Iwata Asks about Super Mario Galaxy 2’s music
The information below comes from the third edition of the Super Mario Galaxy 2 Iwata Asks interviews. It’s in Japanese, but I’m sure it’ll be released in English sometime in the next few days. While you wait, we’ve posted important details from the interview below.
– Mahito Yokota in charge of sound direction
– Koji Kondo composed a few songs, was a supervisor to check that all songs fit with Mario
– Ryo Nagamatsu only has four years of work with Nintendo, but did New Super Mario Bros. Wii
– At first, team was thinking of not really changing the music, but later needed to in order to match new elements in the game such as Yoshi
– Miyamoto told the sound team they worked too hard with all of the new music they created
– Miyamoto thought some fans would have liked to hear songs from Galaxy in the sequel, which is why there are some songs from the original in Galaxy 2 along with other classic Mario tunes
– All of the developers wanted to see the orchestra live, very crowded so people took turns watching
– 60 orchestra members, first game had about 50
– Orchestra conducted by Taizou Takemoto, a well-known classical conductor (also conducted 2002 Smash Bros. Concert at the HAL offices)
– Takemoto loves games, was able to fully understand and communicate in game jargon
– The orchestral records in the first game were difficult so Yokota was worried about getting Miyamoto to get on board for the sequel; Two days spent making presentation materials to show Miyamoto the importance of using an orchestra; When asked Miyamoto obliged without really thinking about it because he thought Galaxy 2 needed it since fans from the first game would be looking forward to it
– Sometimes needed to add 10 big band artists for those types of songs
– Kondo did the Yoshi Star song; Yokota wanted Kondo to do it because Yokota was concerned that if he did it, it would only be an extension of the Mario Galaxy music and believes Kondo is good at making Yoshi music
– Yokota wanted the song to not be orchestral and to sound like the primeval age; Kondo was concerned about how to make an ancient atmosphere for the song even though the game’s setting is on a planet
– Kondo wanted to do more songs for Galaxy 2; He created five songs including Yoshi Star Galaxy, Mario Star Ship, Koopa Jr. themes
– Kondo advised other staff; Example: Nagamatsu created a song for the world map, Kondo told him it wouldn’t work since it needs to make players feel the need to hurry up and move on to the next stage rather than have a good song; Kondo suggested that he create a simple looping song
– Yokota wants players to be able to cool down on Star Ship Mario
Thanks to Thomas N for the tip!
