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Today’s listening example is the theme from “Punch Out” which was Kondo’s first composition for a video game. This one was actually an arcade game. In college he would frequently visit the local coffee shops to play arcade games like Nintendo's Donkey Kong, which had just been released. "I was really interested in them," says Kondo, "because they were the only place where you could find the kind of sound creation I was looking for."
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Kondo is most known for writing the themes to arguably the most popular melodies in the video game industry and probably, world over.
During his senior year, Nintendo sent a recruitment message to his university stating that they were interested in hiring people dedicated to composition and sound programming. An LCD and arcade gamer, Kondo successfully applied for the job in 1984 without requiring any demo tapes. |
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Video games use electronically produced sounds and music. One of Koji Kondo’s most popular tunes is Saria’s song, “Lost Woods” from Legends of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This melody usually serves as background music for places that are related to forests or woods. In 1985, he wrote the music and sound effects for the super hit game ‘Super Mario Bros’; a game which would be later be called ‘The Greatest Game of All Time’.
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Koji Kondo is a genius with a computer and a keyboard, but do you know where he gets most of his ideas?
"When I'm thinking of the main theme — the melody and the main theme of any game, I don't really come up with those at work," said Kondo. "For some reason, they don't come to me when I'm in the office!" |
"Usually, I'll be in the bathtub, I'm it's like 'oh, there it is!' Or I'll be sleeping, and the melody is in my head. Or even, you know, I'll be walking down the hallway in my house, suddenly the music pops into my head. It really doesn't happen at work, it's always somewhere outside of the office."
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"The director will walk me through the game they're thinking of putting together," said Kondo. "And we'll talk a little bit about about overall music direction. Until we have a prototype ready for me to play, what I'll do is I'll take that conversation and listen to different kinds of music and try to come up with what I think may work."
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