Tag Archives: koji kondo

VGM Entry 45: A Link to the Past

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 45: A Link to the Past
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

I never did find out why Koji Kondo did not score Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, but then, very little about that game made much sense in any department. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past got the series back on track both stylistically and musically.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2KYrEI5JZY

Yet the music to A Link to the Past never much agreed with me as a kid (though I enjoyed it more than Super Mario World). It’s got a really dark side to it which I think often goes unrecognized, and which made it incredibly appropriate for the game. I mean, there is nothing warm and fuzzy about A Link to the Past. Monsters all over the place, guards out to kill you… The whole world’s got only one town in it and everyone there’s a crook or a witch or just all around unfriendly. Your only real companion is some chick’s voice in your head, and you don’t really ever get to interact with her along the way. In spirit, this was more some horror/nightmare game than a standard adventure/RPG. It made me really uncomfortable as a kid, and it should have. You know, half your companions might die or betray you in Final Fantasy IV, but at least you had them. As Link, you’re quite alone in the world.

I think Koji Kondo perpetuated the angst. You can divide the majority of the soundtrack into string and trumpet tracks and harp tracks. The latter are soothing, sure, but they mostly occur in little safe haven faerie pools. I’m sure glad Tinker Bell is on my side, but I don’t think I’ll be sheathing my sword any time soon. And the former, the former are spooky. Seriously. When you get the same tones on the Hyrule Castle theme (2:25) that you hear in the Forest (3:55) there’s got to be something up. Hyrule Castle is supposed to be protecting your realm, and sure, you’re an unwelcome guest, but the effect is to make the castle itself feel like it’s under some dark spell. You’re not just battling corrupt politicians here; there’s something evil pervading this whole world. Indeed, the forest ends up being one of the most comforting songs on the album, because the flute it least renders it merely mysterious and not obviously dangerous.

Kakariko Village (not sampled here), the only town in the game, uses slightly different tones, but they still have that sort of ghostly texture to them, and in consequence it feels no more comforting than that enchanted mysterious forest.

I think I can best describe my childhood Link to the Past experience as simultaneously captivating and unnerving. I don’t care to speculate what Koji Kondo had in mind when he composed it, but suffice to say I think its consistency with the gameplay is phenomenal.

VGM Entry 42: SNES

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 42: SNES
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Are we really there? I had naively intended to start this whole project off with a simple one to two post summary of video game music prior to 1990, then jump right away into the Super Nintendo. I suppose it didn’t quite work out that way.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk57KiTlMlc

I don’t know much about technological specifications. I have no idea what made the SNES tick the way it did. But there had to be something inspirational to musicians in its design. The Super Famicom was launched in Japan on November 21, 1990. By the end of the year it had nine titles, and as far as I’m concerned only two of them lacked noteworthy soundtracks. That’s better than the Genesis/Mega Drive managed in its first two years. And of the two that fail to impress me, Final Fight (Capcom) was a port arrangement of the arcade original and Super Ultra Baseball (Culture Brain, Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 in the U.S.) was precisely what it sounds like–the sort of game only a Tim Follin would put serious energy into.

F-Zero (Nintendo)’s soundtrack, composed by Yumiko Kanki (Naoto Ishida also wrote two tracks for it), is not one of the best on the SNES. Top 50? Eh, probably. But it sounds unbelievably better than nearly anything before it. The system brought nearly arcade-quality music to the mass consumer market, but also to musicians accustomed to having to compensate for lack of quality with highly creative song-writing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUs7bFWmy14

So you got both. And you would continue to get both for the better part of a decade. Bombuzal (Image Works) was originally released for the Commodore 64, Amiga, and Atari ST in 1988. Its original version, composed by Ross Goodley as best I can tell, was pretty catchy in its own right. But the clarity of each tone on the Super Nintendo version (later released in North America as Kablooey), arranged, I believe, by Hiroyuki Masuno, gives the song a degree of fullness it could have never possessed before, even on the Amiga. And much like the Commodore 64/Amiga musicians of old, Hiroyuki Masuno was not afraid to improvise, incorporating his own melodies into the song and altering the rhythm and general vibe to suit his own whims. Hiroyuki Masuno’s revised Bombuzal theme is downright addicting.

