m’a profondément marqué, et c’est une valeur de laquelle je continuerai de chérir
à vie à cause de leur efforts. L’appui sous toutes ses formes qu’ils m’ont offert tout au
long de mes études musicales, d’abord parascolaires et plus tard universitaires, a toujours
été grandement apprécié. Merci beaucoup!

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Introduction
Over the past decade, academia has witnessed a steady rise in the attention given
to video games.1 In this context, video games have been studied from a range of
perspectives: their narrative devices, their consequences for human identity and
representation in virtual spaces, the technical aspects of their design, debates about their
merit as works of art. Their music, too, has received some attention, with authors
exploring its varying roles and uses, the similarities and differences between scoring for
films versus games, and how technology influences compositional choices in the video
game medium. Overall, “that music plays an important role in the overall experience of
video gaming is widely accepted,”2 and this importance is reflected in the ever-growing
number of studies that video game music attracts.

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It is curious to note, however, that within this area, there has been “very little
written on what makes a great game soundtrack,”3 or even on which compositional
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techniques are most prevalent within the music of video games. Very few studies have
considered video game music using the tools of music-theoretical analysis; on the
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contrary, most studies limit themselves to describing music qualitatively, using whatever
adjectives appeal to an author who reviews a particular game track.4 Occasionally, one
reads that a game score makes “use of large orchestral forces and a type of harmony and
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orchestration associated with nineteenth-century composers such as Wagner,”5 or that

developers know “that musical scores that settle among minor and diminished chords, or

1 Some manuals prefer the term ‘computer games’ on the basis that games are played via some kind of
computer system (consoles are computers too), be it connected to a television or a monitor. I prefer the
more colloquial term video games, fully conscious of the term’s lack of technical precision.
2 Sean Zehnder and Scott Lipscomb, “The Role of Music in Video Games,” in Playing Video Games:
Motives, Responses, and Consequences, ed. Peter Vorderer and Jennings Bryant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 2006), 244.
3Thomas Gersic, “Toward a New Sound for Games,” in Playing the Past: History and Nostalgia in Video
Games, ed. Zach Whalen and Laurie Taylor (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008), 147.
4 To clarify my terms, the word ‘track’ is sometimes used to describe one particular musical selection
excerpted from a video game. I use the term interchangeably with others such as: tune, work, piece, etc.
5 David Bessell, “What’s That Funny Noise? An Examination of the Role of Music in Cool Boarders 2,
Alien Trilogy and Medievil 2,” in Screenplay: Cinema/Videogames/Interfaces, ed. Geoff King and Tanya
Krzywinska (London: Wallflower Press, 2002), 138, discussing the soundtrack of the video game Alien
Trilogy.

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that depend on dissonance, are unnerving;”6 however, musical descriptions rarely extend
beyond such basic observations and musical terminology. This situation prompts what is
currently a largely unanswered question: what can analyzing game music in more detail
bring to an understanding of the genre of game music and the medium of video games?
Certainly there are plenty of reasons why a musical analyst might be interested in
studying video game music. The success of tours such as Play and Video Games Live,
where orchestras perform arrangements of video game tunes in symphonic halls before
hundreds of fans (many of whom dress up as their favourite gaming character for the
occasion)7 all over the Americas, Europe and East Asia, suggests that the music of video
games is considered by many listeners and professional musicians as meritorious not only
as collages of sounds accompanying virtual journeys, but also as music in and of itself, to

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be listened to intently for its own sake away from its gaming contexts. An analyst might
turn to musical analysis to question how game music relates to other popular forms of
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music these fans enjoy, perhaps to see if their enjoyment of the music derives from the
musical features themselves or the mental associations they make between these melodies
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and their game-playing hobby. Alternatively, perhaps an analyst wishes to explore how
specific musical features draw players into the feeling of ‘immersion,’8 applying the
results not only to video games, but also to other immersive technologies like video
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lottery terminals, which use musical cues to attract gamblers, mask their financial losses
and discourage them from leaving.9 In such contexts, mapping specific musical gestures

