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KOJI KONDO'S SUPER MARIO BROS. SOUNDTRACK

Andrew Schartmann, Takeshi Higuchi (Japanese Translation), Yu Yang (Chinese Translation)



 

Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. (1985) score redefined video game music. With under three minutes of music, Kondo put to rest an era of bleeps and bloops-the sterile products of a lab environment-replacing it with one in which game sounds constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression. Andrew Schartmann takes us through the various external factors (e.g., the video game crash of 1983, Nintendo's marketing tactics) that coalesced into a ripe environment in which Kondo's musical experiments could thrive. He then delves into the music itself, searching for reasons why our hearts still dance to the “primitive” 8-bit tunes of a bygone era.


What musical features are responsible for Kondo's distinct “Mario sound”? How do the different themes underscore the vastness of Princess Peach's Mushroom Kingdom? And in what ways do the game's sound effects resonate with our physical experience of the world? These and other questions are explored within, through the lens of Kondo's compositional philosophy-one that would influence an entire generation of video game composers. As Kondo himself stated, “we [at Nintendo] were trying to do something that had never been done before.” In this book, Schartmann shows his readers how Kondo and his team not just succeeded, but heralded in a new era of video games.

 

PUBLICATION DETAILS

LANGUAGE

BINDING

EDITION

ISBN

YEAR

PAGES

English

Paperback


9781628928532

2015

168

English

eBook


N/A

2015

168

Japanese

Paperback


9784866472041

2023

192

Japanese

eBook


N/A

2023

192

Chinesee

Paperback


9787532186839

2023

210

OTHER NAMES

  • 「スーパーマリオブラザーズ」の音楽革命 近藤浩治の音楽的冒険の技法と背景

  • 近藤浩治一超级马里奥兄弟原声

 

TAGS


Publishers: #Bloomsbury (Bloomsbury) #DuBooks (Du Books) #ShanghaiLiteratureArtPublishingHouse (Shanghai Literature & Art Publishing House)


Companies:

#Nintendo (Nintendo)


Public Figures:

#KojiKondo (Koji Kondo)


Games:

#Mario (Super Mario Bros.)


Misc:

N/A


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