Koji Kondo (近藤 浩治 Kondō Kōji, born August 13, 1960) is a Japanese composer … Read Full Bio ↴Koji Kondo (近藤 浩治 Kondō Kōji, born August 13, 1960) is a Japanese composer and musician best known for his scores for various video games produced by Nintendo.
Kondo was born in Nagoya, Japan. He took to music at an early age, writing simple tunes for fun even as a small child. At seventeen, he decided to pursue music professionally. He undertook classical training, and he learned to play several instruments.
In the 1980s, Kondo learned that a company called Nintendo was seeking musicians to compose music for its new video game system, the Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan). Kondo had never considered writing video game music before, but he decided to give the company a chance. He was hired in 1983.
Kondo found himself in a totally different environment at Nintendo. Suddenly, he was limited to only four "instruments" (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion) due to limitations of the system's sound chip. Though he and Nintendo's technicians eventually discovered a way to add a fifth channel (normally reserved for SFX), his music was still severely limited on the system.
Kondo has stayed with Nintendo through various consoles, including the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo outside Japan), the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube and most recently the Nintendo Wii. These latter systems have vastly improved Nintendo's audio capabilities, and Kondo today composes music with CD quality sound.
Koji Kondo attended the world-premiere of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, IL in May of 2006. His music from the Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda series was performed by a full symphony orchestra. This event drew nearly 4000 attendees.
Considered by many to be the "John Williams" of the digital entertainment world, Koji Kondo is acclaimed the world over thanks to his unique partnership crafting the most recognizable themes and soundtracks with industry giant Nintendo (and to his credit, a creatively fluent partnership with Shigeru Miyamoto). Fans and critics alike cite as his greatest talent being his ability to craft melodies that while catchy and pleasant upon first listen, remain enjoyable even when looped over long periods of time and played through inferior sound equipment. His songs are certainly memorable; the title theme song to Super Mario Brothers retains its iconic status 20 years after its initial release. Not unknown in the musical community, Mr. Kondo can count talent such as Paul McCartney among his fans. Kondo's music has been cited as being as integral to the Nintendo style as the game design of Shigeru Miyamoto.
Conversely, this familiarity is also the cause of most criticism of Kondo's work. Over nearly 20 years in video game music, his style has changed very little. The themes of Super Mario Bros. in 1985 are little different from those of Super Mario Sunshine in 2002, although the earlier game sounds more primitive due to technology constraints. This need for sameness over the years is something of a two-edged sword for Kondo; when he has tried something different, as in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, some criticized him for abandoning the themes and styles they had grown to enjoy (although others found this to be some of his best work).
"Super Mario Bros. Theme" has been on Billboard Magazine's Hot Ringtones chart for over 90 weeks, where it also hit #1.
Koji Kondo's work shows at least three major influences: Latin music, jazz music, and classical music (mainly ragtime and march music), often with a strong cinematic flair. Latin is particularly evident in his bouncy themes throughout the Mario series, such as the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. 3. The happy main theme has a slow, samba-like rhythm. The second theme offers a more upbeat, ragtime-like style. Bowser's theme would not sound out of place being played by a Mexican mariachi band. This influence also shows up in his more recent works, such as the Gerudo Valley theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a song with a certain stereotypical Andalusian flair.
Kondo's more jazz-influenced pieces also come from a wide variety of projects. One of the earliest examples of this is his minimalist underground theme from Super Mario Bros., and Saria's theme from Ocarina of Time sounds almost Dixieland in places. All of this is hardly surprising; Kondo lists Henry Mancini as one of his most admired influences.
Kondo was trained as a classical musician, and this shows in his more ambitious projects, such as the soundtracks to the Zelda series. These pieces are distinctively cinematic, reminiscent of John Williams' work on Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The title theme to The Legend of Zelda is grandiose for all its low fidelity. Several of Mr. Kondo's themes have been famously recorded with full orchestral backing, with several tours of his work featured highly in concerts presented around the world.
Kondo's work is also highly influenced by Eastern Asian music, which might not be surprising given his country of birth. His songs are predominantly melody-based with little supporting harmony, which is in keeping with the Asian tradition. This makes him somewhat unique among the most popular video game composers, as his counterparts such as Nobuo Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama produce more Western-sounding compositions for their games.