6Ken McAllister, Game Work: Language, Power, and Computer Game Culture (Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, 2004), 87.
7 Such events’ success has prompted others to set up ensembles uniquely dedicated to this cause, such as
Montreal’s Orchestre des jeux vidéo. In other spheres, popular bands such as The 1-ups and The Minibosses
do covers of renowned game tunes.
8 Biocca and Delaney define the term ‘immersion’ in the context of video games as the extent to which a
“virtual environment submerges the perceptual system of the user in computer-generated stimuli. The more
the system captivates the sense and blocks out stimuli from the physical world, the more the system is
considered immersive.” Frank Biocca and B. Delaney, “Immersive Virtual Reality Technology,” in
Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality, ed. Frank Biocca and Mark Levy (Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum,
1995), 57.
9 See generally K. Collins et al., “Sound in Electronic Gambling Machines: A Review of the Literature and
its Relevance to Game Sound,” in Game Sound Technology and Player Interaction: Concepts and
Development, ed. Mark Grimshaw (Hershey PA: Information Science Reference, 2011), at 1-21.

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onto human behaviours opens further inquiries into how the mind understands and reacts
to music. Perhaps an analyst is interested in understanding the history of video game
composition techniques as part of research for a class s/he is teaching in a university
music program dedicated to video game composition—of which there are gradually more
and more offered,10 yet with apparently little knowledge of the critical repertoire from the
past.11 Or, perhaps, an analyst might simply be interested in the compositional logic and
peculiarities of the modern tonal practices from video game music for their own sake.
Thus, there are many avenues which are open for video game music research. Yet few
have been explored. It has been over a decade since Nicholas Cook warned that “music is
booming; but it is booming outside of music theory,”12 yet the extension of music
theoretical paradigms to a booming and decidedly popular genre like video game music

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has been markedly slow.
This last idea of exploring the compositional logic of video game music for its
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own sake holds significant personal appeal for me, and is one of the overarching purposes
of this study. Video game music is a most curious genre, one that music theory has yet to
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peer into with any degree of rigour or seriousness. Originally a largely Japanese
endeavour, as for video games more generally, the peculiarity of video game music was
perhaps most astutely captured by Matthew Belinkie, who suggested it emerged from and
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continues to thrive in a context where “eastern musicians, greatly influenced by western

music, compose music for an eastern audience which is later sold back to the west.”13

10 Karen Collins briefly details a few examples of such programs. See Karen Collins, Game Sound: An
Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 2008), ix.
11 It is worth pondering for a moment if any music program worth its salt would ever graduate film-scoring
students who never considered the works and techniques of Korngold, Elfman or Williams, or string players
who never played a Beethoven string quartet. How is it that the aforementioned video game music
programs do not consider the historical repertoire of the genre in any detail, since just about every other
music program out there makes the examination of important historical works and figures of the genre an
important pedagogical objective? If these programs do accomplish this objective, then it is worth asking
why details of this research have not yet surfaced in publication anywhere.
12 Nicholas Cook, Analysing Musical Multimedia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), viii.
13Matthew Belinkie, “Video Game Music: Not Just Kids Stuff,” [Link], 1999, accessed August 3,
2011, [Link]

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Viewed from this angle, that video game music attracts a worldwide following is a minor
miracle of international cultural exchange.
In order to begin addressing some of the unresolved questions facing video game
music, this study proposes a comprehensive analysis of several tunes from the Super
Mario video game series. The reasons for selecting these video games are numerous.
First, as the “most famous game character of all-time,”14 whom reports suggest was at one
time better known in the United States than even Mickey Mouse,15 it is a safe bet that
most people—theorists and otherwise— have encountered Mario and the games he
features in somewhere before, providing a reasonable level of basic familiarity and
context for the study.16 Some tunes from Super Mario games are also widely known, not
the least of which is the track simply known as the Super Mario Bros. Theme.17 The Super

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Mario series is also long-running, having celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010, offering
lots of music up for analysis. Said otherwise, for a first major inquiry wanting to motivate
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further research into video game music, familiarity is likely a better strategy than
obscurity.
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Yet, the Super Mario series is appealing as a research object for more musically-
centred reasons, too. Much of the Super Mario series’ music was composed by the same
musician, Koji Kondo, allowing for a reasonable theoretical assumption about the
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consistency of musical thought applied to the writing of the series’ soundtracks.

