Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 199: Nintendo's Stairway to Rhythm Heaven

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

Live from MAGfest 2019! Jeremy Parish, Bob Mackey, and Chris Sims explore the musical legacy of Nintendo R&D1 from Donkey Kong to the grand culmination of the studio's love for brilliant music and sound design: Rhythm Heaven. Special thanks to Trey Johnson for an assist with the audio!

Away we go. This week in Retronauts, it's a bustle in your hedgerow. Hi, everyone. I'm Jeremy Parrish with Retronauts here at MacBest, That guy. Oh, me, Bob Mackey. And that guy. Hi, I'm Chris Sims. I'm a comic book writer, and I look forward to bringing my expertise in a completely silent medium to this panel. Can we say bustle in your hedgerow in this panel?

I already said it. Okay, we're working blue. It's ready to T for teen. Is that blue? I don't know. I think so. It's a Britishism, so who knows what it means. But hi, yes, because this is Magfest, the Music and Games Festival.

Is that what it stands for? I think it is. Cool. We thought we would talk about music and games. Music in games and the history thereof, as seen through the lens of Nintendo's R&D 1 division. So we'll, I guess, just jump right in. Yeah? Okay, cool.

So in the beginning, video games had sound, but not much music. I want that on vinyl. That's kind of loud. I'm going to turn that down. But yeah, you know, people realize, like, there is a certain musicality to these weird, harsh electronic beeps. It was an age of experimentation in drugs. It was the 70s. And so people started saying, could we, you know, make music out of video games?

So you had books like Gentle Giant who took those sounds you just heard and turned them into a song. That's supposed to be like the rhythmic lead into that song. I don't think it works, but God bless them for trying. That was 1975, and there were no rules back then. But a couple of years later, a band from Japan called Yellow Magic Orchestra, YMO, came out with their first album, and that included a track called Firecracker, aka a computer game, which riffs on a bunch of computer sounds, and turns it into something that is genuinely musical. So anyway, it was a long journey from those horrible little sounds we heard in Pong

to where we are now with video game music. And there were many experiments along the way and lots of mistakes, lots of successes. I really feel like looking at Nintendo and Nintendo R&D 1 specifically is a great way to just sort of come to a better understanding of how video game music evolved over the years because, you know, Nintendo R&D-1 was kind of like the core Nintendo development group internally. They were responsible for a lot of the hardware

and great innovations that you saw at Nintendo. And also the organization, the group, existed for like 25 years with a lot of continuity within the staff. So you really get a sense of how these people's discipline and approach to music, creating music out of video games, shifted over time.

And we're going to see that. You know, there's a few names we'll see repeatedly over the next hour. And as music evolves in the video games that they worked on, you get a sense of how they were growing as artist and coming to a better understanding of how to use music. I think it's interesting because, you know, we started with Pong, and Nintendo created its own Pong games. That was the Nintendo Color TV game,

and it was a thing that they created with MagnaVox in collaboration, and that was sort of their entry into video games. And the guy who worked on those with MagnaVox was an engineer from, I want to say Sharp, I don't know exactly how it worked, but Masayuki Uamura joined the company and helped develop the NES. But the TV game line went through a few different iterations, and one of the most notable and final iterations was, a redesign of the hardware that was created by, designed by a young

fellow named Shigeram Yamoto. And a couple of years later, he would become extremely important for Nintendo when he gave them their first video game hit. But I've been talking a lot. So I don't know if you guys want to get a word in edgewise before we launch into this. I'm waiting for the actual music to start.

I mean... The actual video game music. Don't you love you some YMO? I'm going to perform it all. All right. So let's see where we are now in my video real. Oh, there we go. So you guys probably know that game. So you guys probably know that game. But that's a pretty notable hit. It was Nintendo's first hit, Donkey Kong.

And it's also an early example of video game developers integrating music into their work. And this was in the days before, you know, standardized platforms before people programmed video games. They actually put their games together as discrete logic boards. And I recently read an interview with the composer on Donkey Kong, Hirokazu Hipp Tanaka, where he was talking about how, instead of creating music, he was basically like torturing diodes to get the sounds right. And that's why Donkey Kong has such kind of distinctive sound. Like, if you compare it to Pac-Man or something, Donkey Kong has this kind of weird muffled quality to the audio.