Kondo was born in Nagoya, Japan. He took to music at an early age, writing simple tunes for fun even as a small child. At seventeen, he decided to pursue music professionally. He undertook classical training, and he learned to play several instruments.
In the 1980s, Kondo learned that a company called Nintendo was seeking musicians to compose music for its new video game system, the Famicom (Nintendo Entertainment System outside Japan). Kondo had never considered writing video game music before, but he decided to give the company a chance. He was hired in 1983.
Kondo found himself in a totally different environment at Nintendo. Suddenly, he was limited to only four "instruments" (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion) due to limitations of the system's sound chip. Though he and Nintendo's technicians eventually discovered a way to add a fifth channel (normally reserved for SFX), his music was still severely limited on the system.
Kondo has stayed with Nintendo through various consoles, including the Super Famicom (Super Nintendo outside Japan), the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube and most recently the Nintendo Wii. These latter systems have vastly improved Nintendo's audio capabilities, and Kondo today composes music with CD quality sound.
Koji Kondo attended the world-premiere of PLAY! A Video Game Symphony at the Rosemont Theater in Rosemont, IL in May of 2006. His music from the Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda series was performed by a full symphony orchestra. This event drew nearly 4000 attendees.
Considered by many to be the "John Williams" of the digital entertainment world, Koji Kondo is acclaimed the world over thanks to his unique partnership crafting the most recognizable themes and soundtracks with industry giant Nintendo (and to his credit, a creatively fluent partnership with Shigeru Miyamoto). Fans and critics alike cite as his greatest talent being his ability to craft melodies that while catchy and pleasant upon first listen, remain enjoyable even when looped over long periods of time and played through inferior sound equipment. His songs are certainly memorable; the title theme song to Super Mario Brothers retains its iconic status 20 years after its initial release. Not unknown in the musical community, Mr. Kondo can count talent such as Paul McCartney among his fans. Kondo's music has been cited as being as integral to the Nintendo style as the game design of Shigeru Miyamoto.
Conversely, this familiarity is also the cause of most criticism of Kondo's work. Over nearly 20 years in video game music, his style has changed very little. The themes of Super Mario Bros. in 1985 are little different from those of Super Mario Sunshine in 2002, although the earlier game sounds more primitive due to technology constraints. This need for sameness over the years is something of a two-edged sword for Kondo; when he has tried something different, as in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, some criticized him for abandoning the themes and styles they had grown to enjoy (although others found this to be some of his best work).
"Super Mario Bros. Theme" has been on Billboard Magazine's Hot Ringtones chart for over 90 weeks, where it also hit #1.
Koji Kondo's work shows at least three major influences: Latin music, jazz music, and classical music (mainly ragtime and march music), often with a strong cinematic flair. Latin is particularly evident in his bouncy themes throughout the Mario series, such as the soundtrack to Super Mario Bros. 3. The happy main theme has a slow, samba-like rhythm. The second theme offers a more upbeat, ragtime-like style. Bowser's theme would not sound out of place being played by a Mexican mariachi band. This influence also shows up in his more recent works, such as the Gerudo Valley theme from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, a song with a certain stereotypical Andalusian flair.
Kondo's more jazz-influenced pieces also come from a wide variety of projects. One of the earliest examples of this is his minimalist underground theme from Super Mario Bros., and Saria's theme from Ocarina of Time sounds almost Dixieland in places. All of this is hardly surprising; Kondo lists Henry Mancini as one of his most admired influences.
Kondo was trained as a classical musician, and this shows in his more ambitious projects, such as the soundtracks to the Zelda series. These pieces are distinctively cinematic, reminiscent of John Williams' work on Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The title theme to The Legend of Zelda is grandiose for all its low fidelity. Several of Mr. Kondo's themes have been famously recorded with full orchestral backing, with several tours of his work featured highly in concerts presented around the world.
Kondo's work is also highly influenced by Eastern Asian music, which might not be surprising given his country of birth. His songs are predominantly melody-based with little supporting harmony, which is in keeping with the Asian tradition. This makes him somewhat unique among the most popular video game composers, as his counterparts such as Nobuo Uematsu and Koichi Sugiyama produce more Western-sounding compositions for their games.
