This is not how this song was originally intended to sound. Composer Koji Kondo actually wrote a much
longer piece of music for the game's ending, but due to memory constraints, it had to be
cut down, until it was this 7 second long or so loop of music. But what happened to that original, longer
song? Well it actually turned up in a game you might
not expect. And so today, I'd like to talk about 7 of
these songs - songs that you've heard before, but you've been missing the full story. Let's go. Hi there, welcome to Thomas Game Docs! Today we’re talking about 7 Nintendo songs
that you only sort of know. And, first up is the much-loved Zelda
game for GameCube and Wii, Twilight Princess. Now, many people have compared this game to
Ocarina of Time - it’s pretty clear just looking at the game that Ocarina of Time provided
the greatest inspiration to the developers. But, one aspect where it clearly and unsurprisingly
differs from our Ocarina starring story is the overworld theme. I mean, it would be kind of ridiculous if
they reused the same theme tune right. Well, prepare for ridicule. Because inside the files for the finalized
version of the game found on store shelves lies a pretty surprising audio file. I’ll let it do the talking. Now, as you can hear, once the intro is done,
it starts to differentiate itself a little more from the Ocarina of Time theme. But as for whether this next section is actually
any good? Well, I'll let you make up your mind. Now, for years, Nintendo never acknowledged
this earlier version of the overworld theme, but that all changed with the release of Twilight
Princess HD for the Wii U. You see, alongside the game itself, Nintendo
of Japan released a soundtrack CD for the game. Well 3, actually. And if we scroll all the way down this long
long tracklist, we arrive at the final song on disc 2, titled “Hyrule Field Main Theme
(Alternate Take)”. And if we give it a listen... Oh and this isn't the only time that this
has happened with a Zelda game. If we travel way way back to 1986, Nintendo
were hard at work on their not originally a Zelda sequel but then turned into a Zelda
sequel, Zelda 2. Earlier that same year, the world had been
graced with the original Legend of Zelda, along with its iconic overworld theme, courtesy
of the great composer Koji Kondo himself! And so, jump forward a few months and composer
Akito Nakatsuka had just been given the task of composing this sequel's music. And, why change perfection, right? Well, that's not entirely fair. The majority of the overworld theme that Nakatsuka
composed is completely different from the original, but listen to how it starts. And not to be harsh, but I would say like
Twilight Princess, this game adopts the introduction of another game's theme, and then follows
it up with a vastly inferior main part. Right, next up is the iconic Main Theme from
Luigi’s Mansion. It should be instantly recognisable. Now, this theme did some pretty unique things. As well as generally sounding spooky, it was,
I would say, ahead of its time, in that it played with mixing diegetic and non-diegetic
audio. What does that mean? Well, diegetic audio is sound that’s playing
in the world of the game. So if a character plays a song on their CD
player, or in this case, hums it to themself, then that’s diegetic. Non-diegetic audio is music that is only playing
for the sake of the audience. Take that incredibly famous scene from the
movie Psycho. Now when the lady in the shower is being attacked,
she’s not thinking, “who invited that string orchestra in here”. The characters don’t hear the music, but
we do. Anyway, Luigi’s Mansion combines both diegetic
and nondiegetic audio in a really interesting way. Because luigi IS humming - you can kinda see
it if you really zoom in - so that’s diegetic audio. But the backing track is only playing for
our sake - that audio is non-diegetic. Having them play a sort of duet together is
really unique. But this wasn’t always going to be the case. Because the game’s two composers, Shinobu
Tanaka and the amazing lovely Kazumi Totaka who I adore, actually reworked the game’s
music from the ground up near the end of development. So, what was the original version like? Well, I think it speaks for itself. So, as you can no doubt hear, this version
was a synth-filled fiesta, and I would personally say that it’s quite a bit scarier, which
matches the earlier prototype versions of the game that were shown off at conferences. I do think the current version of the theme
makes a lot more sense for the final game, though. Luigi's Mansion, or at least the version eventually
sold on store shelves, wasn't meant to give you bowser filled nightmares, it was just
a little spook here and there. Anyway, this original version of the theme
was used all the way up until E3 2001. But after E3, composers Totaka and Tanaka
had a heart to heart. This current music just didn’t sound fun
enough, somehow. And so, they embarked on a quest to completely
rework the way the music worked. They decided to make use of some diegetic
audio, as we talked about earlier, in the form of luigi humming the game’s main theme. Not only that, but the soundtrack was also
adaptive. When the player enters a room they’ve already
