In an interview regarding his work for the Nintendo world around “Mario,” composer Koji Kondo revealed that many years ago he was able to experience a private performance of his theme music – sung by Paul McCartney. When Kondo attended one of his concerts in Japan, the Beatle found out about his presence, invited him backstage and sang the piece for him.
An “incredible moment”
Also there was the creator of “Super Mario Bros.”, Shigeru Miyamoto, who attended the gig with him in 1986. The 62-year-old said this in his conversation with “Washington Post”. Although it wasn’t a particularly long performance, with Paul McCartney only singing the first six notes of the piece, Kondo described it as an “incredible moment.”
He got the role as “Mario” composer by chance
Koji Kondo is not just one of many in the world of video game composers. More specifically, it is the only one inducted into the Library of Congress, a collection of audio pieces that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to the United States. In addition to the “Mario” soundtrack, he also created recordings for “The Legend of Zelda” and various “Star Fox” games.
The Japanese actually came to work on the successful series by chance. Together with a colleague, he was the first Nintendo employee to be explicitly responsible for the music of the video games. Regarding the process and division of labor, he told the Washington Post: “We basically just took turns and did whatever was being developed. They came to us and said, ‘Hey, we have this game, you do it’. It happened to be my turn when they were developing ‘Super Mario.'” Since then, he has contributed to around 70 compositions in the series, including pieces for “Mario Party”, “Mario Galaxy”, “Super Mario Maker” and “Super Mario Odyssey.”