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Super Mario Bros. (Complete Soundtrack)

1985 · FDS, NES

Four notes of that Ground BGM and your brain is already running through World 1-1. Koji Kondo wrote the Super Mario Bros. soundtrack in 1985 with two pulse channels, a triangle wave, and a noise channel, and somehow invented the template for every platformer score that followed.

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The Underground BGM drops to a chromatic bass figure that immediately tells you the rules changed. Castle BGM is pure tension, just minor intervals and staccato rhythm creating dread from almost nothing. The Hurry Up variants add urgency by just bumping tempo, which is so simple it's kind of genius.

That Underwater waltz proved the NES could do graceful. Nineteen tracks total, most under thirty seconds, every single one permanently lodged in culture. If you think you know this soundtrack, listen to it isolated from the game and hear how much Kondo built from so little.

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33 tracks · tap a song to play it, grey ones have no video

  1. 1Ground BGM
  2. 2Timer Warning
  3. 3Ground BGM (Hurry Up!)
  4. 4Course Clear
  5. 5Scene Change
  6. 6Underground BGM
  7. 7Underground BGM (Hurry Up!)
  8. 8Invincibility BGM
  9. 9Invincibility BGM (Hurry Up!)
  10. 10Player Down
  11. 12Underwater BGM
  12. 13Underwater BGM (Hurry Up!)
  13. 14Castle BGM
  14. 15Castle BGM (Hurry Up!)
  15. 16World Clear
  16. 18Ending (The Lost Levels)
  17. 19Mario Name Entry (Vs. Super Mario Bros.)