Kōji Kondō

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Koji Kondo
250x300px
Local 近藤 浩治 (こんどう こうじ)
Born August 13, 1960 (Age 52)
Birth Place Nagoya, Japan
Nationality Japanese   Japan.svg
Aliases
  • Nick Kondo
  • Konchan

Koji Kondo was born on August 13, 1960 in Nagoya, Japan. His love for music appeared early in his life when he would create short tunes for fun, and by seventeen he began to study music professionally.

In the early 1980's Kondo heard that a company called Nintendo was looking for music composers to create music for videogames. Kondo never thought of composing music for games before, but he decided to try it out and in 1983 he was hired. He felt very confined to writing music on the Famicom because it had such a low quality of music, but as Nintendo released new systems, the quality of music also increased.

Kondo went on to compose music for some of the biggest known titles for Nintendo including the Mario and Zelda series. To this day, Kondo continues to work with Nintendo making music for video games.

Kondo's style shows elements of Jazz, Classical, and Latin influences with a cinematic theme that have remained fairly similar throughout his career. His music has been released on a multitude of albums. Some have drawn a parallel calling him the John Williams of videogames.

Music Composition

NES

Koji wrote his music using the Family BASIC, programming the music using Nintendo's audio driver.

SNES

Koji composed his music on an electronic keyboard and then programmed it into the game. It is likely that the instrument samples came from his electronic keyboard but it is unknown what the make or model is on his keyboard.


Gameography


Released

Title

Sample

1984/10/05 Devil World (FC)
1985/04/09 Soccer (NES)
1985/09/13 Super Mario Bros. (NES)
1986/02/21 The Legend of Zelda (NES)
1986/04/14 Nazo no Murasame-Jou (FDS) (The Mysterious Murasame Castle)
1986/06/03 Super Mario Bros. 2 (FDS)
1987/07/10 Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic (FDS) (Dream Factory: Heart-Pounding Panic)
1987/10/30 Famicom Grand Prix: F1 Race (FDS) (ファミコングランプリF1レース)
1988/10/?? Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES)
1988/10/23 Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
1988/11/?? Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt (NES)
1988/11/?? Super Mario Bros./Tetris/Nintendo World Cup (NES)
1990/??/?? Nintendo World Championships 1990 (NES)
1990/11/21 Super Mario World (SNES)
1990/12/?? Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet (NES)
1993/07/14 Super Mario All-Stars (SNES)
1996/06/23 Super Mario 64 (N64)