Moreover, Kondo is objectively important in the history of video game music, given that

14Steven Jones, The Meaning of Video Games: Gaming and Textual Strategies (New York: Routledge,
2008), 138.
15 Steven Kent, “Super Mario Nation,” in The Medium of the Video Game, ed. Mark Wolf (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 2001), 46.
16 Although I will offer some explanations and recall certain non-musical details about the Super Mario

Bros. series as is relevant, having a general background knowledge of Super Mario games and gaming is
likely useful in reading this study, in the same way that knowing a specific opera or a film and the
techniques and vocabulary of those genres is useful in reading about their associated musics.
17Several examples illustrate this tune’s popularity: from 2006 to 2009 it was the most downloaded cellular
phone ringtone worldwide; it has been arranged for numerous musical ensembles, from rock bands to a
cappella jazz choirs to brass quintets; it is a staple of the repertoire of various touring video game music
symphonic shows (notably, Play and Video Games Live); and several performers have created covers and
adaptations of the work, most notably Taiwanese pianist and music star Jay Chou, who in 2006 famously
inserted the tune into a pop adaptation of J.S. Bach’s C- Prelude (WTC I) during a performance for Filipino
broadcaster GMA.

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he was the first person, circa 1984, to write actual music for a video game,18 in the 1985
game Super Mario Bros. Prior to Kondo, video games featured sounds, but (with
apologies to John Cage) not what most people would describe as music. The sound aura
of Pong perhaps best represents the pre-musical game sound era: whenever the ‘ball’ hits
one of the paddles at the edge of the screen, a sound is created, a beep of somekind; yet,
surely few people would describe the accumulation of beeps emerging from even the
most hotly contested Pong match as music. Koji Kondo’s contributions, then, establish
him as the first game music composer, and thus his aesthetics can reasonably be
hypothesized to inform many of game music’s foundational norms. Additionally, Kondo
remains a towering figure of the game music genre today, having been recognized by his
peers with a lifetime achievement award in 2007 from the Game Audio Network Guild.19

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Thus, a study of the music of Mario and Koji Kondo seems like a good starting
point for inquiries into game music, not only due to its popularity at its beginnings and
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today, but also for the contributions the series and its principal composer have made
towards the very idea of video game music itself.
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[The next paragraph begins on the next page.]
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18 Belinkie.
19 Bryn Williams, “Koji Kondo’s Musical Landscape,” Gamespy, March 7, 2007, accessed August 3, 2011,
[Link]

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 The specific problem under consideration here is more targeted than simply
analyzing the music. Rather, based on the main canon of Super Mario video games, 20 this
study proposes an analysis of those musical works featuring common motives and/or
themes.21 Indeed, in video game series such as Super Mario, it will be shown that there
exist several recurring musical themes, somewhat akin to leitmotifs, but with less
narrative connotations than the term usually invokes. Such recurrences usually go beyond
simply copying themes from one track or game to another; changes occur in comparison
to the ‘original’ tune, such as alternations to its melody, harmonies, rhythms, and overall
character. Applied across several games, this process creates a rich canon of related works
reflective of Koji Kondo’s variational approach.