SD The Great Battle (Banpresto) is a fun soundtrack to point out, both because you’ve almost certainly never heard it and because I think it really shows off how much better fairly generic scores could sound now. I mean, there is absolutely nothing special about what Norihiko Togashi did here. When the melodies are not a bit too overly repetative for their catchiness to be a virtue, they’re not particularly memorable at all. The only thing really to distinguish it from a standard to slightly above average NES soundtrack is the sound quality. But Norihiko Togashi makes excellent use of this. The accompaniment often pans and fades. The slap bass effectively fills in the percussion while still sounding like a real bass, and these never tastelessly overpower the melody as they’re so inclined to do on the Genesis/Mega Drive. It’s a completely forgettable little work which nevertheless surpasses a lot of the competition of its day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LLOEvhsgOg

Super Mario World by Koji Kondo obviously deserves mention, though I am not as fond of it as I perhaps ought to be. As a kid, I honestly found it kind of annoying, and I can understand why. Koji Kondo’s weird mix of Caribbean, Latin American, and African rhythms and instrumentation sound more like the sort of “world music” sampler cd you find at Starbucks than authentic ethnic music. (I find it funny that the PHD-waving ethnomusicologists I met in college placed the highest value in that sort of crap.) But this is Mario, not bad scholarship, so what he was borrowing for his compositions is really quite irrelevant. The end result is what matters, and the end result of most of these songs is pretty cheesy, whether you like it or not. It’s not until the ending credits (8:14) that Koji Kondo returns to the classic sound that so delights me in Super Mario Bros. 2. (That being said, Super Mario World‘s credits is one of my favorite Kondo songs ever.) This might have been the first game I ever personally owned–no more pretending the neighbor kid was my friend!–but it doesn’t hold much nostalgic value for me, and I think the music is somewhat to blame.

But enough with the negative criticism. Let’s not overlook the shear quantity of unique tracks in this game (well over 30 if we include some of the variations and shorter jingles). The “world music” gig is only a dominant fraction of a much larger collection. Such noteworthy tracks as “Forest of Illusion” (6:12), “Sub Castle”, “Koopa Junior”, “The Evil King Koopa”, and “Athletic” possess none of these nusences (as long as you stay away from Yoshi, which I never did, hence perhaps my youthful distaste). And had there ever been a game even remotely approaching Super Mario World‘s extent of gameplay relativity? Kondo’s own work on Super Mario Bros. 3 might come the closest, and it’s a long ways off. Super Mario World offered a ridiculous degree of diversity, with each zone and situation possessing a distinct and entirely appropriate sound. This might come to be the future norm for RPGs and adventure games, but we’re dealing with a simple side-scroller here.

Super Mario World was a grand showcase of the endless new possibilities made available by the Super Nintendo. It may lack some of the timeless classics of Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 2, but only in proportion to its length. Its place in the history books of video game music is well deserved.

VGM Entry 29: Mario’s many sequels

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 29: Mario’s many sequels
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

While the Genesis was just getting started, Nintendo developers were pumping out sequels. Super Mario Bros. 2, Final Fantasy II, Mega Man 2, Dragon Quest III, Super Mario Bros. 3… They were coming out right and left in 1988, and most of them were improvements over the originals.

