The soundtrack

The sound of your childhood, now grown up.

It was weird because…

Koji Kondo’s traditional Mario tunes are the stuff of legend - gleeful, bleepy, blue-sky sounds that put a giddy 8-bit smile on the most curmudgeonly face.

With the Wii’s Super Mario Galaxy though, all of that retro appeal was ditched. Collaborating with Mahito Yokoto (although it was Kondo's composition that won out rather than Yokoto's rejected ideas for Latin percussion and sci-fi sounds), Kondo's sweeping orchestral arrangements were now the soundtrack for Mario's adventures.

But it worked because…

The previous Super Mario Sunshine lacked the old games’ magic, and for hardcore fans, so did the Wii itself. Galaxy’s downright majestic, celebratory score repackaged that magic on a never-before heard scale, and made the plumber’s triumphant return a genuinely epic experience rather than relying on the faded memories of the past.

Check this behind-the-scenes footage of the Super Mario Galaxy Music Orchestra and you'll see what we mean - chiptune it most certainly ain't.