The Brilliance of Super Mario Sunshine’s Soundtrack and the Effectiveness of Thematic Repetition
In the summer of 2002 I was an excited 3rd grader as we were riding up to the local Walmart to pick up the one thing I had been excited about the most: the Nintendo Gamecube. While I was aware that the Playstation 2 and Xbox were out as well, Nintendo seemed to be the only real direction to go in that made sense to me. I had gone up to that point playing Super Nintendo and with that, Super Mario World and all of the NES games available on the Super Mario All Stars compilation cartridge. At the time, I was a huge Super Mario fan and when my brother and I got our Gamecube bundled with Super Mario Sunshine I became nothing short of obsessed with the game and every little detail of it. It was so cool to finally try out a 3D Super Mario game like what I had seen with Super Mario 64.
Of course, me being a fan of music as much as games, one of the most nostalgic things about Super Mario Sunshine for me is the soundtrack. About a year ago, I was listening to the soundtrack for it when I realized a lot of repetition existed that I had never really noticed before, and I thought the way it worked out in the game was brilliant in a subtle kind of way.
One of the biggest critiques of the soundtrack for Super Mario 64 is that, while the tracks themselves are great, there is a lot of copying and pasting of world themes between them which can sometimes make for a repetitive experience. For example, the Bob-omb Battlefield theme is repeated at least between 3 different worlds including Bob-omb Battlefield. This happens with most of, if not all, the themes in Super Mario 64. This was probably due to memory constraints on the Nintendo 64 cartridge. When the Gamecube announced that it would use an optical medium for its games, this allowed more space for a larger number of unique tracks on them.
One of the things that many game reviews have pointed out about Super Mario Sunshine already is that, unlike the more thematically disjointed worlds in Super Mario 64, everything in Super Mario Sunshine is connected by the fact that it all takes place on a tropical island. Naturally, because of this, all of the levels have to conform to the game’s setting in some way. You have a central plaza that connects Mario to the distant hills, the harbor, the amusement park, the beach, the bay, the hotel, and the village. What many have pointed out about the game’s presentation when it comes to showing this setting is that from many of the worlds you can see the others in the distance. This gives the player a sense of geography and provides the illusion of an open world. When i was a kid, this didn’t go unnoticed and I thought it was one of the most immersive aspects of the game.
The connections don’t stop there, however. One of the things I noticed is that all the major worlds share some kind of connection with some of the others musically. Save for a few tracks like the airstrip one at the beginning and some of the extra tracks in worlds like Pinna Park, Nico Bay and Pinata Village, the main themes for the world share musical themes that help to convey the sense of connectedness in Isle Delfino.
The first instance of this begins with the theme used in Delfino Plaza. This theme is the most prevalent in the game and is actually rearranged for Bianco Hills, Rico Harbor, Gelato Beach, and Sirena Beach. It’s something that, upon first listening, you probably wouldn’t notice it, but they all share some distinct similarities. If we use the Delfino Plaza theme as the base for what the theme sounds like normally and become familiar with its structure, we can then see the relationship the other tracks have to it.
Delfino Plaza, on a very basic structural level, has a four-part structure where it goes from an A section to a B section, back to the A section, and into the C section and finally a D section before it repeats.. The A section consists of a guitar being played in a percussive style introducing the first bits of the main melody with the upper strings. The B section is introduced by an accordion which takes the melody and moves the melody into one of the most recognizable sections of the track where most of the other level themes can be easily identified as rearrangements of this track. In particular, the part of the melody the accordion plays where it repeats the melody it introduced for the third time and does a chromatic descent, feeling like it might modulate to a different key before bringing us right back to the A section. The C section begins again with the accordion taking the theme from the guitar, this time with a more staccato and kinetic style, providing three different variations of a phrase that features an ascended version of the first one and a slightly descended version of the second before heading back into the A section. The A section is cut in half and takes a break when the accordion comes in again and gives something of a development section which includes a healthy does of chromaticism as the melodic contour starts high, descends for the first phrase, rises up with the second phrase, and reaches its peak at the beginning of the third phrase and consists of a descending sequence, hitting the lowest note in the section and going back into the beginning of the A section where, from there, the track loops.
Now that we have the structure down, let’s look at Bianco Hills. Immediately we can see that Bianco Hills’ theme consists of completely different instrumentation. This time there is more emphasis on wind instruments, particularly reed instruments. One of the things we also notice is that the melody is more upfront in the beginning than the original Delfino Plaza theme with the guitar. Because of the nature of wind instruments they can’t really perform the type of chord melody that the guitar was in the beginning. As a result certain liberties needed to be taken with the original melody, interpolating notes in blank spots left by the original melody making for a more melodically verbose A section than the original. Alas, when those interpolations are taken out, what we end up getting is the same melody at its core as the one in Delfino Plaza. Going into the B section of this track, the melody is more obscure as the winds that were playing the melody are now carrying the harmony while the melody is traded off with one of the lower voices in the ensemble. However, the harmony is easy to follow and it doesn’t take long to realize that it is mirroring what the accordion was doing, especially when it does the three-note chromatic descent and practically completely copies the melody of the accordion from Delfino Plaza as it goes back into the A section. The only thing missing is that there isn’t really a C section as this track is shorter than Delfino Plaza and really has a short Coda that loops the song. But from the structure that is there, and the overall harmonic structure and melody of this are, at their essence, a variation of the Delfino Plaza theme.
