Koji Kondo talks music in Mario Maker – “robust sound editing functions”, but no music creation
IGN has published a short interview with Koji Kondo, who is heavily involved with the music-side of Mario Maker. Check out his comments below.
On how the music is weaved into the player’s goal of creating in Mario Maker…
There are two modes to this game. You have the mode where you’re playing whatever it is you’ve created, and then the actual creation mode where you’re placing different blocks, enemies, and whatnot to build your level. What I really wanted to focus on was the seamless transition of music between those two modes.
So when you’re playing, you’ll be hearing the kind of music you’d expect, Then, when you transition into edit mode, the sounds might become a little brighter, cleaner, livelier, but we don’t really want you to notice that change. That seamless transition between the two modes is where we’re really focusing.
We also want to make sure that players, who will be spending a lot of time in the edit mode creating their levels, don’t get tired of the music. We have all the different tracks – the base track, the piano, the drums – which we try to do some interesting things with using our recent technology. Whether it’s lowering or increasing volume, or bringing them in and out of these separate tracks, we always want to make sure the music sounds fresh and new so the players never get tired of hearing it.
On how as players add tiles, you feel like you’re adding a layer of sound in…
You actually hit on something that’s pretty interesting. The sound effects that you hear when you’re placing the different elements within a level are pitched to match the music playing at that time. It’s pretty fun to add and subtract elements and see how those sound effects change to fit with the music that’s playing.
Similarly, a lot of the music in edit mode will be standard arrangements of some of the original scores you’ll be hearing in play mode, but I’m really looking at making those arrangements branch into a lot of different genres as well. Some of the songs will be pretty unique and abstracted versions of the original score.
On whether players will make their own music…
No. The sound editor is not designed to allow players to create their own original music, simply because this is a game about creating Mario levels to play through, not a music creator. While we do have some robust sound editing functions involved, there’s no music creation section.