cleared of ghosts, Luigi calmly whistles the theme song. When he’s in a hallway that he hasn’t
been cleared, he nervously mumbles the theme. When he enters a room full to the brim with
ghosts, the ghosts themselves sing the game’s theme. And, when he leaves the mansion, a lone harp
takes over. Now that is some clever use of audio, right
there! But next up is Sunshine’s main theme. In the final version of this tropical game,
we were blessed with the positively iconic Delfino Plaza theme. But again, it wasn’t always going to be
this way. Let’s travel back to the year 2001. Nintendo’s new home console, the so-called
GameCube, was set to launch mid September, alongside the Mario title which I don’t
think anyone could have predicted - Luigi’s Mansion. And sure, this game looked cool. It was atmospheric, and unlike anything else
from the series. But, it wasn’t Mario - fans were still waiting
for the next big Mario game, the follow up to the critically acclaimed Mario 64. However, in August, Nintendo held their annual
Spaceworld Conference, and this time they had something to announce. Something secret to announce. “I’d like to ask you a favour. Mario and Zelda are scheduled to be launched
next Summer and Christmas, so the video I will show you is very very confidential, so
please don’t take pictures and study them later. Is it ok? Can you promise?” Well, unfortunately for poor Miyamoto, IGN
decided to ignore his request completely. Not only did they take pictures, but they
also recorded the entire trailer and posted it online. Still, this does give us an interesting opportunity
to not only see what the game was like back then, but also listen to it. Now, as Miyamoto stated, the game was very
very early in development at this point, soI really doubt that this song was ever intended
for use in the game. But, interestingly enough, it can still be
found inside the game’s files. Which might not seem especially weird - they
must’ve just left it from the trailer, right? - but remember, the music from the trailer
would’ve been edited onto it afterwards with video editing software, not played directly
from the game. Weird! Ok I’m allowed one self-indulgent song,
right? This is from Ace Attorney, which isn’t published
by Nintendo. But it has been exclusively released on Nintendo
platforms until pretty recently, so it counts? Kind of... Anyway, with that little disclaimer out of
the way, here’s the song we're talking about. First thoughts, this is a little painful to
listen to. Like the chords and melody sound nice enough,
but those instruments are the very definition of “grating”. And so, I feel like to give this song a fair
chance, we should hear what it would sound like if it were given a slightly nicer-sounding
instrumentation. Ahem. Now, I’m sure you’re wondering, what even
is this song? Well, it's just sitting in the game’s files
alongside all the other music from the game. This one was just happened to never be used. But, there’s probably a little more to the
story here. Because in all likelihood, this was originally
intended to be the game’s end credits music. Here’s the final theme from the Japan only
Game Boy Advance version of Ace Attorney: Still a little grating, but it’s definitely
much improved. But, if we fast forward 4 years to the release
of Ace Attorney for the DS - that’s the version most people have played - then we’ll
hear a beefed up but also much less painful version of the theme. Ah, isn’t that better. Now we can enjoy the game’s emotional ending
without having to reach for our earplugs. Now, for our next song, we’ll be turning
to one of Nintendo’s golden geese - Zelda. Specifically, the first ever Zelda game for
the NES! I have talked about this before, but I think
it’s worth retelling. So, cast your mind back to, say, mid 1985. Nintendo had released their Famicom console,
also known as the NES, 2 years ago in 1983, and it had done ...OK. They had released some sports games, some
ports of their arcade games, and people were generally happy with the system. The sales hadn’t been through the roof,
but they were high enough that Nintendo wanted to keep going with this little system. However, the developers at the company were
starting to feel like they had reached the limits with what they could achieve, from
a technical point of view. The system wasn’t powerful enough, they
thought, for many more exciting new games. And so, Nintendo came up with a sort of stopgap
solution. This: the Famicom Disk System. It slotted onto the bottom of your Famicom
console, and let you play games stored on floppy discs. That came with a number of technical advantages
- greater storage, plus some extra sound channels. And so, as a final goodbye to the original
system, Shigeru Miyamoto and his colleagues decided to develop a sort of send off, a culmination
of everything which had come before, which ended up taking the form of Super Mario bros. Now, this game sort of scuppered Nintendo's
plans for the Disk System. Everyone was now talking about this new “Super
Mario”, and the Famicom’s sales were suddenly higher than anyone at Nintendo could’ve
predicted. By that point though, work on the Disk System
was well underway, so Nintendo decided to continue with their plans to release the peripheral