The first thing you might ask is how Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 ended up being released in the same year. Well, they actually came out a mere two months apart. There is a bit more to this story though, and since Super Mario Bros. 2 has by far the best music among NES installments of the series, there should be time enough to tell it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WsaclyckD8

The first game to be titled “Super Mario Bros. 2” was released in Japan in March 1986. It seems to be readily downloadable today, but if you’re like me and don’t play games much these days you probably only ever encountered it on Super Mario All-Stars (1993) for the SNES, where it was titled The Lost Levels. As you might recall, it wasn’t particularly interesting; it was pretty much identical to the original, music and all, just with new level designs. This was not originally intended to be the case. A much more unique and creative game had been in development, but for whatever reason Nintendo’s market research lead them to believe that an expansion of the original would have greater commercial success. The project in development was passed off to Fuji Television Network and released as Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic in July 1987. Koji Kondo’s original work went along with the package, and much of what you are hearing now first appeared in Doki Doki Panic.

Nintendo sensed a different interest in the American consumer and went ahead with the original project. You may have heard at some point years back–I know I had–that the American Super Mario Bros. 2 was just some cheaply refurbished port of a non-series Japanese title, but this is not entirely correct. The projects were one and the same for much of the game’s development. In a very peculiar turn of events by early gaming standards, North America (and Europe) got the real Super Mario Bros. 2, and Japan got the ripoff. It took so long for the game to be released in its intended form, however, that it ended up launching in North America at pretty much the exact same time that Super Mario Bros. 3 came out in Japan.

Musically, Super Mario Bros. 2 improved on Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic by integrating peppier renditions of themes from the original Super Mario Bros. The music is also a lot more crisp, though that might be the consequence of differences between the Famicom and the NES. At any rate, it is probably my favorite early Koji Kondo soundtrack. The main theme remains, arguably unlike the original Mario Bros. theme, unconditionally pleasant. The limitations of the NES are a total non-factor here. I wish I could pinpoint what sort of style it is–I get some distant vibe of jazz and ragtime–but it either falls beyond my knowledge base or proceeds from nothing more than Koji Kondo’s incredible talent for writing instant classics. I mean, I never played Super Mario Bros. 2 back in the NES days, but it feels more nostalgic to me than the original Mario theme.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TNWfSpEL7w

Super Mario Bros. 3 is a little less interesting in my opinion, if only because its generally laid back pace and Latin/Caribbean beats just don’t feel quite in harmony with what was probably the fastest-moving of the NES Mario games. But Super Mario Bros. 3 was also the most diverse of these soundtracks, switching up its style as needed to suit a greater variety of level designs. In some instances, most notably “Level 2 Theme” (1:09), Konjo employs sounds more akin to his work in the prequel. “Hammer Brothers” (4:28) seems to be inspired by rock and roll, and the beat-laden revision of the original underworld theme, here amusingly titled “Super Mario Rap” (2:30), is undeniably cool.

I suppose Super Mario Bros. 3 can be justly regarded as the “best” NES-era Mario soundtrack, if nothing else for the shear variety of styles Konjo successfully employed. But it lacks any particular really stand-out tracks–the sort of incredibly catchy anthems for which he is best known.

VGM Entry 12: Zelda and Dragon Quest

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 12: Zelda and Dragon Quest
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

Two fantasy-style games in 1986 achieved massive retail success and thereby brought the genre to the attention of the masses. These, it should be fairly obvious, were The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo) and Dragon Quest (Enix). Both games are likewise frequently cited among the most important soundtracks for the Famicom/NES. I think this can be a bit misleading.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jElFHhfIrY

The Legend of Zelda had a truly epic main theme, with which Koji Kondo almost certainly surpassed his work in Super Mario Bros. Whether it was the best video game song written up to that point is really a matter of personal preference; it is not as though it had no competition. Regardless, this was the first installment of Nintendo’s second major franchise gaming series, and the sort of anthem Koji Kondo was able to craft for Link had enormous marketing benefits. It’s not as though lead characters in Nintendo’s games became popular out of the shear force of the company’s good name. No one really remembers say, Professor Hector (Gyromite and Stack-Up) or Mr. Stevenson (Gumshoe). If Link was going to become a franchise character, he was going to need a theme song, and in that regard Koji Kondo pulled through once again.

