Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack (2015)

This 33-1/3 by Andrew Schartmann is one of the more offbeat and creative entries in the series. Schartmann tells us early that the totality of music on this “soundtrack album” for the video game Super Mario Bros. amounts to about three minutes—closer to 90 seconds if you are scrupulous about removing redundancies. That’s a pretty short album. The videos on youtube can run to three minutes each, but they obviously have all the redundancies and more. I quickly realized the only way to hear or experience the “album” really is by playing the game, which I’m pretty sure I never have. Schartmann dwells less on the game anyway, and more on the music, in highly technical ways. He discusses computer requirements in 1985, which didn’t leave much in the way of resources for game music. And he also talks about the music in terms of composition, chiefly, but also historical context. When going over the “Underwater” theme, for example, he has occasion to deliver a quick history on the waltz. Having never played the game, I found myself mostly at a loss, but nonetheless rarely less than fascinated. I presume Schartmann has at least played the game, if not obsessed over it for hours and hours as the best video games demand of us. My sense is his experience is much closer to the latter, as this text very much feels like the work of someone who has gone deep into the game. It’s as if the three minutes of original music has been absorbed at cellular level across the hours of exposure in varying game contexts. Most of this book is over my head—Schartmann is a professor and student of composition and theory presently at the New England Conservatory. The book is basically a novelty, comparable to John Darnielle’s short stories for Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality, and others in the series. You might even want to classify it as a stunt or gimmicky. But it is serious in its intent, however tongue in cheek it might seem. It’s a great place to think about what an album is and it’s a great chapter in the history of video games. Plus it has a nice bibliography with many tempting titles on the history and/or theory of video games. Put this one on your short list for the series.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.