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20 Although by some counts, the character Mario has appeared in over 200 video games, for the purpose of
defining the Super Mario series, eleven games are considered to form the main canon of Mario games. This
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is per Nintendo’s own Super Mario History 1985-2010 commemorative booklet, included as a pack-in with
a 25th anniversary edition of Mario games released for the Nintendo Wii in 2010. The eleven titles are:
Super Mario Bros. (1985), Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988), and Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990), all for the
Nintendo Entertainment System; Super Mario World (1991) and Super Mario All-Stars (1993; note that this
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game featured visually updated versions of the NES Mario games including The Lost Levels (see below),
although changing next to nothing about the actual gameplay) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment
System; Super Mario 64 (1996) for the Nintendo 64; Super Mario Sunshine (2002) for the Nintendo
Gamecube; New Super Mario Bros. (2006) for the Nintendo DS; and Super Mario Galaxy (2007), New
Super Mario Bros. Wii (2009) and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010) for the Nintendo Wii. Also note that, in
1986, Nintendo released Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels in Japan only, which was later included in the
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more widely distributed Super Mario All-Stars (1993); this game mostly used the same music as the
original Super Mario Bros., however, so its absence from the official timeline is unproblematic for this
study. The reasons for which Nintendo excludes games such as Super Mario Land (1989, for the Nintendo
Game Boy) from its official North American Mario history remain unclear, though it is known that pivotal
developers of the Mario series, such as Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto and composer Koji Kondo, were
generally not involved in designing most of these other titles. Throughout the study, individual game titles
will be referred to by their full name and year of publication so as to facilitate the reader’s approximation of
the game’s place in the series and its level of technological sophistication. See Nintendo, Super Mario All-
Stars: Mario 25th Anniversary Edition (Wii®) (Redmond, WA: Nintendo of America, 2010).
21 Of course, the point at which motives become themes continues to be a contentious issue in music theory
more generally. From this point onwards, I will use the term theme to describe a repeating musical phrase
featured across several Mario compositions, without regard for whether or not such a theme features “a
conventional set of initiating, medial, and ending intrathematic functions” which close with a cadence, as
William Caplin (p. 257) would want them to in the high classical tradition, or any other period-specific
stylistic conceptions of the term. Motives, on the other hand, are understood as elements from within the
themes—akin to gestures, interrupted or incomplete phrases, the bases of ostinatos, individual examples of
Caplin’s intrathematic functions, etc.—and, while they usually satisfy Roger Sessions’ definition in their
“small but rhythmically self-sufficient” character (p. 44), they may not always neatly fit in any of these
categories either. In sum, for this study, motives are joined into themes, and the boundaries of these terms
are somewhat elastic in relationship to their traditional music theoretical definitions. See William Caplin,
Classical Form: A Theory of Formal Functions for the Instrumental Music of Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) and Roger Sessions, The Musical Experience of
Composer, Performer, Listener (New York: Atheneum, 1965).

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 To those even passingly familiar with the Super Mario series’ music, this much is
already abundantly clear, even if the variational techniques in and of themselves could
come into sharper focus. My main thesis goes one step further, in that I propose that a
careful analysis of thematically-related works demonstrates a planned differentiation of
motivic variational approaches based on the role that a particular theme plays within the
context of the Super Mario series as a whole. Koji Kondo does not just vary his themes;
he varies them purposefully with consideration for a given theme’s pivotal musical
identity, that which will later be deemed its essential element. Larger-scale consistencies
in some applications of variational techniques are such that informal rules may be
abstracted about how Koji Kondo approaches composing music for the Super Mario
video games.

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To this end, the study is structured in five parts beyond this introduction. First,
some background details on the Super Mario series and Koji Kondo will be developed to
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provide context about gameplay and the musical ideas which may have influenced the
development of Mario soundtracks. Second, a review of recent literature about video
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game music will showcase some methodologies currently used in this research area, and
demonstrate the utility of score analysis as a capable tool for research in game audio.
Third, a general analytical framework will be developed for how to analyze the music of
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Super Mario video games, so as to better abstract common musical elements from more
notable ones. Fourth, five sets of thematically-related works drawn from multiple Super
Mario titles will be analyzed in detail. Fifth, unearthed trends in the analysis will be
discussed, and their relationships to gameplay and other Mario contexts elaborated.
Readers are also invited to consult the appendix of scores joined to this study, so as to
facilitate an understanding of the music of Mario and my research about it. Overall, the
study offers a first sketch of Koji Kondo’s approach to variation in his music.

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I. Sweet Participation: Mario’s Gameplay and Creators
In a study dedicated to the music of Super Mario, some expository context on the
games themselves and the composer is appropriate to clarify many of the study’s terms
and contexts which will be referred to periodically in this study. This section also presents
an outline of the process by which video game music is written, which differs in some
important ways from music that theorists usually consider. Finally, the largely unknown
yet key figure that is Koji Kondo, principal composer of the Super Mario games, is
elucidated.