What else did The Legend of Zelda have going for it musically? Well… very little. I mean, the Underground Level theme (3:18) is pretty cool–all 18 seconds of it. It reminds me of some of Uematsu and Mitsuda’s later works. But there just isn’t much else to this game. The title screen and overworld theme are variations on the same (awesome) melody. Death Mountain (3:48) sounds like it was thrown together in five minutes, and the ending theme (1:42), while catchy, is simply in the wrong game. It is Mario music.

Koji Kondo is one of the most important figures in the history of video game music, no doubt about it, but the bar had not been raised quite so high on the NES in 1986 as it had been in the home computing world. Thus The Legend of Zelda sounds great within the context of its system, but a little primitive in the larger scope of things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntmk5aHaPQ4

The interesting thing about Dragon Quest to my western ears is that the game series was never all that hot here. I seem to recall reading at the time of Dragon Quest VIII‘s Japanese release–and we’re talking 2004 so I may be very much mistaken–that the game franchise had sold more copies than Final Fantasy. At any rate, it is important to recognize that this series was huge in Japan. The original Dragon Quest formalized nearly every stereotype of traditional RPGs. This video should make that fairly clear, and it’s pretty significant to note that this was not a product of Eastern adventure/RPG traditions. Yuji Horii took his inspiration from the Ultima and Wizardy series on the Apple II, and it’s at this point that the two genres really diverge. Japan would become the centerpoint of both Eastern and Western traditions, and just a Legend of Zelda served as the quintessential starting point for the modern adventure game, Dragon Quest permanently defined the RPG.

Like The Legend of Zelda‘s overworld theme, Dragon Quest‘s title theme became a series staple, but “Overture March” took quite a while to grow on me. A good many other ears might hear delicious nostalgia, but its quality does not immediately jump out at me. It’s really how Koichi Sugiyama continually developed and improved upon it in future games that makes the original fun to revisit. The rest of the soundtrack was, like Ultima III and Ultima IV, perfectly well suited for the RPG experience, and wider distribution meant that Sugiyama would be much more influential in standardizing this approach. I would be shocked if “Unknown World” (1:40) did not heavily influence Nobuo Uematsu. It could be a chiptune take on a Final Fantasy VII track, and it’s quite pleasant. Still, and unlike Kenneth W. Arnold’s works, the original soundtrack does have its flaws. The combat music (2:22) is terrible, grating on the ears on the first listen let alone after the constant encounters one expects in an RPG.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOrfzFPZLAs

But in setting the standards for the series he would faithfully continue to compose for the next twenty five years (the man is now 81 years old and still making music), Koichi Sugiyama also set the standard for what RPGs should sound like. The standard was already in practice, as I hope I have shown, but the enormous influence that the Dragon Quest series would have on video games in Japan probably prevented a lot of deviation from this norm in the future. And much to Koichi Sugiyama’s credit, the music definitely improved over time. Dragon Quest II, released by Enix in January 1987, less than a year after the series debut, would retain the original’s best tracks while replacing the obvious duds with significant improvements.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afXJfo-7XRM

By Dragon Quest III (Enix, 1988), Koichi Sugiyama had firmly established himself as one of the best RPG composers of the 1980s. His emphasis on continuity and improvement of past works rather than wholly original soundtracks allowed each game to feel both refreshing and entirely familiar. In the cases of the best tracks, the changes are barely even noticeable. “Overture March” in Dragon Quest III begins almost identically to the original for instance. The melody is a little more staccato, and that’s it. If it’s not broke, why fix it?

