Today sees both the OG Mario Party and its successor, Mario Party 2, land on the Switch thanks to the NSO Expansion Pass, and this has led to a certain amount of reminiscing from the games' developers.
One such peek into the past comes courtesy of Mario Party composer Yasunori Mitsuda (thanks, @gosokkyu, for the translation). Tweeting his memories of working on the original game, Mitsuda revealed that a disagreement over what constitutes 'jazz' caused around 200 songs to be scrapped from the original soundtrack.
According to Mitsuda's above tweets, the composer initially struggled to get to grips with director Kenji Kikuchi's vision for the Mario Party soundtrack, producing a huge number of rejected 'jazz' tracks (as guided) before discovering that the director was actually after 'big band jazz' - don't you just hate it when that happens!
This resulted in a record-breaking number (in Mitsuda's career, at least) of 200 songs needing to be scrapped from the game's soundtrack - talk about not understanding the assignment. Fortunately the composer is yet to top this total.
Of course, the resulting soundtrack ended up as a certified banger with influences from carnival music, original Mario motifs and, yes, big band jazz. We've thrown in the full mix courtesy of EXTREME YouTube Gaming Channel for your hearing pleasure down below.
Was it worth the removal of 200 tracks before it? We guess that we'll need to hear 'Mario Party: The Mitsuda Cut' to find out...
Will you be playing Mario Party and Mario Party 2 today? Roll and move into the comments to let us know!
[source twitter.com, via twitter.com]
Comments 19
I hope we one day get theses tracks released to hear.
I love listening to VGM and have contemplated writing a book about it at some point. Articles like these made me realise how much music must get scrapped. It would be so awesome to be able to listen to these B-sides! Such a shame that Nintendo is so protective of their music too. They could be earning so much on opening up their library of music
Even after all this time, Mitsuda's soundtrack for the first Mario Party is still one of my favorites in the series. He really established the general tone and vibe of the series, and it feels like many of the composers who followed him took some degree of inspiration from his work. It would be cool to listen to these early tracks to see how different the series could've ended up sounding.
Woody woods fromn3 is awesome
I really hope someday he writes a book detailing his career. There's been so many interesting bits that have come out and there's probably way more untold. Plus the guy is just neat, watching him on the Chrono Cross reunion concert having so much fun with his music is the best thing.
While we're dreaming, a Yuzo Koshiro book that goes in depth on all the techniques he used to get around console limitations. We need more literature on video game music composers.
Please let us hear them, OMG I love that OST! ❤️
Nintendo when jazz >:^(
Nintendo when BIG jazz
Mario Party 1, 2 and 3's soundtracks are so quintessentially 'Nintendo 64' (between stuff like the high-hats, unabashed MIDI instrumentation and lovable compression of it all) and it's fascinating to hear insight from the person who made them all those years ago on the creation process of them (with some of my favourites being the Title Themes, Wario's Canyon, Space Land and Horror Land just to name a few).
Will say though: of all the genres to describe MP1's music, 'big band jazz' was perhaps the last one to come to mind for me.
I wish I could say this kind of mistake was uncommon in freelance work, but it isn't. :v
People will have you work for a long time without realizing they've asked you to do the wrong thing.
Aw, that’s too bad. I’m sure they were two hundred good tracks! I love Mario Party music, especially from the N64 era.
Release those tracks in future Mario Party games, other Mario games or even games from other franchises.
One of my favorite bits from Mystery Science Theater
"Does he know dixieland jazz??"
I've never played the first 9 Mario Party games (well maybe once decades ago) and had no idea Mitsuda had done the soundtrack for any of them. I love the Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross soundtracks. I gotta check this out immediately.
@LastFootnote I HAVE played them and I didn't know he worked on any of them until now. My knowledge of his body of work starts and ends with Chrono.
The music in Mario Party is jazz?
Nintendo: “Always has been”
Well, Mario Party 1 has the most bippin' and boppin' Options Screen music.
(although the Super Famicom-exclusive Donald Duck game has a pretty great Options music, too. Quack quack!)
Huh. I didn't know Mitsuda worked on Mario Party. Neat.
to be fair, why would someone, a trained, educated musician, compose 200 jazz songs without bothering to find out what "kind" of jazz?
big band is really specific, sure, but then again all jazz is some kind of specific jazz, it's a broad category. what are the chances that what he made was going to be the right thing, with that level of information?
I'm an independent wood finisher. if a client asks me to "finish" or "refinish" a piece of furniture, I don't just say "ok will do!" and then finish it in whatever material, color, sheen, etc that I feel like! I know automatically to ask questions. just saying.
cool article! 👍
Chill Jazz > Big Jazz
But let's hear it for ourselves please. Nintendo should've been had an official Youtube Music channel and VGM albums on all the DSP's (Apple, Spotify etc.) for awhile now... like most other big publishers do. Nintendo late to and/or neglecting the party as usual smh.
... Wun can only hope.
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