The Basics of Super Mario

Introducing the Super Mario series ought be a relatively simple task, given that

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the main character and the games he features in “are as deeply ingrained in the national
consciousness as the Disney menagerie”22 (if not more so, as was alluded to earlier). Its
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“jump-and-run”23 gameplay now extends to hundreds of other gaming titles (Mario and
non-Mario alike), where the main goal is to navigate a path full of enemies and obstacles
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to reach a goal somewhere in the virtual space by running and jumping; there is also some
swimming, sliding, flying, etc. thrown in for variety. The main canon of the series now
comprises 11 major titles featuring this type of gameplay.24 In early Mario titles, players
move left-to-right through a two-dimensional world, seeking out individual levels’ finish
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lines (a flag, a special box, a gate, sometimes implicitly ‘breached’ or ‘found’ by

defeating a major enemy, etc.), allowing them to advance to more difficult levels. Since
Super Mario 64 (1996), three-dimensional virtual spaces render gameplay less linear, in
that the players no longer need to move lef-to-right; they can go left, right, up, down,
around objects, into the sky or underwater, etc. as they choose. Still, the objective remains
to accomplish some goal (such as defeating an enemy, winning a race, collecting an

22 Kent, “Super Mario Nation,” 35.

23 Michael Nitsche, Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Game Worlds (Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 2008), 96.

24 See footnote 20 above for a full description of the Mario canon.

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object, etc.) within this environment, and achieving it unlocks more difficult challenges.25
In all instances, the environments themselves change periodically to offer a broader range
of challenges to players, or to suggest narrative elements. For example, castles feature
prominently in the Mario series, since this is where the games’ antagonists hide from
Mario. Hence, entering a castle is usually a sign that a major battle is about to take place.
The narrative goal of accomplishing these feats is usually to save Princess Peach
of the Mushroom Kingdom from some unthinkable fate in the hands of the evil Bowser, a
giant spiky-shelled turtle, or one of his cronies. There is nothing particularly special about
this setup; as Jeff Newman notes, it represents a typical narrative rescue plot with an
“archetypical damsel in distress” needing rescuing.26 Of course, to players, the motivation
for playing a Mario game is not so much to win back the princess as it is to “battle against

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the terrain of the landscape” to be traversed,”27 and the personal satisfaction that comes
from overcoming difficult enemies and obstacles in the process of doing so. As players
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travel across different virtual spaces, the music changes to match the new environment in
which players find themselves, say underwater or in a fiery castle.
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One of the key distinctions which should be explicated for later analytical
purposes is the nuance between the Super Mario game series and a particular Mario
game. Comparisons to other arts are useful for grasping the similarities and differences
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which exist in gaming series versus series in other media. In traditional literature, one
could cite J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as being somewhat analogous to a
series in gaming, and specific instalments of the trilogy (say, The Two Towers) as
equivalent to a single title, like Super Mario World (1991). Literary series generally
feature recurring characters, locations, plot elements and a unifying written style;
individual entries develop their own plots (that is, they are not re-treads of the previous
novels), yet feature narrative structures which insert themselves into the broader themes
and contexts of the series as a whole. Video game series are often very similar in this

25Note that difficulty generally resets between titles; hence, the start of Super Mario Bros. 2 (1988) features
easier challenges than the end of Super Mario Bros. (1985).
26 James Newman, Videogames (London: Routledge, 2004), 94 and 55.
27 Ibid., 113.

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respect. In games of the Super Mario series, however, there is no overarching narrative
structure that continues from one instalment into the next, as is the case with literary
series. Rather, as hinted at above, the storyline in each Mario game is largely similar to
that of any other Mario game: Princess Peach has been kidnapped, and Mario must rescue
her. In this sense, a more apt literary comparison might be with detective novels (such as
Agatha Christie’s Miss Marples or Hercules Poirot series, or Georges Simenon’s Jules
Maigret series) or various adventure novels (Dixon’s The Hardy Boys, Vernes’ Bob
Morane, etc.); characters and genres return, but the setting and circumstances of the
action generally reset between titles, offering the hero fresh, new challenges. This kind of
approach is occasionally used in television animation, too. A good example comes from
the Looney Tunes cartoon series, such as that series featuring the Road Runner and Wile