Ballad Of The Wind Fish
近藤浩治 Lyrics
We have lyrics for these tracks by 近藤浩治:
Chase Start me up いつもと同じ空 よくある シチュエーション なのに はやる気持ちはもう 夏のゲーム いざ開始! …
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
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@pleonasm545
Hmm, gonna have to disagree with you there. The progression on Seasons might not be smooth, because hardly any of the hints are actually helpful to you, but in such old Zelda games that was kind of what grew their lifespan into more than a day or two of play time, and Ocarina of Time/Majora’s Mask were just as shady with their progression, never outright telling you anything. It was a trick used to scale the difficulty in a “what do I even do next?” Sense, and that was awesome because it meant you could come back and replay the game and get stuck on the same puzzles and get the satisfaction of beating them and feeling like a smart cookie all over again, even if it’s concerning that six year old you could beat the games faster than twenty year old you can.
Both games had traditional 2D Zelda gameplay but adapted different triggers to make the leading mechanics feel unique, despite the fact that you were mostly just using a game-exclusive item to change the environment, making it possible to get around while also gating off the higher level areas.
The combat was fairly simple, fun, and challenging in both titles, and beating one allowed you to use this geeky cheat code system to play an altered version of the other, essentially giving you four different ways to play the games, as well as offering an extended challenge for if you beat both and unlocked everything. That included mini-games, collectible codes, main stories, and fetch quests, which is a wide variety of activities for such an old game that hardly any games bother with nowadays, settling for maybe a main story, collectibles, and a multiplayer.
And to top it all off, as if the gameplay, story, and variety weren’t good enough, the soundtrack was BALLER, especially in ages. Nayru’s song, despite being a bunch of 8-bit noises, is actually beautiful as fuck, and had such an impact on the Zelda cannon that ever since Twilight Princess, (including Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild,) Zelda devs have been naming locations, songs, and dragon characters after the three psuedo-princesses in a kind of strange homage/plagiarism. Din, Farore, and Nayru were such good character, with such cool concepts behind them that, while on one hand, Nintendo couldn’t just rip them off and put them in-game for future franchises (also because it would be lore breaking but hey if one goddess can be resurrected to accomplish nothing but fanservice, why can’t three?), they also couldn’t ignore such cool and integral ideas from the past games, so they sneak those names or some adaptations in whenever they need a good throwback.
I don’t know what could possibly make Seasons a bad game compared to Ages, since it was basically a reflection of the same game, and represents a time when games where made whole and complete, with a great deal of love and respect for the franchise, even when out of the hands of its original creators. I can’t think of any particular puzzle or dungeon that would make you hate the game, and the only flaw I think spoils the whole game is that Onox as a villain was pretty lame. Attack as a tornado? Cool. Disrupting the world in the name of a greater evil? Cool. Giant armored behemoth with a ball and chain? Cool. Trapping Din in a rupee? I would too, she’s hot, why would you kill her? Having almost no effect on the game outside of the opening cutscene, being a pretty lame boss overall, and turning into a dragon at the end for no explicable reason? Not cool. Not cool at all. Compared to Veran, that’s actually really lame. Veran was really active in the game, and progressively made things worse around the world, adding to the tension and suspense of the story. Onox did none of that. However, between the two game worlds themselves, I think Seasons had the better and more fun to explore game world, with cooler puzzles. On the dungeon side of things, Ages was much cooler, including how you get to some of the dungeons. Stranded on an island with some geckos who stole my shit, bit they didn’t know I was a time-traveling badass who would ruin their entire species? Yeah, that’s pretty awesome.
So yeah, highs and lows to both games, but almost entirely highs. 11/10, would recommend to anyone over the age of 5 and under the age of dead.
@timothymckane6362
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@user-dk1nt1hg2f
Yes, my favorite part of Majora's Mask was the part where the Wind Fish came down from the fucking sky and stopped the moon from crashing.
@deletedaccount3187
LMAO
@lengewenethegreenman6389
Same
@jonahstein3034
I loved that part, too.
@mirnaabu-gheida8976
Actually that was the four giants/guardian deities.
@MCsonic537
@@mirnaabu-gheida8976 r/woooooosh
@movezig5
The joke is that it's actually the Ballad of the Wind Fish.
@protectoman9150
Majora's mask must somehow be connected to Link's Awakening
@ColorBrothers5
MM was actually co-directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi (mainly leads mainline Mario teams) who directed Links Awakening. He drew a lot from it and MM has more of the 2D Zelda DNA than any of the other 3D games
@highdefinition450
Yes congrats for figuring that out, man