I don’t know that I would call either The Legend of Zelda or Dragon Quest great soundtracks. The Legend of Zelda contained an especially great song, but I feel like allowing one song to carry a game was beginning to be a cop-out by 1986. Dragon Quest formed a more complex whole, and it’s definitely closer to excellence, but I feel like it still lets the shortcoming of the NES get the better of it at times in sound selection for what were certainly wonderful melodies. It’s also got the Combat theme to deal with, and such a reoccurring flaw is hard to ignore. Koichi Sugiyama would continually improve, and Koji Kondo too would be stepping up his game before the Famicom expired, particularly with Super Mario Bros. 2 in 1988.

VGM Entry 09: Nintendo’s turn

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 09: Nintendo’s turn
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

If a bit humbled by less apparent contemporaries, Koji Kondo’s work in Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo, 1985) nevertheless stands as the most recognized video game music in the world. Your average Joe on the street is more likely to identify it than a Beatles or Dylan song. A lot of this has to do with successful marketing. Super Mario Bros. is not the most distributed game of all time. In fact, it barely sneaks into the top 10, at roughly 40 million copies sold. A lot of this has to do with dirt cheap mobile phone distribution. (Apparently that Angry Birds game has broken 1 billion. I still have no interest in checking it out, and anyway it’s pretty easy to exploit a free download to your heart’s content to get into the world record book. Does one seventh of the world’s population even own smartphones?) Of games that actually require you spend a little, the 2006 title Wii Sports is leading the records at 79 million. It must be that economic depression…

But really, if you asked people what they thought was the all-time best seller I’m pretty sure most would mention Nintendo’s 1985 classic, and that is an indication of the company’s groundbreaking marketing strategy. If you owned a Nintendo, you knew Mario and his music. And if you played video games in the late 80s, you probably owned a Nintendo. The company has moreover been persistently re-releasing the game ever since its conception, not to mention incorporating features of its classic soundtrack and iconic characters into newer games. The only prior game that really offered this sort of bundle–very catchy music, memorable characters, massive distribution–was Pac-Man.

But a 5 second song that doesn’t even loop and a big yellow dot just aren’t all that satisfying. Oh the ghosts had names, and I’m sure if I was born a few years earlier I’d have gotten a kick out of pretending they were somehow relevant and imagining some sort of weird plot to it all. (Preferably a better one than the Hanna-Barbera 1982 Pac-Man tv series.) But all of the important features, while present, were just too simplistic to stand the test of time. And it wasn’t a game design you could make good sequels to.

What Super Mario Bros. really offered was a full package. The “best” music of its day? No. The most memorable characters? Not in isolation. But all of the features came together to make a game that really had no flaws. Nintendo knew it, and they ran with it.

If I tried to compare Koji Kondo’s music to other game musicians of the day, I might sound a little unfair. He certainly wasn’t revolutionary in style; his music was if anything retro, harking back to earlier carnival- esque soundtracks, whereas electronic experimentation was the cutting edge. Compared to the likes of Monty on the Run (which by the way, despite being only one song, was longer than the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack in its entirety), the game sounds a little childish. But that was, after all, the target audience, and let’s not split hairs here. Koji Kondo is brilliant. He wrote a soundtrack that was simultaneously extraordinarily catchy and quite aesthetically pleasing. It never clashes with the game. It never speaks out louder than the game. It just merges harmoniously, and keeps on playing in your head when you power off.

Maybe that should be remembered as one of his greater contributions to video game music. A lot of the Commodore 64 tracks I’ve been listening to, while feeling more progressive than Super Mario Bros., seem to disregard their games entirely. A good case in point is Roland’s Rat Race.

Another 1985 title, composed by Martin Galway, Roland’s Rat Race (Ocean Software) is a sleazy little bop, perfect for an inner-city street fighter, or perhaps, in consideration of the peculiar opening sequence, something to do with extraterrestrial pimps. It’s great stuff, way better than the vast majority of soundtracks that would ever appear on the Nintendo Entertainment System. But the problem here should become pretty obvious when you take another look at the game’s cover art.