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E. Coyote. The excitement in watching such cartoons comes not from knowing that the
Road Runner will escape the Coyote’s plan and the Coyote will end up hurting himself in
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each episode, but rather in how this will play out. Mario games narratively function in
very similar way: it is not the fact that the princess has been kidnapped again which
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retains attention, it is the challenges that Mario will need to overcome to get her back that
do. Series in games, then, emphasize the action which is to be taken to accomplish a
narrative goal, rather than the denouement of the goal itself, and various series associate
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themselves by their branding to specific kinds of actions. In the case of Mario games, this
is running and jumping through lands in the name of saving a princess, over and over
again, but always in a somewhat different way.
The relationship between Super Mario series/games and game music is complex
and will be the subject of much elaboration later on, but one clear point should be made
now. Some musical themes, such the well-known Super Mario Bros. Theme, transcend
individual games of the series and are featured in some form in most Mario titles. Other
themes are expanded within the soundtrack of only one game, such as the Super Mario
World Theme; as the name suggests, this theme is only found in the game Super Mario
World (1991). This study considers both ‘series themes’ and ‘game themes’ in their
appropriate context, that is, by extending series themes across multiple games and gaming

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platforms, and by limiting game themes to whichever specific titles in which they are
developed. These terms, series theme and game theme, will be used throughout to clarify
the nature and breadth of a theme’s use.

Game audio development

A second important contextual detail in a study of the music of the Super Mario
series concerns the processes by which game music is developed. Unlike art music, game
music is composed in an industrial setting where musical products must not only satisfy
their composers, but also others—colleagues, directors, testers—involved in the game
development process.
Karen Collins provides the most straightforward and non-technical account of the

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game audio development process in chapter 5 of her book Game Sound.28 An important
principle in the production of video games is the hierarchy built into audio design studios;
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all work is approved along a chain of command. The head of the studio is typically the
sound director, who “is responsible for the overall audio vision” of a game and “oversees
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the design, [and] defines and drives the creative and technical directions” of the audio
project.29 The sound director typically reports to the game director, who oversees all
branches of a game’s development. An audio design studio typically specializes the
functions of its employees such that sound designers, licensing/contracting directors
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(where music is being licensed from external sources), composers and audio programmers
all work together to satisfy the sound director’s requests.30 At Nintendo, the sound team
which Mario composer Koji Kondo now directs reportedly employs approximately 40
people.31

28 Karen Collins, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music
and Sound Design (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008). This section is intended as a summary of the
process; for further reading, consult Collins’ text, or any technical manual described in section II of this
study.
29 Ibid., 87.
30 Ibid., 87.
31 Glitterberri [online moniker], “Special Interview – Koji Kondo,” [Link], October 26, 2010,
accessed August 3, 2011, [Link]

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 Collins presents game audio production as a three-step method: pre-production,
production, and post-production. In the pre-production stage, sound teams—which
include designers working not only on music, but also sound effects and dialogue—gather
to chart what kind of audio the game likely needs and divide up the work. Sound teams
sometimes produce an “audio design document” to summarize their vision for their
work.32 Also, by studying “storyboards, concept art, crude gameplay, [and/or] character
sketches” supplied by other development teams in the studio (such as graphics, story,
programming, etc.), the styles, moods and functionality of audio in relation to other game
elements may be better understood early in the development process.33
The production stage emphasizes what one might reasonably expect in touring a
game audio development studio: artists at work on their fragments of a much larger

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project. Some less expected tasks come along, too. Composers, having completed a score,
may need to code cues, loops or splits into their score34 so as to better integrate the music
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with its functional role in the game. In some games, audio channels may need to be
redistributed from the composer’s original work to allow for special gameplay effects.35 If
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compositions are being orchestrated, musical materials (scores, MIDI multitracks, etc.)
are sometimes sent to an external professional orchestrator;36 later, an orchestra will be
assembled and the music recorded. Late in the process, all sounds—music, effects,
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dialogue— are integrated into a playable version of the game,37 and revisions undertaken
as necessary to fit the overall vision of the game.

