This month’s Wired Magazine has a profile on internet superstars the Minibosses, who cover only music from classic Nintendo Entertainment System games. The thing with them is – they refuse to do Mario music. Now if you ask me, that’s all posturing. Anyone who has ever picked up a bass guitar has attempted the underworld theme from the first SMB game, so I decided to see if anyone was doing mario music justice.
The obvious first place to look was Overclocked Remix, a site dedicated to hosting reinterpreted versions of video game music. Most of the mp3’s are pretty typical videogame music fare: remixed to sound like… video game music. But if you dig around a bit you can find some pretty great interpretations by people playing real live instruments. I present to you my relatively organic-sounding Mario mix:
1.) Super Buck Jazz by Estradasphere
Super-produced version of the SMB2 ‘overworld theme.’
2.) Aquatic Interlude by Brad Smith
A tasteful arrangement for classical guitar with some synth bits.
3.) The Italian Plumber by M.S. Mehawich
A piano / cello / violin arrangement of several SMB1 themes.
4.) Jazz Plumber Trio by DJ Pretzel
Self-explanatory: Jazz trio plays mario music.
Additionally, it’s worth mentioning that there is a guy methodically redoing every bit of music contained in the first Metroid game in a ‘metal’ style at metroidmetal.com. It’s pretty fun. There’s also a ‘deleted scene’ from that Wired article here.