You will find irrelevant soundtracks up to this day, and plenty of carefully coordinated ones prior to Koji Kondo, but I do have to wonder if perhaps Super Mario Bros.‘ success lead to developers demanding a little more attention to audio relativity.

VGM Entry 05: SID comes to life

Posted on by necromoonyeti

VGM Entry 05: SID comes to life
(Thanks to Tish at FFShrine for the banner)

1985 was the year that changed video game music forever, and this transpired primarily through the mediums of the Commodore 64 and the Nintendo Entertainment System. At a glance it can seem a lot easier to discuss the latter, what with Koji Kondo’s classics being performed around the world in symphonies today. The former still lacks a formalized history. Where people will readily make the bold and overpresumptuous claim that Super Mario Bros. revolutionized NES music, or even all game music, you don’t really hear the same claim being made about Monty on the Run. This is good, because neither are entirely true. The main difference I suppose is that Super Mario Bros. was undeniably the most popular game of its day, while you may well have never even heard of Monty on the Run. I don’t know if its priority over other Commodore 64 works stems from greater marketing success in 1985 or from a later acknowledgement that it was probably the best among a whole lot of excellent songs.

Let’s focus on the Commodore 64 first. The C64 sound revolution required a lot of programming innovations. The sort of sounds Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, and the like were able to produce weren’t preset to the click of a button, and they weren’t at all obvious. Hubbard was most certainly the first prolific composer for the system, and a lot of SID programming innovations were his in origin, but to what extent C64 musicians influenced each other at this point in time is hard to say.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93nIljXpqUY

Monty on the Run (Gremlin Graphics, 1985) is probably Rob Hubbard’s most famous work, granted it was one of many he composed in 1985, and the improvement here over C64 examples from previous years is certainly staggering. I mean, games like 3D Skramble in 1983 may serve as fine examples of the SID’s naturally appealing tones, but they certainly don’t predict a chip and roll epic. With Rob Hubbard in 1985, and with Monty on the Run as the hallmark, we can really mark the end of serious technological limitations for home gaming sound. Programming sound for the Commodore 64 was a painstaking process no doubt, but its sound capacity was not so limiting as to physically deny quality in anything but the obscure/avantgarde. It took sound programmers a while to catch on, and perhaps, in light of the fact that they were not previously expected to compose great music for home game systems, it took a while for developers and real musicians to partner up. But three years after the release of the Commodore 64 and its legendary SID chip, home gaming music really came into its own.

Despite both making their first major waves in 1985, western and Japanese sound programming probably developed independently at first. Early game composers tended to stay within their regional spheres of influence. The European movement was not exclusive to the SID, but rather to local systems. Rob Hubbard for instance composed for the ZX Spectrum as well as the Commodore 64 early on, scoring such games as Spellbound (Mastertronic, 1985), but he never really branched out to Japanese gaming mediums. The Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC formed a fairly isolated pocket of platforms. Similarly, Koji Kondo composed exclusively for Nintendo, and Nobuo Uematsu’s non-NES works were all on computers of Japanese origin, such as the PC-8801 and MSX. A few British musicians, notably Tim Follin and Neil Baldwin, would later turn to the Nintendo, but the language barrier proved daunting. Some of Neil Baldwin’s best works were never commercially released due to communication difficulties between British developers and Japanese producers.

The most interesting indicator of what was going on with the Commodore 64 might be “Synth Sample” by Georg Feil. Composed in 1984 or 1985, it was a widely distributed file in the early days of the internet and had no affiliation with any sort of commercial enterprise. No one needed to ‘invent’ game music. It wasn’t discovered; it didn’t come to the first sound programmer as a sort of epiphany. It was the natural result of improvements in sound chips. Once the potential for good music was out there, it would happen with or without support from major game developers. The SID sounded great, it still sounds great, and it was an inspirational instrument in its own right. Hubbard and others might have been lucky enough to be paid a pittance for their works, but I like to think of them as musicians more so than ‘composers’ in the commercial sense.