32 Collins, Game Sound, 89.

33 Ibid., 90.
34 Ibid., 99; simply said, these terms refer to various computer instructions which affect how a track is
played in-game and how tunes transition from one track to another in-game.
35 Ibid., 103. An example might be to allow for seamless stereo panning of a diegetic musical event that a
player passes by in the game’s virtual space.
36 Ibid., 95.
37 Ibid., 99.

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 Audio post-production, for its part, “typically involves some degree of [audio]
mixing” in order to adjust the balance between all sound elements.38 In this stage,
problems of “overlap between frequencies,” where several distinctly programmed sounds
coincidentally occupy the same pitch range and thus clash when sounded together in the
course of normal gaming events, are typically addressed.39 Upon reaching a satisfactory
balance for all sound elements as well as the transition between elements, the final audio
setup is approved. Developers will briefly celebrate their achievement and the end of a
project before soon beginning another.
Of course, Karen Collins’ model is only a generalization of highly variable
approaches used throughout the game development industry. Understanding more about
Mario-specific musical processes requires that we turn our attention towards the series’

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composer Koji Kondo and the practices by which he reportedly composes and directs
Super Mario soundtracks. IE
A snapshot of Koji Kondo
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Compared to many musicians, relatively little is known about Koji Kondo, lead
composer of the Super Mario series since 1985 and currently the manager of sound
development at Nintendo’s Entertainment Analysis and Development division, an in-
house game development studio.40 Given his profession, perhaps the fact that little is
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known about him is not so surprising; unlike travelling performers or composers

premiering works across the globe, Kondo’s tasks require that he mostly stay in his
studio. Although there are no authoritative biographies available, many salient details
about his life, musical influences, and approach to composition and audio development
can be gleaned from the occasional interviews he gives to gaming media outlets.41

38 Ibid., 102.
39 Ibid., 102.
40 Satoru Iwata, “Super Mario All-Stars: Vol. 1 The Music,” Iwata Asks, 2010, accessed August 3, 2011,
[Link]
41 Note that Koji Kondo knows little English. Therefore, all of the English-language interviews consulted
here presumably made use of a simultaneous translation service during the interview, or some translation by
a third party later. In any case, direct quotations from Kondo should be understood as being mediated via a
translator, whose own level of musical sophistication is unknown.

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Beyond Super Mario, Kondo’s musical credits include much of the music for other
Nintendo series such as The Legend of Zelda and Star Fox.
Born in Nagoya in 1960, he began musical studies at age five on an electric
keyboard.42 From age seven, he mostly played electric organ,43 over time also
experimenting with conventional piano and various kinds of synthesizers.44 More
recently, he is learning to play the cello.45 From middle school, Kondo played electric
organ in a band. In its first few years, the band mostly did covers of the music of hard
rock band Deep Purple, but later, in high school, it turned more towards jazz and fusion.46
Upon graduation from high school, he attended the Osaka University of Arts,47 where he
followed a general fine arts program, taking courses in composition, music mixing and
painting.48 As a university student, Kondo spent quite some time in local cafés and

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arcades playing video games. It was these early interactions between computer sounds
and images which sparked his interest in sound programming. 49
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As he recounts it, Kondo’s employment with Nintendo was a “lucky break.”50
Nintendo, headquartered at the time in nearby Kyoto and looking for its first sound/
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music employee, had sent recruiters to the Osaka University of Arts just before Kondo
was slated to graduate in 1984.51,52 A friend of Kondo’s heard about this and let him know

42Chris Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview,” Wired, March 11, 2007, accessed August 3, 2011, http://
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[Link]/gamelife/2007/03/vgl_koji_kondo_/.
43 Glitterberri, “Special Interview – Koji Kondo.”
44 IGN, “Koji Kondo: An Interview with a Legend,” [Link], March 12, 2007, accessed August 3, 2011,
[Link]
45Koji Kondo, “Inside Zelda: Part 4,” [Link], 2005, accessed August 3, 2011, [Link]
universe/game/twilightprincess/[Link] [Originally published in Nintendo Power, Vol. 195 (2005)].
46 Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.”
47 Ibid.
48Mark MacDonald, “Koji Kondo Interview,” [Link]/Electronic Gaming Monthly, March 2005, accessed
August 3, 2011, [Link]
49 Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.”
50 Kondo, “Inside Zelda: Part 4.”
51 MacDonald, “Koji Kondo Interview.”
52 Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.”

