Mario Party composer says nearly 200 songs were scrapped from the soundtrack

Yasunori Mitsuda, the original composer for Mario Party, has now shared some interesting information about the first game’s soundtrack. Twitter user gosokkyu came through with the translation. Mario Party 1 and 2 just landed on Nintendo Switch Online as part of the service’s Expansion Pack tier, so it makes sense for this information to come to light now.

Mitsuda mentioned how Mario Party was his first freelance gig, and the music director told him they wanted “jazz”. However, all of his songs were rejected. Ultimately he scrapped almost 200 pieces of music from the initial Mario Party soundtrack, which is a personal record for him. It turns out that the music director was looking for big band jazz specifically rather than just simple jazz, so Mitsuda has “the bitter memory of being like, ‘seriously?!'”

Mitsuda has had an absolutely legendary career. Mario Party was one of his earlier titles, but before that he worked on Chrono Trigger and Xenogears. He’s also been involved with the Xenoblade Chronicles series, Super Smash Bros., Kid Icarus: Uprising, and much more.

Mario Party originally came to the N64 in 1998. It is now available on Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack.

Thanks to Jake for the tip.