Quick task for you: think of your favourite moment from a film. Maybe it's an epic chase, a first kiss, or a climactic stand-off. Now imagine it without any music in the background. No soundtrack, just two blokes fighting, or a couple playing tonsil tennis.
Not so grand is it? Well, you didn't need my lame and frankly smart-arsed metaphor to know how rubbish any kind of visual media can be without background music. I feel the same, and I believe that soundtracks to video games can be a vital component: get the music wrong and you lose a lot of what makes a game really engaging.
So with that in mind, let me introduce Sound Bytes, a new feature where I review a game's soundtrack, with a focus on my favourite pieces. I only own a few game
soundtracks at the moment, so I’m going to start with our newest arrival: Super Mario 3D World!
After months of saving up
his Club Nintendo points, my husband finally earned enough points to redeem for
this soundtrack CD - coincidentally, the game that earned him the final points
push was in fact Super Mario 3D World,
which I bought at a Game Stores event.
3D World, a somewhat
spiritual sequel to 3D Land on the DS, plants Mario and his extended blended
family in the middle of Bowser’s latest scheme: acquire some fairies. Quite
what he’s going to do with them we are not sure. Maybe he’s planning to make
them into a collection of bijou toilet brushes for the many bathrooms in his
castle. Anyway, Mario and Co decide that this is quite rightly unacceptable
behaviour, and give chase.
Since Mario has such a
whopping legacy, it’s going to be fun listening through the soundtrack to see
where I recognise bits and pieces from, and I may even find a few reworked
originals.
The soundtrack comes as a
double CD with 77 tracks, so in order not to kill you with boredom, I’ve picked
a couple of my favourites. Here-a we go!
DISC ONE: TRACK 04 - UNDERGROUND THEME
The Underground Theme in
any Mario game is usually the first thing I like to take a close listen to.
Because it’s such a simple and iconic melody, it recurs in nearly every Mario
game with a slight twist. Overground level themes in Mario tend to be
laid-back, peppy and poppy, especially in the first world where everything is
new and exciting. Under the ground, and truly in Bowser’s domain, Mario is
never sure what to expect...
This arrangement is
slightly more urgent and exploratory - if we imagine the theme of the track represents creeping
around an unfamiliar area late at night, treading carefully, the familiar ba-dum, ba-dum,
ba-dum bass line now has a
little synthesized call-and-response after it, almost as if something in the
darkness is chattering back at you as you move through the level. It’s more
eerie and less percussive and bouncy than previous versions, giving it a slightly
more ‘dangerous’ feel.
TRACK 25 - FORT FIRE BROS.
This has got to be my favourite track on this album. It’s so urgent and exciting! The melody is almost similar to the
Desert themes, which always use ‘exotic’ instruments like the flute, but with
the dramatic violins and the bouncy beat, it’s also got a rushing, high-stress
factor to it, which is appropriate for a level featuring plenty of heat and
lava.
TRACK 26 - BOWSER’S HIGHWAY SHOWDOWN
Woah, Bowser has a muscle
car! I’d love to see his licence photo; I bet it’s embarrassing.
 |
| "Ugh. At least I'm not Dennis Hopper." |
If anyone in the Mario
series was going to have a kick-ass electric guitar on his track, it would have
to be Bowser. He’s Nintendo’s rock-and-roll bad boy. His theme for this game,
which is a collection of minor key notes with a slight ‘circus’ flavour, features
heavily here, and you’ll get used to hearing it crop up. You could imagine
Bowser listening to this as he screeches down the Mushroom Kingdom
highway, shades on, possibly with a reluctant Peach tied up in the front seat.
Woah, that took a dark turn.
Boss music always has to
be high-octane, since boss battles aren’t your average level. The pressure’s
on: the clock is ticking, and Mario has to take out Bowser’s pimped ride with
its own bomb projectiles while avoiding common obstacles and Bowser’s gross
fire breath, so the frantic drum beats and the crunching, pounding rock guitar
urges you on.
TRACK 28 - DOUBLE CHERRY
PASS
One of the newest
power-ups in the game is the Double Cherry. Don’t get confused, this isn’t
Pac-man. Eating (I presume that’s what he does with power-ups) a Double Cherry
will create you a duplicate that runs alongside your player character, jumping
when you jump and so forth, and helping you to access hidden platforms and
negotiate tight squeezes. Now, of the new power-ups, I found this to be the
most rushed, afterthought-y one: the Cat Bell is superb. Two Marios (or is it Maria?) is confusing and awkward.
