Koji Kondo

Koji Kondo (近藤 浩治) is a Japanese composer and musician best known for his scores for various Nintendo video games.

Biography
Kondo was born in Nagoya, Japan. In the 1980s, Kondo learned that Nintendo was seeking musicians to compose music for its new video game system, the Nintendo Entertainment System. 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 sound effects, his music was still severely limited on the system.

Kondo has stayed with Nintendo through various consoles, including the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube, the Nintendo DS, and most recently the 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 Theatre in Rosemont, Illinois, 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 four thousand attendees.

Musical style and influences
Koji Kondo is widely acclaimed due to his unique and recognizable themes and soundtracks with Nintendo along with a creatively fluent partnership with Shigeru Miyamoto. Fans and critics alike cite 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 Bros. retains its iconic status two decades after its initial release. Not unknown in the musical community, Kondo can count talent such as Paul McCartney among his admirers. 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 two decades 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 technological constraints. This need for sameness over the years is something of a double-edged sword for Kondo; when he did try something different, as in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), some criticised him for abandoning the themes and styles they have grown to enjoy.

"Super Mario Bros. Theme" has been on Billboard's Hot Ringtones chart for over one hundred sixty 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 up-beat, ragtime-like style. The Bowser 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 Ocarina of Time, a song with a certain stereotypical Andalusian flair. Kondo also has been influenced by classic rock, as the Deep Purple instrumental "April" bears a striking resemblence to the main title theme of The Legend of Zelda. Kondo even uses a riff from the song as the looping end section of the underworld/dungeon theme from the same game.

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 the first Super Mario Bros. Saria's theme from Ocarina of Time sounds almost Dixieland in places. All of this is hardly surprising; Kondo lists the late Henry Mancini as one of his most admired influences.

Kondo's work is also highly influenced by Eastern Asian music. 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.