My Gaming Audio History: Super Mario Bros 2 (1988)

Today's feature is another blockbuster game that I loved and played often, Super Mario Bros 2.  Now, no jokes please, but I was very good at playing with Princess-- probably because she could float.  The individual characters having different attributes made the game much more interesting for me.  Even so, I didn't beat the game until much later, once Super Mario All Stars came out and I could save the game and pick it up at a later time.  I loved the fact that there wasn't a timer in the game compared with the original.  In terms of music, this means that you could hear the game music for much longer than you could in the original, where the timer limited how long it was possible to hear the music on any given level.  Also, obviously, there's no hurry up music.

The music here is by Koji Kondo.  I've always preferred the music in this game to the music from the original SMB.  For my taste, there's a natural progression of composition here.  Clearly, after SMB and LoZ, Kondo had established early on his mastery of game music composition.  His melodic writing was superb and memorable.  In between SMB/LoZ and SMB2, according to VGMPF, most of the games that Kondo worked on were not released in the US.  SMB Lost Levels came in between, but I didn't really play that game; it was simply too hard.  Most of the music in Lost Levels is reused from SMB; Kondo had the chance to reuse/update several of his themes and sound effects from SMB.  SMB2 game gave that opportunity again.  For instance, the title screen music in Lost Levels and the title screen music in SMB2 are both remakes of the underwater theme is the original SMB.  With these reworkings and games in between, I hear Kondo becoming more comfortable and familiar with amazing game music and I think his work is even more skillful with the sounds of the NES.

One of the most interesting musical themes for me (though it's heard only briefly in typical gameplay) is the character select theme.  Have you ever given this a listen beyond the first few seconds that most people hear it?  When the second voice gets really high and virtuoso several seconds into the theme is just completely unexpected and almost crazy!  I remember playing this theme on the piano as a kid and when it got to this section I just immediately stopped because it sounded so complex.

Here's a link to the soundtrack.

A brief comparison of the music of Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 2

There are definite similarities to the original game in that there's different music for different game locations (Overworld, inside, boss music, stage clear).  SMB 2 has more "menu" screens, though: character select and the slot game, which the original didn't have.  Because there is no "Super" or "regular" states for the characters in this game, the jumping sound doesn't change an octave in pitch as it does in the first game.

Considering sound effects, it's interesting to me that Birdo makes a sound when he shoots eggs at you, but enemies that shoot bullets don't make any sound.  In SMB, Bullet Bills made sound!  Also, boss monsters have an audio and visual reaction to being injured (Birdo, Mouser, Triclyde, etc).  Bowser wagged his feet as the bridge disappeared in SMB, but there was no sound of injury or demise.  Coin sound effects seem to be the same P4, B-E.  The invincibility theme is the same D min 7- C maj 7 3 sec loop.  The 1 up sound is transposed from the original, I think to G but it's hard to hear isolated on the playthrough I wanted.  The collecting a heart sound is similar to the LoZ heart pick up.  The throwing of enemies/items sound effect is definitely musical, a glissando up to a C and I'm struck that sound effects in this game are starting to relate in pitch to the overall key of the game.

I count SMB as having just under 3 minutes of music
SMB 2 has a bit more, about 3 and a half minutes of music

Both games have a home key of C major for all the music that appears in them.

Also, the Overworld track of SMB2 is significantly shorter (40 sec vs 90 sec).  Beyond the Overworld theme, SMB had very short tracks for underground and underwater and SMB 2 has slightly longer ones.  Also, the end game music with SMB2 is quite a bit longer and Wart has his own theme as well whereas Bowser's castle theme is the same in each of the SMB castles.

Probably my favorite comparison here is the Subspace music.  This music is literally half of the A and then the B of the original SMB theme.  Even though the key and tempo are the same as the original game, the music is slightly different sounding, though, it's not a literal quote.  I love when composers quote themselves!  Reminds me of Mozart quoting Figaro in Don Giovanni!



Here's my normal breakdown of the music by track with whatever notes I made as I listened.

Title screen.  28 sec.  C major.  Sounds like a carnival or merry go round
Character select C major. 29 sec.  Crazy second high melody later in the piece that few hear because of how briefly this screen is active.
Overworld C major.  40 sec.  Intro (doesn't repeat 1 sec), Form: A-B-B-C
Dream world C major (reference to SMB). 14 sec.  Just uses the A-B from the SMB theme.
Invincibility: 3 sec.  D min-C maj alternation.
Inside theme F minor.  11 sec.  Open fifths and fourths give this a very different feel from the opening.
Birdo theme-- all tritones.  9 sec.
Wart theme: 14 sec. G minor.  Very chromatic and dissonant.
World clear: C major. 4 sec.
Ending: C major, 33 sec, 37 sec, C major w/ Ab motion-- similar motion to winning at slots w/ coins?

Game Music Online: 8-bit Analysis

A few posts ago I mentioned I'd stumbled upon Jason Brame's blog 8-Bit Analysis doing some internet searches.  I've taken some time between now and then to read through it throughly and really enjoyed his postings.  Reading through a blog a few years older than mine definitely gave me a heads up on some of the challenges of maintaining a blog long term.  The hardest thing as I see with many of my favorite blogs are continuing to update regularly.  Also I realized that by linking to YouTube videos, over time my links will become broken and require updating.  I guess that goes with the territory of online blogging!  

If I'm honest with myself somewhere inside, Jason's blog is in some ways what I thought I wanted to make of this blog.  He does some very specific analysis and lots of detail with just a tiny piece of music.  However, as I read through it, I realized that I've definitely got a different audience in mind.  He shows the most impressive transcriptions and musical analyses, but the people who can read that sort of information and process it are few.  His blog is aimed at classically trained musicians.  So, even though I know basically all of the music he's listed (SMB 3 World Map 7 music is a little vague to me because I sucked so much at that level!), the advantage of having transcribed the music in standard notation is that a classically trained musician can look at it and hear it very clearly in the mind regardless of linking somewhere.  That said, some of my favorite posts were where, despite the transcribed versions, the videos he links to make his point perfectly clear with only aural means.  This post where he compares the water music of SMB and the Title Screen theme from SMB 2 is a perfect example.  

He's also got several links up at the bottom of the blog that I want to follow to keep learning more.  We would have overlapped at UNC by a year, but I don't think I knew Jason.  I'm definitely going to give his article "Thematic Unity Across a Video Game Series" a read soon.