It's not just your video. It sounds like it's being played through an amp that's underwater. Yeah, yeah. When you played in the arcade, that's exactly what it sounds like. And it's a game that's really hard to emulate the sound perfectly because of that. And the game was recently put on Switch as part of the arcade archives. And if you listen to that, Mario's little... that little foot sound he makes,

it doesn't sound right on Switch. It's just like a constant tone, but because of the nature, like the sort of analog nature of the hardware, on the arcade game, he makes this sort of weird, alternating, sort of chaotic tone when he walks. And it's really hard for people to emulate that.

But there is a musicality to it, not just the little doot, do, do do, do. But also, like, the way his footsteps syncopate with that. It's a really great little soundscape that the game creates. and I mentioned Hipsonaka. He had actually joined Nintendo the year before Donkey Kong as the hardware, like the sound hardware creator

for a game called Space Firebird, which is no great shakes, really. So nothing super remarkable, but, you know, it's a start. You got to start someplace. So anyway, yeah, I think at this point maybe we should talk about the Nintendo divisions just to kind of give a sense. Because Nintendo did kind of work in silos. You had R&D 1, R&2, R&3, and R&4, plus there are some other R&D. And R&D is research and development.

And we're talking about R&D1, but you guys have probably heard of some games by some of the other groups. Chris, you seem a little... This is not your area of expertise, I think. It is not. So, what do you know of Nintendo's internal groups? Well, I know that R&D4 became EAD. There you go. And that was Miyamoto's group.

Right. So they made Mario. Right. Was one Gunpei Yokoy? It was, yeah. Yeah. So they did stuff like Game Boy and Game Boy camera and Virtual Boy and so on and so forth, whereas Nintendo was, Nintendo R&D4 was doing the big hits.

Virtual Boy was not a big hit. you also had R&D2 and R&D3 and we can kind of get a quick overview here with some more videos R&D1 did games like this Okay, this was a good game Super Metroid But listen to the sound here

Have you written about this game before? Once Actually someone just pitched an article to me It was like, hey could you read about Super Metro And I said no, let's let someone else talk I just played that game for the first time Like three months ago So this is R&D2

Mock Rider was that used in any other game that music yeah I don't think so R&D 2 is interesting because oh wait what so sorry oh well I mean that doesn't count every video every video game song ever composed is in

smash brothers it sounded really familiar and I couldn't place it because I'd never really played mock writer but when I was 19 I was unemployed and I played melee for about four hours a day, so that would be why. That sounds like that. Yeah, R&D2 is interesting. It was run by Masayuki Uemara

who did the NES hardware design and so forth. They didn't make a lot of video games, and in fact, mock writer, which was developed by R&D2, was actually a HAL developed a game. Hal developed game, yes. And then there was R&D3, which mostly focused on games for the Western audience.

Like Pilot Wings. Great music. Yeah, how come I can't hear the music here? I guess that's just, like, the sound of the wind whipping around your ears. Oh, you know this guy. You know what I really like about that one? Hmm. It is good.

Is that from Smash Brothers, too? I think it is. I think it is. I think it's a smash. That's actually my favorite. smash stage right there. I really like that opening because it's very much a

now you do something. And I like the way it starts because you know you've written about this frequently. Once or twice. Mario Brothers wants to start with what is essentially, you know, the title screen, the title goes away and then you're just standing there

and there's a ticking clock. And the music is very good at queuing you to be like da-da-da-da-da. Your turn? Press a button. It's, it's, ta-da. Yeah, so Super Mario Brothers music was composed by a guy named Koji Kondo, who joined in the mid-80s. But a lot of the music we're going to be talking about here is going to be by Tanaka, who, like I said, joined in 1980,

and was kind of the company's musical mainstay, aside from the Mario games, throughout most of the 80s. And he works at the Pokemon Company now. He's like the boss of the Pokemon Company. He left Nintendo so that he could compose music for the Pokemon Anime. And I guess they liked him so that much they were like, just take possession of the whole company. Why don't you? So he's doing okay. He's got a close relationship with the Nintendo still, but he doesn't really compose for games anymore.

