Super Mario Bros. melody matches Mario’s movements
I originally held back on posting this when the Japanese version of this Iwata Asks edition went live. Now that the text and video are in English, I think you’ll get a better idea of what this neat little Super Mario Bros. secret is all about. Well, I suppose it’s not really a secret, but it’s still very interesting!
Mahito Yokota: That’s right. I didn’t even realize it until it was pointed out to me. There are a lot of things I’m careful about when I create tunes for Mario games, too, but I couldn’t express those in words, either.
Still, when I tried analyzing my own music the other day, I realized that the World 1-1 background music melody in Super Mario Bros. might have been timed to Mario’s walk.
Satoru Iwata: I see, in other words, the melody is written to be in time with Mario’s steps.
Koji Kondo: I didn’t write the tune with that in mind. At first, when he starts walking, it goes “Da dum dum dum dah”, then when he finds the Goomba and backtracks so he can time his jump, then starts forward again, the music goes “Dum da da, Dum da da”, and finally when he starts walking, jumps and stomps, it goes “Da dum dum dum dah, da da dah!”, like that. The melody really matches Mario’s movements well that way.
When I actually wrote it, I wasn’t thinking anything of the sort. I think maybe I had that image inside me, though, latent, and that’s why the music turned out the way it did. Maybe that’s far-fetched, I don’t know (laughs).
