Mario vs. Donkey Kong is finally here on Switch. This remake gives the original GBA puzzle platformer a fresh spin and adds a handful of new features — including a completely revamped score. The composers for the GBA original, DigiPen Music Department, are involved again this time with a new interview from the department Web page provides an interesting look at the process of updating a 20-year-old soundtrack.
As it turns out, recreating GBA music wasn’t all about downloading it to your computer and hitting a button that says “modernize”. In addition to writing the tunes for the two new worlds of the remaster, the team also composed and arranged acoustic performances to complement the virtual soundscape of the original soundtrack. As the game’s Head of Production, Engineering and Mastering Tacket Brown states:
You take a track that was mostly recorded with virtual instruments, but apply a few custom acoustic performances to bring it to life. That’s the whole idea of the uncanny valley. When something is too perfect, the brain knows, but when you add one layer of a little imperfection, it feels much more human.
The article details the institute’s long history of working with Nintendo, which began back in the 1990s. Lawrence Schwedler, who worked on the music for the original game, briefly mentions his experience working with Shigeru Miyamoto and Koji Kondo on the GBA title, praising the “remarkable amount of freedom” they gave him:
Mr. Miyamoto and Mr. Kondo had a very light touch, and apart from a few constructive comments, they really let me do my job
Along with working on the remastering project, the team continued to work as teachers in the DigiPen music department and had to keep the Nintendo connection a secret for the duration of the project — hey, those Nintendo ninjas have eyes everywhere. It all seems to have been worth it though, as Schwedler describes the performance as “an absolutely crazy full-circle moment” and “the opportunity of a lifetime.”
You can find more details on how the DigiPen team went about reworking the soundtrack at the whole article on the DigiPen website or by watching the video version below.