in February of the next year. And, Miyamoto had undertaken the responsibility
of developing a game to launch alongside this new device. The name of the game was to be “The Legend
of Zelda: The Hyrule Fantasy”, and I think we all know how that turned out. But the game’s music has an especially interesting
story behind it. As I’ve talked about in the past, composer
Koji Kondo was given some incredibly, incredibly vague instructions for how the game’s music
should sound. For the fairy fountain theme (which ended
up being cut), he was simply told “Life Fountain - fanfare, sparkly”. For the dungeon music, he was simply told,
“Short BGM”. And for the title screen music, he was simply
told “title music”. That was it. And so, since Kondo was given practically
free reign, he decided to use a pre-existing piece of music for the title screen. The classical piece “Bolero” by composer
Ravel. Now, no recording of Kondo's arrangement exists,
but here’s a quick mockup I threw together. And so, that was the first version of the
title theme that you’ve never been able to hear before. But why was it changed? Well, right before the game’s disks were
to be printed, the development team realised they had a major problem on their hands. You see, in Japan, a piece of music enters
the public domain 50 years after the composer has died. And Kondo just assumed that Ravel had died
at least 50 years ago - he seemed pretty old. But to assume is to make an ass out of you
and me. And that Kondo did. Because it turned out that Ravel had died
49 years ago! If Nintendo was to delay the game by only
a few months, then they would be in the clear. But Zelda was a launch title for the Famicom
Disk System, and they definitely couldn’t push back the release of THAT. And so, Kondo took matters into his own hands,
and pulled an all nighter during which he rearranged the game’s overworld theme into
a more majestic, slow sounding song for the title theme. But this a tiny bit more to the story, actually. Because as I mentioned, one feature of the
Famicom Disk System was the addition of an extra sound channel, and a special one at
that. Composers could design their own waveforms,
allowing them to recreate the sound of any instrument. ...kind of. The functionality was still pretty limited,
but Kondo made full use of it in the game’s title theme. Listen closely - there's all sorts of sounds
you would never normally hear in an NES game! If you compare that to the version we were
given in English speaking countries, where the game was released as a regular old NES
cartridge, you can instantly hear the difference. And now for the final example, and I think
my favourite of them all, simply because it seems so obvious once you point it out. Picture this, you’re this plumber guy called
Mario, and oh no, your significant other has been kidnapped by this evil beast called Bowser! You travel across foreign lands, journey through
harsh environments, kill countless foes in your way. Until eventually, you manage to save the princess. And your reward for all of that? Cool, and then it goes... And then it goes… Yeah, you get the idea. It's an incredibly short piece of music! And so, I was thinking about this one evening,
and I wondered, “is there a little more to the story here?” And it turns out, yes. Composer Koji Kondo originally wrote an AABA
structured piece of music. So part A would go… And then part A would repeat... Then part B would go... And then finally, part A... See, that sounds so much more complete! It sounds like a proper, full piece of music. But, as I mentioned before, Super Mario Bros
was the last game, or intended to be, the last game released on the regular old Famicom,
or NES. Because of this, memory was really tight. There’s that super famous story of how the
clouds, are exactly the same as the bushes, just with a different colour palette - that's
how much they had to squeeze every last drop of memory out of the system. And so, late in development, it became necessary
to free up a tiny bit more space. And I think you can see where this is going. Sadly, Kondo’s beautiful B section had to
be completely cut from the game, leaving an AAAA structure instead, or as we know it this
beautiful 5 second music loop. But, all was not lost. Because, when Nintendo decided to release
a sequel to the game, released this time of the Famicom Disk System, composer Koji Kondo
saw an opportunity. Let’s see what happens when you complete
the game. Tada, ful theme! And check this out - it's got a flipping key
change! What a vast improvement! So we hear this phrase, “limitation breeds
creativity”, right? And it’s talking about how often having
constraints, having limitations on what you’re able to do from a technical standpoint,leads
to more original and creative ideas. And that is 100% true, that's proven itself
to be very very true over the history of video games. But as we've seen today, I think it can be
nice, from time to time, just to free up those limitations just a little. Thanks for watching to the end. If you found this interesting, then be sure
to subscribe for more videos like this. Plus you can follow me on Twitter @thomasgdocs
if you want more from me in your life, which I don't know if that's a good thing, but the
option is there. Either way, see you next week. Bye!
