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Analyzing specific games and their music styles: Super Mario Series

  • zfrye151
  • May 6, 2017
  • 2 min read

The Super Mario Series has been around since the 1980s, and started off with a very simple repeating melody, with many synthesized sounds. "Gusty Garden Galaxy" from Super Mario Galaxy is a good example of a consistent style in the series, with a full orchestra playing through that song, as well as through the entire game. Later on, once spin-off games started coming out, the style of the music changed, incorporating orchestra instruments into songs.

The songs "Boo Night Fever" from Paper Mario: Sticker Star and "Beep Block Skyway" from Super Mario 3D World are perfect examples of the changing styles. Both songs are composed in a disco style, with the former having a slight bit of jazz undertones and instruments. "Boo Night Fever" uses a combination of a jazz saxophone and trumpet with a disco-based bass line and beat, which provides an odd, but interesting mix of styles. It's quite a short loop, but it conveys the theme of the area perfectly, as you are doing a battle against a group of Boos, or the Super Mario equivalent of ghosts, who are dancing to the disco music.

The latter song is a purely disco-themed song that plays in a level where the blocks Mario is landing on disappear and reappear with the beat. The music fits perfectly with the disco genre, since it uses disco chord progressions, a prominent bass line, and has a distinct beat to dance to.

Beep Block Skyway from Super Mario 3D World


 
 
 

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