Wired talks to Koji Kondo

Posted Mar 14, 2007 at 12:32AM EST by QJ Staff

Listed in: Wii, Nintendo DS Tags: GDC, Koji Kondo, Osaka University

Koji Kondo, composer of video game sound tracks - Image 1

Considering that Koji Kondo, the Japanese composer responsible for most Nintendo soundtracks, is a man of few words, Wired was lucky enough to have talked to him. Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, and Tommy Tallarico of Video Games Live only have good words to say about Kondo, especially after his great performance at the GDC.

Kondo was born in Nagoya, studied at Osaka University of Arts. As a college student he was fond of playing arcade games like Space Invaders and the Donkey Kong series. He also liked to listen to hard rock, jazz and fusion, to musicians like Deep Purple, Cassiopeia, Chick Corea, and Herbie Hancock. He dreamed "only a little" of being a keyboard player.

Nintendo was where he found his first job, and he has been working with the games giant ever since. Kondo says that his goal for making the Super Mario sound track was to create something that had never been heard before. An interesting fact is that Kondo made the underwater music for Mario first before anything else, because it was the easiest to imagine.

Kondo admits that he does submit his ideas to the game directors, that in a sense, he's just like any of the game designers. But he's never played any of the new games nowadays, complaining that "it's too hard for me". We'll just have to excuse that complaint for now, knowing as how Koji is one of those people who oversee the whole project of Wii Music.

Via Wired

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Wired talks to Koji Kondo

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