Sometimes, the most unlikely things just work perfectly together. Peanut butter and jelly, for instance, or the Resident Evil 3 remake and Thomas the Tank Engine. Now, one musical visionary has blended Super Mario and Bloodborne’s vibes to fantastic effect.
Both the Super Mario and Soulsborne games are renowned for their excellent music. From the simple 8-bit days of brilliant bleepy-bloopy chiptunes to the sweeping orchestral score of Super Mario Galaxy, Nintendo’s main man always delivers a banger for every occasion and mood in his games’ soundtracks. The chill, tropical tunes of the rather unconventional Super Mario Sunshine (which got more unconventional than ever when those debug cubes were spotted in the Super Mario 3D All-Stars collection) always hit the spot.
In an equally glorious but entirely different way, the Soulsborne games always deliver when it comes to music too. FromSoftware’s titles are absolutely dripping with dark fantasy atmosphere, and the musical score is an important component of that. Explosive themes define the tempo of boss battles, helping to make these bouts as epic as they can be utterly frustrating.
Naturally, fans of both franchises will be well aware of this and will probably have at least a few tracks from each franchise in their regular rotation. Most fans are not the super talented Alex Moulaka, though. This self-titled “composer & videogame music nerd” specialises in analysing the soundtracks of games and producing covers. Most excitingly of all, he also blends together the styles of series that the world never knew needed to be blended together, until he boldly went and did so.
As Kotaku reports, his latest work, Super Mario music created in the style of Bloodborne, has to be heard to be believed:
The most impressive thing is just how simple the composer makes it look. That’s the sign of a true musical artist at work. Some distorted instruments, a choir and a bit of harpsichord later, it sounds as though Super Mario and Bloodborne have been musical kindred spirits all their lives. It’s phenomenal stuff and the glimpse into the process is super interesting too.
Head back to Alex Moukala’s Twitter for more of his musical creations.