The Evolution of Mario Music

My research will explore how the musical style of Nintendo’s mainline 2D and 3D Mario series has evolved overtime.
I will specifically focus on four games: Super Mario Bros. (1985), Super Mario Bros. Wonder (2023), Super Mario 64 (1996), and Super Mario Galaxy 2 (2010). The first two are 2D, side-scrolling platformers, and the last two are 3D, open-world puzzle platformer games.
Super Mario games include different “areas” that share visual and musical elements to build an immersive atmosphere. I will focus on certain “area themes” from the selected games: the overworld theme, the underwater theme, and the castle theme.
The themes will be compared through the lens of instrumentation, form, rhythm, and “reuse”. Reuse refers to recurring melodic ideas, rearrangements, and how the song connects to the idea of Mario music as a whole. Comparing these elements in the selected Mario themes will allow for the exploration of how Mario music has evolved into what it is today.

hi my name is Jessica Taylor and I am a senior in the music Technology Program here at George Mason and I did My Capstone research project on the evolution of Mario music this platforming video game series has been close to my heart ever since I was a kid and I enjoy the depth and versatility that comes in the music of such a long running and diverse Series so I wanted to look into that this is my thesis just state it more properly exploring how the musical style of Nintendo’s Mainline 2D and 3D Mario Series has evolved over time and for each game I picked an Overworld theme an underwater theme and a castle theme because there are certain elements that make these themes what they are make them immersive make them associate with these areas that they’re trying to convey to The Listener such as their instrumentation their form or maybe some recurring melodic ideas or rearrangements throughout the series um so I know that’s a lot of lenses I’ll be looking at things through but I’m going to for the interest of time go through the Overworld theme from the first and second game that I analyzed which is actually the oldest Mario game and then the most recent one that came out in 2023 Super Mario Bros Wonder um I will be analyzing the Overworld themes from them so this is the Super Mario Bros Overworld theme I will play a little

excerpt so as you you can see the instrumentation is very simple that’s due to technological limitations at the time but the composer koi condo did the best he could to make an upbeat interesting sounding piece um the form is ABC and Mario music is often very AB ABC form Reliant it’s got a lot of periodic structure um and that little intro Hook is one of the most iconic Mario music figures probably of all time and what I noticed during this project is that there are little intro hooks in a lot of Mario pieces whether it be a castle theme or an underwater theme there is something that gets the listener into the piece and then there is the actual atmosphere um and then this song has been rearranged 30 times throughout the uh just the mainline Super Mario series which I find really interesting everyone kind of knows this song If you know any Mario song you would know this one this is the newest Overworld theme from the newest game

so obviously the instrumentation is a lot more broad it’s acoustic it’s live it’s very well recorded it brings a lot of energy but both of these pieces have that upbeat Happy Feeling where Mario is adventurous and he’s saving the day and you can just tell he’s good from this um and something once again the form is AB in terms of reuse like elements that I find in a lot of Overworld themes the hook we’ve got the kind of similar to the um it kind of plays on that a little bit um and the harmony it’s very major major key in chords the melody is very focused on these main chord tones with little bits of added chromaticism here and there to give it a playful feeling and then the rhythm is very syncopated which is also one of the things that makes the original theme stick out a lot so that helps give it that um Groove and upbeat Vibe so that’s just two of the examples that I looked at over my research but across all the games and all the songs that I looked at I found that what stuck out to me as defining Mario music as a whole were three things fun drama and catchiness so by fun I mean it’s upbeat it’s easy to listen to there’s a lot of major Harmony there’s syncopation to make it groovy but there’s also drama you know there’s scary moments in these games or more deep and meaningful moments in the games that have more story um and this is backed up by chromaticism modal mixture to create a darker tone unique rhythms that allow Melodies to be weirder but still digestible to The Listener and then finally catchiness so so many songs have hooks I think literally just me singing D D D D D is enough proof that catchiness and hooks are an integral part of Mario music um there’s a lot of repetition whether that being the melody or whether it’s literally rearranging a song for a later game um there’s a lot of rearrangements and reuse in the Mario Series so these are the things that I found Define Mario music thank you and these are my sources