Koji Kondo: behind the Beethoven of game music

Paired with Shigeru Miyamoto (a.k.a. the Einstein of game design), Koji Kondo forms the winning team for Nintendo’s game development camp. Kondo, who discussed his game music composition secrets at the Game Developers Conference last week, also can be remembered for his piano solo performance at the Video Games Live concert.

But Koji never started out wanting to be a game music composer. In fact, he started out as a pianist, after pursuing that direction in his life at the age of five. Tapping into his love for keyboards, he was drawn into the popularity of synthesizer boards and MIDI-capable computers. Soon, he was able to code BASIC programs for creating music on his own PC.

Suddenly hooked into the idea of music from computers, he jumped at every opportunity to play local arcade games like Miyamoto’s classic (but newly released back then) Donkey Kong.  Kondo said, “I was really interested in them, because they were the only place where you could find the kind of sound creation I was looking for.”

He joined Nintendo in 1984, where he was instantly put at work to create music for the bout-classic Punch-Out. Soon after, he found himself tasked with coming up with six cohesive, but whole pieces for Super Mario Bros., which was under development then.

If you can guess which song he found the most trouble creating, you’d probably have picked the main theme. As he had discussed in his game music composition lecture, he had to tie the rhythm down in order to match Mario’s energetic running and jumping. But after pulling it off, Super Mario Bros. as a whole became a title to remember: in gameplay, story, and song.

If you’ve got the time, hop over to the Billboard ringtone charts. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. theme still jingles there for 126 weeks (topped the charts once) and still running.

Paired with Shigeru Miyamoto (a.k.a. the Einstein of game design), Koji Kondo forms the winning team for Nintendo’s game development camp. Kondo, who discussed his game music composition secrets at the Game Developers Conference last week, also can be remembered for his piano solo performance at the Video Games Live concert.

But Koji never started out wanting to be a game music composer. In fact, he started out as a pianist, after pursuing that direction in his life at the age of five. Tapping into his love for keyboards, he was drawn into the popularity of synthesizer boards and MIDI-capable computers. Soon, he was able to code BASIC programs for creating music on his own PC.

Suddenly hooked into the idea of music from computers, he jumped at every opportunity to play local arcade games like Miyamoto’s classic (but newly released back then) Donkey Kong.  Kondo said, “I was really interested in them, because they were the only place where you could find the kind of sound creation I was looking for.”

He joined Nintendo in 1984, where he was instantly put at work to create music for the bout-classic Punch-Out. Soon after, he found himself tasked with coming up with six cohesive, but whole pieces for Super Mario Bros., which was under development then.

If you can guess which song he found the most trouble creating, you’d probably have picked the main theme. As he had discussed in his game music composition lecture, he had to tie the rhythm down in order to match Mario’s energetic running and jumping. But after pulling it off, Super Mario Bros. as a whole became a title to remember: in gameplay, story, and song.

If you’ve got the time, hop over to the Billboard ringtone charts. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. theme still jingles there for 126 weeks (topped the charts once) and still running.