He had a great album that came out about a year ago called Jingo. And it was... Is the Sharpen Hill part of the title? Jingo. Just got to breathe deep into the glorious music. I think he's busy counting money. I don't know about that, but he's a... He's a cool guy.

Yeah. So all of this is just to kind of give you some context for what we're talking about here. Nintendo's R&D groups don't exist anymore. In 2003, the company had an internal reorganization, and R&D1 and R&D2 were merged into a group called SPD, which I think is software planning and development. Space Police Decker Ranger. Something like that. And there's like IPD2.

Frankly, the world doesn't make sense anymore after this. Right. This is how I live my life by knowing. development houses, but now it's chaos. But R&D4 became Interdainment Analysis Division in like 1989, and it's still there, and there's an offshoot R&D, or EAD Tokyo. So basically R&D1 no longer exists. And so I feel like Rhythm Heaven, the game we're going to be talking about today, the game that we're

kind of leading up to, or Rhythm Tengoku, actually, the Game Boy Advance version, is a great sort of milestone for the history of R&D1, because it came out shortly after the dissolution of R&D1, and it still carries forward a lot of their spirit. And I feel like it's the sort of synthesis and culmination culmination of everything that R&D1 and Nintendo were working for in terms of integrating music and video games into sort of a single synthetic entity. And I'm a big fan of Rhythm Tengoku, and I'm very sad that it never came over here. But even though it's Japanese language, it's music, and that's universal. So if you ever have the opportunity to track down Rhythm Tengoku for Game Boy Advance, I highly recommend it.

exactly you guys get it so I mentioned that Nintendo had two key composers in the early NES era Tanaka and Kondo and basically like I said Kondo came in and started with Super Royer brothers and then worked on things like Zelda and kind of oversaw those sort of you know central pillar Nintendo games and Tanaka being part of R&D 1 was working on the kind of weird games on the side Nintendo R&D 4 EAD they're like they're the people pleasers. They create the hits. They have revolutionized video games. R&D1 has done some of that, but they've also just done weird stuff.

They've experimented. I feel like R&D4, EAD, they're Nintendo's bank account. And I feel like R&D1 was kind of like their heart and soul. You get those two together and you've got the whole picture. And so I'm a big fan of both groups in the games that they make. But I do have a special soft spot of my heart for R&D1. So let's see. Actually, after Donkey Kong, Tanaka worked on the Game and Watch series, which didn't really have a lot of music.

Are those your hands? Those are not my hands. Okay. I borrowed this footage. I forgot to give it credit. Sorry. But it was not a lot of music there, but the sound design was still important. You know, considering they were working with a pocket calculator, basically, and trying to make video games out of it.

It was pretty impressive. The next big project Tanaka worked on was Mario Brothers. And it does a lot of the same sort of jingly, like building the sound effects of walking into the soundscape of the game in place of having lots of active music in it. Why are the footfalls so wet in that? They're in the sewer. Plumbing.

Yeah, come on. I mean... Okay, yeah. You know, I wasn't thinking about it, but that actually makes plenty of sense. Like Mario changes his boots after he plays. plays a video. Yeah. He's got it. He's not wearing those with the tennis court. So around the time that Mario Brothers came out, Nintendo launched its first console, the

Famicom family computer in Japan, and it quickly became a hit. And R&D1 did a huge amount of work creating the games, the early games, the black box games, as we know them in America, for the NES, the Famicom. R&D2 also did some work, but most of it was R&D1. And so most of the music that you saw in these games came from R&D1 and therefore Tanaka. So like all the memorable musical ditties you saw on those games, that's Tanaka. That is a banger. put a lot of heart and soul into their music, a lot of care. And I'm not going to say that other groups didn't,

but I feel like there was a special consideration given to the importance of sound that you didn't necessarily get from like R&D 2's games. Last one, I promise. So, you know, I've been going through the history of NES games, and sometimes I turn on a game not knowing what to expect because it's sports I didn't play before and I'm like, oh, it's this song again. But those were pretty much all R&D2 I think

and they liked that theme and they just stuck with it. So it's great. But meanwhile, R&D1 was experimenting with weird sounds and trying to find, you know, interesting soundscapes for their games. And so you'd get these catchy little ditties in games like gumshoe and so forth.

