Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros.

Koji Kondo's Super Mario Bros. (1985) score redefined the video game music genre. With under 3 minutes of music, Kondo put to rest an era of bleeps and bloops-the sterile products of a lab environment-replacing it with one in which game sounds constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression. Author Andrew Schartmann takes us through the various external factors (e.g., advances in technology, Nintendo's marketing tactics) that coalesced into a ripe environment in which Kondo's musical experiments could thrive. He then delves into the music itself, searching for reasons why our hearts still dance to the primitive 8-bit tunes of a bygone era.