Then I heard this music,
and it almost redeemed the whole concept. This has got to be the catchiest
ditty on the album, and I often find myself humming it absent-mindedly. Since
it crops up in a fun, easy-going Overworld level, it’s catchy and melodic and
quite light-hearted; there’s no peril here, just cheery cherry fun time.
On a technical term,
there’s a lot of repetition and ‘couplets’ in the melody - listen to it and see
where the notes repeat themselves in patterns of twos, just like Mario and his
clone.
DISC TWO: TRACK 09 - HANDS-ON HALL
Like Mario’s jumpsuit
adapts to match his environment, Mario music is always well-tailored to fit the
levels. Hands-on Hall is modelled on a Japanese dojo where martial artists study, and the use of authentic Japanese
instruments such as the shakuhachi (the flute you can hear) and the shamisen (a
type of long-necked guitar famously played by Geisha) gives authenticity to the
piece, and teamed with a punchy horn section they make this level’s music exciting
and upbeat.
TRACK 25 - PLESSIE
Plessie is a new
character: a Plesiosaur with an incredibly hard-wearing belly who is more than
happy to let Mario hitch a ride with him (or her? I mean, it wears a cute
little Ascot, but so did Freddie from
Scooby-Doo...)
 | ||||
| Man, woman, or Plesiosaur? Experts still cannot tell. |
Have you ever heard the
sound effect played in a show or film when a chubby character raps on their big
belly? It’s usually a bongo or bass drum, which sounds deep, big and bouncy.
Since Plessie is a big, lumbering beastie with a big round gut, the simple
bongo outline to this tune suits him/her/it, while the flutes sound playful and
optimistic. This is a good example of a character’s theme really sounding like
them - you can picture Plessie wandering through the jungle, maybe on a lunch
date with Yoshi.
TRACK 22 - WORLD EIGHT
Ha ha ha! Suck it up,
Plumber! You’re in Bowser’s world now!
Bowser appears to have
built himself a huge, blazing, tacky theme park in his own honour. And what
would you expect to hear playing in the background but a big, tacky, flashy
version of his theme from the game.
This is larger-than-life
theme park music to suit Bowser’s image - similar to the Underground Theme,
there’s a hum-worthy, repetitive motif, and the funky bass line evokes a disco
theme that suits the environment. I bet Mario hates this kind of music.
 |
| I hear he prefers crunk. |
TRACK 33 - RAINBOW RUN
This is a good example of
a fun arrangement - it’s the original and arguably the most recognisable theme
of the series! While the music from the rest of the game uses a ‘big band’ feel
with many different live instruments, this track features a lot more
synthesised beats and bleeps to evoke an ‘old-school’ sound.
TRACK 39 - SUPER MARIO 3D WORLD THEME
Saxophones have been
prominent in this soundtrack, and the theme of the game features one playing
the catchy melody that appears throughout the game. This is a triumphant,
catchy theme that’s a little similar to the theme of a previous Mario series:
Super Mario 64, which was remixed recently to appear in a Super Mario Galaxy 2 level.
This bouncy theme fits in
with the ‘playful’, light and bright theme of the whole game. Everywhere there
are bright colours, from the rainbow of Sprixies (yes, that’s what they’re
called) to the searing lights of Bowser’s ego trip theme park. It hasn’t got
the epic, grandiose feel of Super Mario
Galaxy, and it’s more pop-rock focused than previous Mario games.
I really enjoyed the variety
of this soundtrack, especially the tracks listed above, without which I feel the
music might have lacked originality - the re-arrangement of Bowser’s theme and new
tracks such as Hands-On Hall and Fort Fire Bros kept the soundtrack new and
exciting. The great thing about the variety of Mario music is that old
favourites are always being re-arranged, but sometimes it’s nice to hear
something brand spanking new. It’s not quite as good as I felt the soundtrack
to Super Mario Galaxy was: and I’ll
be reviewing that soon, so I’ll wait until then to explain why.
So there we have it - to
quickly summarise, a fun, bouncy collection of tracks from an equally fun game.
Now let’s get mee-owt of here!
...I’ll get my coat.