What else? Oh, I know. Gyro mite is one of my favorites actually, the Mode B. It's pretty much balloon trip, but remixed. That is intensely painful to watch. Oh, sorry. I should have considered the seizure effect on that one. I mean, all levels.

Yeah. That was a rob game, and so the flashes are telling the robot, hey, do something. And, you know, that's all integrated into the soundscape, the little flashes and the sound of Dr. Vector, is that his name? I think so. It's like Hector and Vector?

Hector and Vector, yes. The legacy of these games that you don't want to play or can't play is the soundtrack. I mean, balloon trip is fine, but you don't want to play Gumshoe. Yeah, Gumshoe's not great. I do like Giro Mite. When you play Jaramite with Rob, it's actually really interesting. It's like this challenging puzzle.

And, you know, you've got great music to do it, too. who hates that? But, you know, after these kind of early NES games came out, Nintendo started really thinking about how they could expand the depth and substance of their games. And so they added a supplement to the hardware called the Famicom Disc System, which added new audio capabilities and new storage capacity to the hardware. And so all of a sudden, their games grew not only in terms of complexity as games, but also in terms of music. And so the same guy who wrote all those ditties you just heard

Hipptonaka also wrote the soundtrack to Metroid which is like on a completely different level. That is not Metroid. What? My favorite part of Metroid. Actually this is interesting because this is something that you see a lot in R&D1's music is like these kind of weird

dissonant sound effects. Kind of used as music but not really. And like this is actually really important to some of the evolution of their tracks through rhythm heaven, like the ability to play with sort of dissonant sound and not necessarily be melodic. I'm a big fan of that.

Anyway, it's like after you get the Vario. Something like that. There we go. That's a disk system version, right? Is it the disk system version? Yeah. Okay. That soundtrack is so good.

I can't stand it. It's so good. I wouldn't say no one, but not a lot of people were making music that rich in 1986 in video games. And you've seen samples for sound effects and stuff too, right? Yeah, I mean, people were doing that in arcades, but you didn't get a lot of that on home systems. But you saw this in games like Metroid and Kid Acres, which was also kind of at the same time by the same people. I didn't include

I didn't include Pits taking damage sound effect because I don't want anyone to sue us for damage to their ears but yeah like you just kind of see music continue to evolve and so yeah I'm just going to kind of go through like the best of, I think, at this point.

So, you know, again, all this is Hiptonaka. Here's Hiptonaka taking Russian melodies and making Tetris. Chris, you seem to have opinions. He went for the single instead of

stacking it up. Oh, I see. So not opinions about the music. No, no, the music's very good. It's about by a game capture. Let's analyze this. I was just recently watching a Polygon video with a Brian David Gilbert talking about the scientific formula for the game of the year. It's very good, funny, 15-minute video. And one of his criteria is cultural reach, which he tests by asking his mother if she's heard of the game.

And he mentions, what's the Tetris one that came out this past year? Tetris effect. Tetris effect. And, like, her response is to, like, sing that song. It's so... I love it because it's very tense music that you don't notice is tense until you're about to snap your Game Boy in half. It's a very...

It's very Russian. Like, it's upbeat and seems perky, but then there's, like, this... But it's minor key. Yeah, like, it's actually kind of gloomy underneath. Like, it's, like, you know, a Dostoevsky novel in musical, video game music form. Chip tune Dostoevsky. I think we can all agree that Ted...

Tetris is the Anakaranina of the Nintendo. Sure. Nintendo R&D1. So, of course, then you have, you know, R&D1's take on Mario. And then you have Mario and Tetris combined with Dr. Mario. Was fever too obvious? I like this one? Okay.

