Game info: Super Mario Wiki
Listening: YouTube
Credits
Sound Programming: Ryo Takami
Music Lead: Shiho Fujii
Music: Yuka Usui
Sound Design Lead: Sanae Uchida
Sound Design: Takahiro Nosho, Tomohiro Imura, Yuki Ito, Kyosuke Nagano, Natsuko Yokoyama, Megumi Inoue
Sound Supervisor: Koji Kondo
Info
I was debating whether I wanted to use the whole long stupid name for this in the post title or shorten it to something more reasonable, and it should be pretty easy to figure out which option I took with an instant glance. Anyway, this is an enhanced port of Super Mario Bros. Wonder for the Switch 2 with a couple of new characters, a bunch of new multiplayer minigames in the titular Bellabel Park, and some challenge course remixes with new boss fights with the Koopalings. Shiho Fujii followed on from the base game to be the lead composer here, and she was joined by a fresh 2024 music university graduate, Yuka Usui (no relation to Tsukasa Usui, probably). Usui actually has extant YouTube and SoundCloud accounts with some original compositions she wrote during university, mostly either solo piano or jazz fusion/bossa nova/etc. Some of them are nice, the one I’d highlight is “chameleon” because the synthy intro legitimately already sounds like Nintendo music. She joined the right company!
Well, back to the video game at hand. The soundtrack is reasonably similar to the music from Wonder, in both the relatively straightforward, cutesy compositions occasionally spiced up with randomly jazzy chords and the combo of synths and fakeish acoustic instruments. Most of the new soundtrack was written for the new multiplayer attractions, for which there are nine themes for different types of events plus some jingles and a map theme. The conceit here is an amusement park where you have a fun time with your friends, so the music’s all fairly perky and happy-go-lucky, with only the lightest hint of darkness even in the Boo-related music. Most of the music like this from the original Wonder I didn’t find super exciting and that’s true again now, though sometimes the chords are nice and that’s always a good time.
Presumably since the challenge courses are all remixed from the original game with no truly new ones, there isn’t any new stage music aside from some themes specifically for the Koopaling challenges: two stage themes as you chase them down and three boss themes as you fight them. These are more electronic/synthier and a bit darker than the rest of the soundtrack, which is to be expected for 2D Mario music. I definitely liked this part of the soundtrack more, not just for typical electronic darkness reasons but also because I generally found the writing to be a bit more interesting. One of my favorite VGM pieces from 2026 so far was in this set, going to show once again that Shiho Fujii is one of the most polarized Nintendo composers to me in writing a lot of music I don’t care about all that much and then randomly the best song in the whole entire world.
Recommended tracks:
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“Chasing the Koopalings 1” has a real sneaky vibe to it that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a chase theme; I love that really loud and crusty synth that comes in to lay down a couple of riffs at 1:38
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“Koopaling Showdown! 2” is in 11, which is notable because any sort of odd time is unusual for Fujii (assuming it’s her); love the chord changes and chord stabs and tonality in this one a whole lot
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“Thrilling! VS Attractions” has a hard panned bongo loop that barely sounds like it’s supposed to be in the song; I checked multiple uploads of this piece and it’s in all of them in the exact same spots so it’s probably not just a dynamic layer
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“Together! Co-op Attractions” was my favorite attraction theme, it’s just a real cutie
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