A group Super Mario World fans are currently remastering the soundtrack from the SNES platform (h / t Chris Kohler) with high-quality versions of the original samples. But if you’re hoping for some great, orchestral versions of songs you’ve loved for decades, it really isn’t.
The samples are provided by the ‘Gigaleak’, a massive (and unofficial) dumping of Nintendo files that took the internet by storm last year. Among those files was the source code for Super Mario Worldthe 2002 reissue on Game Boy Advance, What You Wouldn’t Know, including the original instruments used for SNES music. From there it was just a matter of replacing the compressed sounds with their lossless equivalents to create these “remastered” tracks.
But these technically high-quality songs don’t quite live up to the classic SNES games. Take the theme “Forest of Illusion” for example. Gone are the mellow tones of the original, replaced with a cacophony of echoing melodies that sound more like someone was going too fast for Fruity Loops effects than a comforting walk through a misty forest.
The new course “Swimming” has the same problem. Being able to hear each instrument clearly and perfectly creates an overbearing soundscape that feels too crowded.
And don’t even get me started on the “Athletic” theme. It feels like one player piano version of an iconic song.
That said, we can’t blame these particular creators. They literally plug new instruments into old compositions and make them rock, and on some level, I respect the desire to drag these songs (no matter how kicking and screaming) into the 21st century.
The problem is that these sounds, I assume, were largely chosen by Legendary Super Mario World composer Koji Kondo because they sounded good in lower quality. Today, studios have Blu-ray discs and state-of-the-art sound cards, but the 1991 development was all about getting around the limitations of both limited memory and now archaic audio technology. That’s why sprites from earlier eras don’t look as good on high-definition monitors as they do on CRT televisions: they were created with those drawbacks in mind.
These have been remastered Super Mario World songs don’t work for the same reason that I’d rather listen to a street performer play an original song on an untuned acoustic guitar than have an orchestra blast off with a top 40 hit on their expensive brass and woodwinds. The medium by which art is produced and portrayed is just as important as its technical reliability. Of course these ‘high quality’ and ‘lossless’ samples sound good on their own, but when combined with modern equipment, they lose the heart and soul of the originals.
G / O Media can receive a commission
But if they are your thing, you can listen to some of these remastered tracks here. It seems inevitable that someone is going to plug them into a ROM of the original game, which should make for an… interesting experience.