Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: YouTube (single video), extracted audio
Credits
Sound Director: Koji Kondo
Sound Programming: Chihiro Okada, Ryo Takami
Music: Shiho Fujii, Sayako Doi, Chisaki Shimazu
Sound Design: Sanae Uchida, Takahiko Fujita, Etsuro Urabe, Hiromitsu Fujikawa, Riyu Tamura, Takahiro Nosho, Taiyo Furukawa, Eka Chin, Rintaro Sato
Sound Adviser: Koichi Kyuma
Koji Kondo also composed some amount of music: https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-11-super-mario-bros-wonder-part-1/
Info
Hehe new silly Mario game :J
For some reason I haven’t been able to muster a lot of excitement for Wonder, even though I’ve played every single New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Maker game. Guess I’m just Mario’d out at the moment? But I’ve been eagerly anticipating the credits for this game to see if any of the Nintendo composers I really like ended up on it, and there are two: Shiho Fujii and Sayako Doi! Doi I’ve mentioned a few times here because she’s one of my absolute favorite Nintendo composers, turning out some really cool electronic sound design and production for Splatoon 3 and Metroid Dread in some intricately constructed tracks. Fujii is a composer I find a bit inconsistent, in that she often does a lot of the music I find least interesting and might dismiss as “stereotypical Nintendo cute,” but also often ends up randomly writing my favorite piece of music in the entire game, especially when she does more ambient stuff like “Ancient Cistern” from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and “Another World Stage” from Super Mario Odyssey.
The audio design of the soundtrack is thinner and cheaper-sounding than I’d expect for those two, in what seems to me to be intentional evocation of the music direction from the New Super Mario Bros. series. Koji Kondo said in an interview that as part of the game’s “transformation” theme, they also “redesigned” the music and “incorporated the sounds of musical instruments and digital synthesizers,” and there’s definitely both higher-quality instrument samples and more synthy noises than there’s been in the past, but overall it still feels quite fake in what feels to be an intentional Nintendo way. Within the confines of that space, though, there are some interesting instrumentation combinations and cool synth noises flashed here and there.
Compositionally the music also trends toward New Super Mario Bros. style stuff, with straightforward melodies and generally simpler arrangements. But like the sound design, within the space of that box I think the composers found ways to get creative, particularly in the splashes of harmonic and tonal color present all throughout the soundtrack. It’s pretty easy to skim through this soundtrack and just brush it off as more 2D Mario music, but I think this one really rewards close listening compared to previous ones. It’s not a particularly high bar, but this is definitely my favorite non-Maker 2D Mario soundtrack now.
I didn’t really have a good place to stash this last bit of info but the game has a brand new Nintendo composer: Chisaki Shimazu. She’s a recent grad out of Tokyo University of the Arts; I did a quick search to see if any of her student compositions had YouTube uploads but couldn’t find anything unfortunately, so I have no idea what she’s like.
Recommended tracks:
-
“World 4” (Fujii?) goes Asia Mode
-
“Course – Swamp (Normal)” (Doi?) is the standard Mario underground theme but in Metroid Dread style
-
“Course – Dark Forest (Normal)” has an unusual-for-Mario bit of a classical ensemble bent to the arrangement, particularly in how the winds are written
-
“Course – Lava (Normal)” (Fujii?) has the Fujii chord changes I love and plays back and forth with the triple rhythm in some fun ways
-
“Wonder Flower – ShadowMario” (Doi?) is a frantic combination of the Mario 1 athletic and underground themes with some hideously metallic piano plonking I enjoy
-
“Bowser Battle (Phase 3)” (Doi?) has a really grody synth playing the melody at 0:11 and another one diddling in the back with a bunch of cool distortion on it at 1:16
(track titles are unofficial)
Leave a Reply