Now, at this point I’m not going to go so in-depth with all the other world themes because that would be overkill, however, I will touch briefly on the other cases of of the Delfino Plaza theme-sharing worlds.
Ricco Harbor is fairly straightforward in its thematic similarity to Delfino plaza. The bassline, itself gives the song away before the melody even kicks in. The melody is more, or less, lightly expanded on from the original with a big saxophone section. This theme is almost a perfect copy of the original as, not only does the big sax sax section almost copy verbatim the melody of the chromatic section, but the guitar takes almost no liberties with the C section of the original theme. It’s probably the most obvious case of shared themes.
Gelato beach is another fairly obvious example of theme sharing. The A and B section melodies are played by a steelpan where the C section is played by a solo saxophone which, once again, takes no liberties with the melody.
Probably the most questionable theme I included in this is the theme for Sirena Beach. The Sirena Beach theme is interesting because, of all of the themes I discussed so far, this one is the least involved musically. What I found interesting about this theme that compelled me to include it in with the Delfino Plaza group is that, despite there being no really obvious evidence in favor of my claim, there were some interesting bits that I felt were strong enough include it. For example, the series of glissando in the guitar at the opening of the melody sounds like it could be an extremely subtractive arrangement of the opening melody, only looking at the starting note, the peak, and finishing note of the original melody. Another thing I noticed was in the harmony. The chord progression for Sirena Beach is the same contour as the Delfino Plaza chord progression except it’s shifted 90° out of phase ahead of the original. The track is also in a much different key than the original which makes things very subtle and the fact that the melody in the development section is almost non-existent, there isn’t a whole lot to go by. Again, this is a debatable claim- probably the most debatable claim I’ve made- but I feel strongly enough about it to include it in this thematic group.
The next thematic grouping is the Pinna Park Beach theme group. This consists of Pinna Park Beach, Noki Bay, and Pianta Village.
I will try to be brief with this group since it is fairly straightforward. The Pinna Park Beach theme can be organized in a number of different ways, but the way I hear it, it’s as A-B-A-B’-A-B’’. It’s two different motifs alternating between the two where one is constant and the other is seeing three different variations.
Noki Bay is nearly identical to the original melody only with the addition of different ornimentations- especially trills. The chord progression is also slightly altered and is the biggest difference between this variation of the theme and the original Pinna Park Beach theme.
The trickier of the three is the Pianta Village theme mostly because its entire arrangement is written for percussion instruments and the theme isn’t immediately apparent thanks to the complex, polyrhythmic introduction. What also makes it tricky is that it is in a different time signature from the other ones, but when you listen to the melody for Pianta Park, it matches the chord progression of the Pinna Park Beach theme, and when you reach the latter half of the Pianta Village theme, it conforms more obviously to the original melody and ends in much the same way as the other two do.
So what is it, exactly, that I’m getting at here. Some might reflexively say that this sharing of themes across multiple worlds in the game is a sign of unoriginality on the side of the composer. However, I don’t think that way at all- as the title to this suggests. As I pointed out in a previous piece I where I wrote about the art of video game soundtrack composition, when a composer is able to convey the sentiment, theme, or narrative of a game, they are doing something incredibly right. Of course, there is merit in having a game that simply has well composed music that don’t necessarily have any thematic binding between one another, because good music is good music as long as it, matches the mood of the situation. That said, ones that have a deeper meaning to their composition- ones that go the extra mile, I can respect on a deeper level- even if it consists of tracks I don’t particularly think very much of.
What makes Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack special is the fact that most of the world themes share a basic similarity in that they are all built off a set musical idea and those ideas are expanded on based on what the setting in the game is. The big horn section in Rico Harbor sounds like cargo ship fog horns, the steelpan ensemble for Gelato Beach because it’s on a beach, the spooky vibratos and glissandos of Sirena Beach because of all the ghostly stuff that is going on there, but still on a tropical island etc.
These worlds are linked by common themes because their design themes are linked by the fact that they all take place on a tropical island. Sure the shared musical themes change, and not all of the tracks in the game have them, but the big ones that do, I find are remarkable and shouldn’t go overlooked. It helps add a cohesiveness of the world the game is presenting to the player and it helps make the game feel more immersive. You aren’t leaving for a completely different place like you are in Super Mario 64, you are, instead, going to another part of the same island you’ve always been on.
The best part of all of this is that these similarities are quite subtle if you aren’t listening for them. So not only is it that these tracks share the same basic musical ideas, but the similarities are arranged in such a way where the same musical ideas can be sold to you as a completely different piece and you would believe it, leaving the awareness of these similarities being mostly subconscious. It’s reminiscent of what classical composers did with each others’ works, making variations on their contemporaries’ and predecessors’ works and making something new out of them.
Super Mario Sunshine’s soundtrack is great. Not only is it well-composed, catchy, and as classically ‘Mario’ as any other Super Mario OST, but it is also a great work of doing more with less and pulling it off flawlessly, in my opinion. The game itself might have mixed opinions from reviewers in recent years, but I think everyone can agree that the soundtrack is still one of the game’s strong points, and hopefully my attempt at explaining the theme sharing might help bring even greater appreciation to an already great OST.
