Koji Kondo: the Face of Early Game Music

Konji Kondo is known chiefly for his musical contribution to the ever popular and revered Nintendo classics Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. As a teenager in the 1970s, Kondo was inspired by bands like Deep Purple and Electric Light Orchestra, but also the music of film such as Henry Mancini. Kondo was a frequent player of arcade games and successfully applied to a recruitment message released by Nintendo for a composer while enrolled in university. He was the first individual hired by Nintendo whose sole purpose was to create music for video games and in turn played a vital part in allowing Nintendo’s games and their soundtracks to be remembered all over the world, establishing the gaming world’s most recognizable melodies with scores from the two smash hits Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.

Koji Kondo’s first best-selling score belonged to Super Mario Bros. in 1985. The entire soundtrack was only four minutes in duration and possessed small portions of music that could be repeated during gameplay. Limitations of the NES console allowed only three channels of music to be played back simultaneously: melody, harmony and percussion. This limitation by today’s standards did not allow for much variation in texture but nothing could stop Kondo’s timeless music from underscoring a defining era in pop culture. Using only extremely basic waveforms including sine, square, sawtooth and noise waves, Kondo was able to create one of the most beloved pieces of music of all time: a Latin-inspired “overworld” theme that became an instant classic.

The Legend of Zelda series would not be what it is without Kondo’s musical contribution either. The 1986 Zelda soundtrack could be considered Kondo’s second major score. Chris Greening at VGMOnline claims that this particular score was more time consuming and challenging to compose due to its valiant nature being set to the limited palette of early video game sound, but Kondo succeeded yet again with a total of four pieces of music for the first game of the franchise.

Eventually, Kondo began exploring innovations in sound production during the height of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System’s popularity. With a mind to push the console’s technological limits, he began programming not only the music but also the sound effects of titles such as SimCity (1989) and Starfox (1993) using the Super Nintendo’s internal sound engine. By this time, Koji Kondo had established himself as Nintendo’s lead composer with others scoring titles under his musical supervision.

Koji Kondo will forever remain an influential giant in the video game music industry for his contributions: composing unforgettable melodies that never tire a gamer or a listener to even engineering sounds for some of Nintendo’s classic hits. As the first composer at Nintendo, Kondo paved the way for countless video game composers to follow. He set the standard and created a sound template that immortalized the essence of Nintendo. Early video game sound may have had its limitations, but Koji Kondo did not.

Worked cited:

Greening, Chris. 2012. Koji Kondo Profile. http://www.vgmonline.net/kojikondo/.
Kondo, Koji, interview by Justin Haywald. 2014. Creating Nintendo's Most Memorable Melodies: Q&A With Koji Kondo.
Kondo, Koji. 1985. Super Mario Bros. "Title Theme". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGX4obVl64w.
Kondo, Koji. 1998. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Title Theme". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ShzyggtsCs.
Sievers, Beau. n.d. A Young Person's Guide to the Principles of Music Synthesis. http://beausievers.com/synth/synthbasics/.