Sure, you could listen to the Super Mario Bros. classic soundtrack, and you might have done just that hundreds of times over the last 30 years.
But you've probably never listened to a piano medley of some of the classic game's greatest hits played on a giant Nintendo Entertainment System. Or just a piano styled like one.
YouTube duo Player:Piano, made up of composer Sonya Belousova and filmmaker Tom Grey, turned their talents to honoring the 30th anniversary of one of gaming's legendary heroes on its 30th anniversary. Previously, the duo has tackled piano interpretations of music from Game of Thrones, Doctor Who and "Guile's Theme" from Street Fighter.
The Mario medley includes tunes from the original game from 1985, including music heard in the game's first level, its classic underground theme, the underwater theme and the ending notes heard at the completion of a level.
"There are quite a lot of great recognizable themes in Mario, so the main challenge was to find those themes that worked the best. When arranging music for a specific instrument, piano in our case, not every music theme could potentially work. Some themes are “pianistic” by nature and others are not," Belousova, who has arranged each Player:Piano piece, explained.
"In case of Mario, since we were going for a medley, I had the luxury of selecting the themes that worked the best in my opinion not only for piano, but in combination with each other as well."
Player:Piano is releasing this medley as a teaser for its album of 8-bit gaming themes retooled for the piano, which will be out Thursday and available on their website, as well as iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. It will include eight songs from games like Mega Man II, The Legend of Zelda and Castlevania.
The duo will also give away the custom NES piano, which Grey and production designer Megan Burns spent two months building, to one of their YouTube subscribers when the channel reaches 1 million subscribers. This is Player:Piano's third custom piano; they also created an arcade version and on that tied into anime Akira.