It's very chill. Exactly. Okay, so... Before you move on. Does everybody know the Super Mario Land rules? Because I didn't know that until I picked it out. I was sick. one day. I just popped open the 3DS virtual console

and I'd never played any of the Game Boy Mario games. Those games rule? And that's like a secret no one tells you. I think everyone agrees. Yeah, they're extremely good. If you haven't played them, they hold up really well. I say don't start with one. You should finish with one? Don't start with one. Play them all.

Complete it. Complete it. Do it all. Everyone agrees with me. All or nothing. I believe in starting from the beginning, even when the beginning is terrible. Same. So, please don't listen to our early retronauts, though. All right, so all the R&D one music we've looked at so far spans a decade nearly, and it's all been by one guy, Hiro Kazu Tanaka.

He had a tremendous output, and all his music has been great and just getting better as it goes. But eventually, I think they reached a point where they were like, you know what, hip, you can take it a little easy, We're going to find you some help. So beginning with, like in 1991-92, they started bringing in new talent for the Game X, which was a really cool Game Boy shooter developed by Dylan Cuthbert of Starvox fame. Nintendo collaborated on it, Nintendo R&D1.

So Hipsonaka did do some music, but they also brought in a guy called Kazumi Totaka, who you may have heard of. Oops. I forgot. I added this here. This is Metroid 2. And that's them doing their dissonant sound thing, which, again, I feel is a very important element of R&D1 music that doesn't get discussed all that much.

People tend to overlook some of the, you know, like, when you listen to the Metroid 2 soundtrack or something, you're not like, oh, yeah, I love those weird little bleepie bits. I've got to crank this up. but it's there and it's important like it informs their kind of design philosophy or music it makes the melodies that they create more notable i think by contrast but anyway that was metro two this is x so anyway that's uh that's uh that's i think that was actually Totaka's first project with Nintendo. So it's kind of remarkable

in that sense, notable in that sense. It's also like an amazing piece of tech for Game Boy, if you ever have the chance to play it. It's kind of confusing, but I definitely recommend checking out just so you can say, like, how is my Game Boy doing that? And that was really kind of R&D-1's thing, was doing weird stuff no one expected

with their hardware. They were really great at that. I forgot to mention that Metroid 2 was composed by a guy named Ryoji Yoshitomi, whose name appears much more commonly or much more frequently in later R&D1 projects. Anyway, so after X, Totaka actually took lead on Super Mario Land 2.

It's good. Yeah, I looked at his discography. That feels like his last very... traditional game soundtrack before he went off in his own weird direction with things like Mario paints. Well, even, you know, even as a Mario soundtrack, it has a different feel than what you'd expect from, like, the NES games.

And he would eventually compose for Luigi's Mansion. And I feel like that was sort of an evolutionary dead end for this sort of sound design, where it was all about one song constantly playing and everything that's happening on screen affecting that one song. But they never did that again with their games.

so another notable game that R&D1 produced around this time this time Tanaka had nothing to do with it was Super Metroid which we saw a little of before that was composed by Kenji Yamamoto who now does I think Dragon Ball soundtracks is that right? Something like that he works in anime also and a lady named Minako Hamano

I don't really know that much about her but they put together an amazing soundscape for SuperMetro Everything about Super Metroid has a very distinct quality to it. You know, the Super NES had a weird sound chip, and it kind of stands out. Like you can tell a Super NES soundtrack just by listening to it because of that sort of muffled, low-quality sampling that they used. But even within the Super NES'ES.

Metroid, or Super NES Pantheon, Super Metroid really stands apart, and it really has a lot to do with the sound design and the philosophy of using ambient sounds in addition to music. I think that's what they were going for with Metroid, too, but it worked a lot better with the tech available to Super Metroid.

Something interesting that I just recently discovered, a lot of virtual boy games, when you boot them up, have, like, music that plays that you don't hear anywhere else in the game. Not all of them do this, but it's a really weird, interesting thing that I was unaware of until I recently tackled Virtual Boy.

