OST of the Day #44: Nintendo Land - Main Theme 🎡

taco.cat (67)in #game • 5 years ago (edited)

Hey Steemit!

OSTs make up the majority of the music I listen to, and they're so underrated I just had to share them! Feel free to listen while reading. 😊

If you've been reading these OST posts, you'll know that I'm a huuuge Nintendo fan, and have been gaming with Nintendo pretty much my whole life. So with all the news about the upcoming Super Nintendo World, and the recent release of their music video trailer, I thought it'd be fitting to do a song from the game that brought this whole concept to life (in virtual form); Nintendo Land!

Source: mynintendonews.com

If you've never seen or heard of this game before, Nintendo Land is a party video game developed and published by Nintendo as a pack-in launch title for the Wii U console in 2012. The game was first announced at E3 2012 during Nintendo's press conference.

Nintendo Land features twelve minigames, each based on an existing Nintendo game franchise such as Mario and The Legend of Zelda, depicted as attractions in the eponymous fictional amusement park with an Attraction Tour train designed as a tournament that utilizes all minigames. There are also different kinds of minigames; from solo attractions to team and competitive multiplayer games. The minigames are designed to demonstrate the concept of Wii U and its Wii U GamePad controller to new players, kinda like what Wii Sports did for the Wii back in 2008.

Source: polygon.com

The first time I actually saw this game was a few years ago when I watched the Game Grumps play it on YouTube, so I was already pretty late to the party even though I had a Wii U. I ended up buying this game second-hand back in 2017 or so, when it's already 5 years old. My Wii U came with New Super Luigi U instead of this game, which was quite unfortunate, since I definitely enjoyed this game a lot more. The minigames are actually really fun, the graphics are really good (thank goodness the Wii U has HDMI), and the motion controls are pretty spot-on with the Wii Motion Plus. I'm pretty surprised this game isn't as well known, but then again the Wii U kinda tanked in sales so I guess that's kinda expected.

Source: nintendoeverything.com

Anyway, the song I chose for today is the Main Theme of Nintendo Land, and is pretty much the first song you'll hear in-game after the title screen. Have a listen:

If you owned this game, you probably never heard the song to its fullest like me, since I was too excited and headed straight to the minigames after starting up the game.

It's such a cheery and upbeat song, and you can hear the distinct sounds of the instruments, like the violin/fiddle carrying the melody, the marimba with the harmony, the piano with the second harmony and the bongos with the percussion (an homage to Donkey Kong.? 🤔). It's a simple tune, but I especially enjoy the last part at 3:38, which I guess is the second bridge just before the end. It's an interesting slight change in pitch and tempo, and the violin gives way a little bit instead of hogging the spotlight for the whole song. Overall, it's a very happy-go-lucky song, and one fitting for a theme park.

Source: reddit.com

The cool thing about this theme is that there are actually different version, depending on what time of day it is. Not literally of course, since the game wasn't linked to the Wii U's internal clock I think, but you could actually change the time of day in-game, and the "sky" would change to a different colour, with a different theme to match!

This was the evening scene:

Source: abc.net.au

And this was the night scene:

Source: entertainmentfuse.com

I personally really liked the evening scene the most, because I loove ombre colours, but I definitely enjoy the night theme the most, because it's just so jazzy and chill. It sounds like the kinda bossa nova-esque theme you'd hear in a cafe; something definitely up my alley (since I listen to Cafe BGM and elevator music while writing these).

The Night theme definitely differs a lot from the Day theme, on top of being more jazzy sounding and slightly less upbeat, but it also does not have that interesting bridge that was present in the Day theme. I still really enjoy it though. It's definitely something I'd expect to play in an elevator.

The composer for the soundtrack was Ryo Nagamatsu, who is an in-house composer for Nintendo. He's worked on Mario Kart Wii, Wii Sports Resort, Wii Play, Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, among many many other games whose soundtracks I absolutely love. What an amazingly talented guy.

The first time I played Nintendo Land I was thinking 'why doesn't Nintendo make this in real life!' And now they finally are! I'm really looking forward to visiting Super Nintendo World at USJ (probably next year because of the crowds and olympics this year), and I cant wait to see whats in store. I might tear up upon entering just like I almost did at Harry Potter World, and I'll probably end up buying a lot of stuff (which is quite unlike me), but I bet it'll be a ton of fun.

Thanks for reading!