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about the opportunity, thinking it would be a good match for him given all the games he
played at the arcades.53 Kondo says he never submitted a demo tape as part of the
interview process (although there were some tests of an unspecified nature administered);
he now suspects that Nintendo never asked for one because nobody in the company at the
time could have properly evaluated such a tape. 54 Kondo won the job.
For his first few projects at Nintendo, Kondo acted as a sound programmer only;55
none of these early works remain particularly notable today. His real breakthrough came
with the development in 1984 and 1985 of the original Super Mario Bros. game, in which
he moved into a music programming role. Citing inspiration from the bright blue
background in the game (video games until Super Mario Bros. usually used a black
background),56 he aimed “to create something that had never been heard before,”

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something that was unlike the game music of the era.57 Although he quickly wrote the
original Underwater tune, the main Overworld tune (also known as the Super Mario Bros.
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Theme) required several re-writes; the tune needed to “enhance the gameplay and make it
more enjoyable” and be “part of the game.”58 Kondo eventually found that the best way to
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coordinate the music and images of Super Mario Bros. (1985) and Mario games
thereafter lay in identifying the game’s rhythm (N.B., not the music’s rhythm)—the speed
at which Mario runs, jumps, swims, etc.—and then to try to capture the feel of that
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rhythm in composing music which fits it.59 Kondo cites the physicality of game control
inputs as one way of identifying a game’s rhythm, in that depressing buttons on a
controller is inherently a physical activity whose patterns can be felt by a player.60 Kondo

53 Glitterberri, “Special Interview – Koji Kondo.”

54 MacDonald, “Koji Kondo Interview.”
55 Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.”
56 Iwata, “Super Mario All-Stars (2010).”
57Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.” Recall that, up until that point in time, most video game ‘music’
was perhaps better described as streams of sound effects
58 Ibid.
59 Glitterberri, “Special Interview – Koji Kondo.”
60 Kohler, “VGL: Koji Kondo Interview.”

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blends this approach with his empirical finding that the music of Mario requires
“something bright, short, airy, happy-go-lucky” due to its gameplay centred on jumping,61
and the result is new Mario music for a new game.
In terms of developmental approaches, Kondo describes his modern-day
compositional process as follows:
Basically, what happens for me at Nintendo, is that, midway through the
game’s development, the staff [from outside the audio department] will bring
over a project that they're currently working on, and I'll play through it over
and over and attempt to grasp the feeling players should get through the
game. Then I begin to create the melodies and themes for the game. From that
point, it’s a parallel process alongside the game. The music changes as the
game changes.62

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At Nintendo, then, the pre-production phrase is only loosely observed, with its tasks
mostly re-distributed into the production phase. Kondo also reports that the guiding
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question which decides whether to accept or reject his own (and, more recently, others’)
musical tracks is: do the game and music fit one another?63 Kondo also emphasizes
listening to game music in its natural context by playing sounds and music back through
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television speakers in the compositional process,64 given that this is how the music will
normally be experienced by gamers. This approach intimately weaves Kondo’s
impressions of his own Mario-playing experience into a game’s musical soundtrack.
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Hence, Kondo’s Mario scores represent both a musical reaction to his experience of
playing the game and a reflection of his conception of the players’ intended impressions
from playing the game.
Kondo’s personal musical influences remain somewhat unclear. Aside from Deep
Purple, Kondo rarely mentions the same artists when asked from who he draws musical
inspiration. The answer is also never the same when asked what he is listening to at any

61 Kevin Gifford, “How Mario Music Gets Made,” [Link], February 24, 2010, accessed August 3, 2011,
[Link]
62 IGN. The punctuation of the excerpt has been edited silently for clarity.
63 Glitterberri, “Special Interview – Koji Kondo.”
64 Ibid.

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