So, again, Virtual Boy was developed by Nintendo R&D1, so you see them, like, just kind of squeezing their love of music and kind of experimental sound effects and that sort of thing into every asset, every nook and cranny of the projects, the products they created. Did you guys know about this? No, I didn't. Do you guys, have you played virtual boy games?

No. Okay. That's why I don't have glasses. One time at a blockbuster video, morning you till I join you. Okay. But you're okay, right? You didn't suffer any permanent damage?

Maybe mentally. Visually? No. Better nuts fans, be sure to check out, Rob has a podcast on Podcast One. The biggest reality TV podcast around as Survivors Rob Cessardino covers the current season, a celebrity Big Brother, and more. Download Rob as a podcast every week on Podcast One or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. So, yeah, I mentioned Kazumi Totaka, and I think this project here is where he first really expressed himself.

I mean, that's a composer who has his own little trademark melody that he slips into games wherever he can. It's an Easter egg or something. That's the easiest to find. And every other game you have to wait 20 minutes on a screen for it to show up. or it's like integrated into some other tune or something. But, yeah, again, it just kind of shows the love that you saw and the creativity behind the integration of games and sound and music. It's a kind of a trademark, I think, of Nintendo now.

Like, look for the Totaka song. Mario Paint in particular is really easy because it was a weirdly, for being called Mario Paint, it was a weirdly music-focused game because it had that thing where you could arrange the sound effects. And I remember Nintendo Power printed it. a guide where you could put like your favorite gate like you could recreate your favorite game songs in Mario paint and so they would

tell you had to do like the Mario theme and I think some Castlevania music they had like a little printout for it's really interesting yeah I'm it is interesting and so much of that carried forward into like Mario Maker but not the musical part that was a huge letdown

that Mario Maker didn't really have like its own create your own Mario section It was just, wop, wap, you know what I'm talking about. I know exactly what you're talking about. I spent a fair bit of time with Mario Maker. Another example of R&D1

putting music and strange things, including music and sound effects, into unexpected places, was the virtual, or the Game Boy camera. I was, go ahead. I watched that when you sent me this video to prepare with this panel. Why is the Game Boy Camera the scariest game ever made?

Why is PT only available on the Game Boy Camera? Yeah, the Game Boy Camera was actually developed pretty much in its entirety by Hip Tanaka. It was a project that he headed up. And so there is music and sound. integrated into it on every level it was I think one of his last big projects at Nintendo but it really like it's kind of like Mario Pain like even though it's ostensibly about taking pictures it's also very musical and people kind of use the the Game Boy camera to create music they've like you know found ways to

abuse it and create sounds out of it what are you running from exactly mortality probably so yeah I have a few other videos on here but let's, yeah, it's Wario, he's cool. Is he? He is. He smells like garlic, but he's cool. I do like garlic. Do you like people that smell like garlic?

Ha ha. Yeah, so the Warriorland series, there's kind of an evolution until you get here to Wario Land 4. Yeah, this game in the Warrior Ware are the only games to sound like this. There's a lot going on to sound like this. just in terms of gameplay, but musically there is, this is a Game Boy Advance cartridge and there is

a song, like a song with vocals playing in the background, and then when horrible things happen to Wario, which is kind of the point of the game, he's your hero, but you also, like, abuse the crap out of him. Like when he becomes bloated and, you know, with the bees that, like, cause him to swell up

or when he gets crushed, the quality of the music and the quality of the singer changed to reflect the horrible status that has been inflicted on And then you heard at the end when he's escaping the level and the music changes, there's like drum and bass going on in there. In a Game Boy Advance game, it's pretty wild. Like, you know, this was kind of the culmination again of sort of the Wario Land series.

And it really plays up at every angle the importance of music and sound in R&D1's work kind of expressed through Wario Land, which was sort of their take on Nintendo's main pillar, Mario. Like, Wario Land started as Mario Games, and then eventually after two games, we're like, you know, this Mario guy, he's okay, but Wario is actually more interesting. Let's make him the hero such as he is. And so you have this, like to me that is very much, this game is kind of the ultimate expression of R&D1's philosophy of sort of traditional game design. I don't know if you guys agree. I agree.

