During the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!
Have you ever been listening to music, enjoying it, and then BAM, suddenly you hear the first four notes of a video game song — and then that song is stuck in your head for the rest of the day?
Well, it’s not always a coincidence. Many music composers draw great inspiration from their favorite music, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without even realizing it. That’s called interpolation, which is a common musical technique in which a musician uses borrowed melodies to create his own song. It’s functionally different from sampling, which is taking a direct sample from another song, and more importantly, it doesn’t steal!
But it’s always exciting and weird to find borrowed riffs in video games, and we’ve scoured the internet to find some amazing three pages of the best examples of music that inspired video game music, although not all are fully confirmed. And yes, there is a lot of Koji Kondo here. What can we say? The man loves interpolation…
The real songs that inspired legendary Nintendo music
The Legend of Zelda ‘Title Theme’ & ‘Dungeon Theme’ — ‘April’ by Deep Purple
Perhaps one of the most iconic songs in video games, the Zelda title theme draws inspiration from this extremely churchy song by Deep Purple. Of course, it’s 12 minutes long, because Deep Purple weren’t exactly known for their ability to keep things fast. It’s prog rock, baby.
Listen to it at 1.5 speed to really hear Zelda coming and see if you can pick up the parts that inspired the Dungeon Theme too!
Super Mario ‘Starman Theme’ — ‘Summer Breeze’ by Piper
The Starman theme from Super Mario is infectious as hell, and it’s no accident. It’s heavily based on this synth-laden Japanese bop from the 80s:
Super Mario ‘Underground Theme’ — ‘Let’s Not Talk About It’ by Friendship
A common joke people make about this Koji Kondo inspo track is that it’s even called ‘Let’s Not Talk About It’, as if Kondo wanted to hide his habit of borrowing infectious melodies. But then again, interpolation is legal, common, and often a great way to cross-pollinate the worlds of music. So just sit back and enjoy!
Super Mario ‘Overworld Theme’ — ‘Sister Marian’ by T-Square
In a 2001 interview with Game Maestro Vol. 3, Kondo admitted that he was particularly inspired by the Japanese jazz band T-Square. “The rhythms in their music were easy for Japanese listeners,” he told the interviewer – also a name-checking jazz musician Satao Watanabe, whose relaxed bossa nova beats influenced the vibe of Super Mario’s music. Click 1:02 in the video below to hear Mario’s riff:
Animal Crossing: New Horizons ‘KK Adventure’ — ‘He’s A Pirate’ from Pirates of the Caribbean by Klaus Badelt, Hans Zimmer and Geoff Zanelli
Yes, KK is also a pirate — pirating tunes, that is. Many of KK Slider’s songs come from real-life music, especially in the genre they emulate. ‘Only me‘sounds like REM’It hurts everyone‘, for example, and ‘KK Bossa‘ sounds ‘The girl from Ipanema‘.
The Legend of Zelda ‘Fairy Fountain’ — ‘Morning Glory’ Tatsuro Yamashita
Fairy Fountain’s beautiful arpeggios didn’t come out of nowhere. The song is beautiful enough that we even made it into the rankings each version of Fairy Fountain, but perhaps we should have included ‘Morning Glory’, which has a recognizable melody against a background of dreamy vocals. Maybe Tatsuro Yamashita was getting upgrades on his armor when he wrote this song?
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