Iwata Explains Mario Galaxy

The British Gaming Blog has links to articles on the official UK Wii site exploring the title Mario Galaxy . The first explores the game's origins and gives us a peek behind the scenes of the game's voice acting. The second looks at Mario's essence, and the benefits of the 'planetary gameplay'. The last is all about the sound of Mario: "This time, we recorded with an orchestra of about 50 or so members. Of course, they were not very good at first because they were playing music they'd never heard before, and they are also seeing the score for the first time. But as the day went on, their performance improved dramatically, and the process of recording each track in its final form was actually a very fast one. This surprised Miyamoto-san, who was glued to the glass wall looking at them from the other side. He was saying 'So, sound is something that really changes too!'"

Comments

The Orchestra

[Riddler Sensei]

As for the music, it's actually not uncommon for the orchestra to only need one, maybe two, takes from complete scratch. Impeccable sight reading coupled with an innate sense of what a piece is musically saying are the makings of the first call musicians that get called to these sorts of jobs. And it can be fairly rough too. If you DO blow it and they have to re-record on the account of you more than once, well you suddenly become the SECOND call guy.

This is the game...

[Enderandrew]

...this is the game that might force me to buy a Wii. Mario 64 convinced me to buy a N64, sadly I'm not sure a better N64 title came out after that, save for Zelda: OoT.

Interesting insight on the audio aspects

[Krozy]

<sarcasm>

A well known site offering news for nerds references a blog, that in turn references a subsite of a major gaming console revealing the obvious: Sound is an important element of games, and there is a correlation between the quality of sound produced and the amount of practice by those performing.

</sarcasm>

Ok. So I read the articles. And really, there are more interesting things about the music. For example, this gem:

When Mario shoots off from the Sling Star, for example, harp music plays as a sound effect. If you listen carefully, this harp will sound in perfect timing with the background music. This kind of technique rarely gets noticed however.

I imagine now knowing that special effort was applied to accomplish this will increase the appreciation I would I have for the game. But probably most revealing is this

"Yokota-san, if somewhere in your mind you have an image that Mario is cute, please get rid of it."... "Mario is cool"

Playing various Mario games over the years, it seemed that Mario had gone from some kind of rugged savior, to a fun plush toy. But embracing the notion that Mario is more then a cute character, and has some cool charm is also fitting considering the changes to have occurred to the Nintendo console over the years. The Nintendo 64 and GameCube seem more like toys. While the Wii isn't a "powerhouse" next to its brethren, I definately think its cool.

The impression that the music was slavishly trying to be like previous Mario music had disappeared. Before that, many of the pieces felt like they secretly wanted to copy the Mario sound, and the presence of elements like that made them sound unnatural.

This is a key element for innovation. Recognizing where you're just copying and doing something about it forces changes that result in raising the quality bar. Overall, I see this as a good thing.

Re:Voice acting?

[spxero]

I don't know if this is the clip you saw, but here's the voice of Mario.