I think they were also flexing a bit by including entire songs with lyrics in a Game Boy game. This and Mario Wireware won. I don't care for Wario. But do you like Wario Land? It's okay. Oh, come on. I find him very upsetting. I don't like him.

Does he have a canon origin? A what? An origin. I think Mario, in some of the Nintendo Power comics, Mario was, like, really mean to him. Yeah, that's in the Charlie Nosello comics. Yeah. I think those are canon.

I mean, Bousat may not be canon, but Mario being mean to Mario is to be canon. I'm sorry if I offended anyone with a bozac comment. I didn't mean to erase your heart's true love. So where do we go from here? Ah, yes, Wario Land Four's sound player. Okay, so one of my favorite things about Wario Land Four is that it has collectibles. You're collecting money because you're Wario and you're greedy.

But also, within each stage, there are CDs you can collect. And you would think, oh, well, I'm collecting CDs. that must mean there's a music player where I can listen to all the cool songs in this game. Because, you know, around the same time you had stuff like Mega Man and Bass, which had a sound collection system where you could like listen to cool music that you found hidden in the game. But no, when you go to the sound player and play the CDs you collected in Warioland for, you get this. It's the Silent Hill soundtrack. It's the Silent Hill soundtrack.

So I won't go all the way through those. because I don't want anyone to have nightmares tonight. If you sent that to the police, you would get arrested. I have the judge's feet. Mr. Police, I gave you all the clues. I would love to interview the people who made Wireland for and just ask, what was up with that sound player? I really feel like it was just like all the sound elements

and interesting ideas, like samples and things they came up with and couldn't figure out how to use in the game. They were like, well, let's just stick them in here. And this is a sound player that is only of interest to the composers and the sound engineers. But they stuck it in there as, like, the core collectible feature of the game anyway. It's so counterintuitive. It perfectly fits the Wario series, by the way. Like, here's a reward that actually maybe isn't.

It's kind of, like, you're going to have bad dreams tonight. Very good news for haunted doll enthusiasts. Do we know who was playing the animated gif of Wario? Who that was? I have no idea. Oh, man. There's probably someone on the team, but, you know, behind that mask. it could be anyone

Anyway Wario Land was for was important because it was basically like I said the final Wario Land game by that team Yes, yes Chris

No I was just laughing at the idea The Warrior could be anyone That's horrible Wario's in all of us But from here they said Let's get rid of the standard platforming games And create something that's more You know weird like Wario

And so that's where we get Wario where eventually. So, go, I'm a son Oh, hey, Oh, hey.

Oh, hey. games they're referencing. I like how in this game, when they remake something like Mario, a game their team did not make, they make it crappier. Some fun trolling from Nintendo. I actually really like the WarioWare games largely because you do not interact much with Wario. You're his wage slave.

Yeah, but he's your boss. I already have like an anti-capitalist hatred of Wario. You wake up every morning and there's an angry email from Wario in your inbox saying, Hey, where's this project? I need the TPS report. You're going to have to come in this weekend. I've been a full-time freelancer for nine years, so that is not new. But the Mona Pizza song in the Warrior Wear games is extremely good.

I put WarioWare in here because to me it is, you know, going one step beyond Wario Land 4 in terms of taking just everything from 20 odd years of R&D1 history and just throwing it together into something genius and brilliant. I mean, I showed off the eight, what is it, the nine-volt games because they are, you know, extremely self-referential to R&D-1's old works. But, you know, even beyond that, you see the things that we've talked about over the course of this panel, like the distorted sound effects and the weird sort of dissonant audio elements and sampled music and like weird things that don't match up visually and audio, audibly, orally, what's the word I'm looking for? Orally. Thank you. So, yeah, like, it's a work of genius, in my opinion, and it's amazing that they crammed all of that, not just the many different micro games, but also all those crazy audio effects and music into that little tiny Game Boy advance cartridge.

But, you know, that was basically the final step before we got to Rhythm Tengoku, which takes everything about Warioware and takes it to the next step, but does it in the context of a game. that is explicitly about music. And I think that might be the first R&D1 game. Well, it technically was SPD, but the first of their games that was specifically pitched as a game about music because it is a game where you have different songs

and you are basically performing actions in time to the music. But it draws on the Wario-Ware microgame concept. So there is this sort of element of comical, I don't know, just watch. Mm-hmm. Ah, ha, ha,

ha, Han'i ungarra Ah, ah, can see a garland. A sloak! Psycho! Are you a lot of uska? Some of you beat that level, and some of you did not.

So Rhythmin-Goku, like I said, it's really a shame it never came to the U.S. I think the localization on it would have been really difficult, very expensive. And it launched in 2006, by which point Nintendo America was like, Game Boy Advance. Nah, forget that. Mother 3. Oh, who cares. So it fell into the same memory hole as Mother 3. It's very sad. But it has by far the most extensive...

sound and music team of any R&D one game to that point. It had one, two, three different directors, two composers, let's see, five arrangers, three people working on sound effects, and then two people credited for song. I don't know exactly what that is. Maybe they were the singers. But, yeah, it was kind of like, to me, it does represent, you know, Nintendo's philosophy writ large in terms of game

and music integration. I mean, we looked at Super Mario Brothers and the way, you know, you have that sort of upbeat music, but all the sound effects go perfectly with the music, like the ding of coins and the punches and the turtle kicks

and the sound of Mario's jumpy. Yeah, that's still the jump sound. Yeah. I mean, it just, it fit perfectly with the music. And so you had this really great discipline that Nintendo brought to their sound design and their games. And rhythm,

Rhythm Tengoku really, I think, embodies that. So let's see. Any final thought, you guys? We're kind of winding down here and running out of time. I say, this is all leading to Rhythm Heaven. We didn't talk that much about it. But if anyone's interested in playing the game, the Rhythm Heaven Gold Collection for 3DS is really good.

It includes some of the levels that we never got in America from the original game. So if you've never played this series before, that's a great place to start to see what this is all about. And yeah, so I guess that's pretty much where we are, because after Rhythm Tengoku, R&D1 no longer existed, they became SPD, they had a lot of staff change, turnover, and so forth. But I do feel like that spirit still kind of shows up in some of their games from time to time,

and not just smash, although definitely in smash. We've never really talked about it, but since we're talking about, you know, music and soundscapes and stuff, do you two have a particular, like, favorite, like, piece of, like, classic video game music? just one is bringing this on me you're kidding me give me a top three you have to go first

I mean you know mine is it ducktails the moon theme from ducktails and bloody tears from Castlevania too oh my god awesome I mean I've

I've done like a dozen podcasts about the classic game music that I love and I'm still like just scratching the surface but if I had to pick one at the moment just because I recently

recently wrote about it. It's a Wiley Fortress Theme 1 for Mega Man 2. How's that one here? I'm not going to Hummet for you. A little bit. I, no. I would say off top of my head, it's underrated, but

Magnet Man's theme for Mega Man 3. It makes you feel ways about stuff. Made me feel ways about stuff. Maybe this panel should have been about Capcom. Oops, we biffed it. We'll rank all the NES Mega Man stage music's Talk to bottom. Next time.

I think wars have been fought over less. You know his number one? Top man. Think about it. Actually, that was a bad joke. Don't think about it. All right. Well, I think that's about our time, unless I'm mistaken.

Okay, that is our time. So, thank you, everyone, so much for coming out. Thank you, everybody. I hope you learn something, or at the very least. you enjoyed some of you. Hey baby, how's it going? This beat is non-stop. Hey, baby, listen to my face.

I can give you the sense of rhythm. Oh, yeah. Hi, baby, how's it going? Hey, this beat is non-stop. Hey, baby, listen to my face. I can give you a sense of wisdom. Awake, baby. Trust me.

This beat is non-stop. You grew in your soul. Oh, yeah. This beat, you are going up well. Hey, baby, hold on to your ambition. Hey! Oh, yeah. The Mueller Report.

I'm Edonahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House his special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving a President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall, becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week.

Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it. It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.