Super Mario World Soundtrack Restored By Dataminers

There is good news from the niche world of SNES music, as data miners have made a breakthrough in restoring the soundtrack of a popular game for the system.

While SNES games like Super Mario World managed to have some of the best soundtracks in gaming, to the point that people are still listening to them decades later, they were often terribly compressed to fit on the SNES' limited cartridge space.

The soundtracks weren't created that way, though. Super Mario World's soundtrack was made with samples that were later compressed to fit on the SNES cartridge. A game music researcher named The Brickster was able to find those samples, and use them to restore the Super Mario World soundtrack to what it likely sounded like as Koji Kondo was composing it.

During last July's gigaleak of old Nintendo files, The Brickster was able to find the names of the original sound sample files. By using the file names, as well as researching what instruments were owned by Koji Kondo at the time, they were able to find the exact samples used to create the original soundtrack. Using these sample sounds, they were able to recreate the soundtrack as it originally would have sounded.

The results are nothing less than amazing. The new instruments are clearly the same as on the compressed soundtrack, but uncompressed, the sound is so much richer and clearer. This is absolutely a must-listen for fans of the original SNES soundtrack.

Super Smash Bros. Melee is an incredibly popular game, with people playing it even to this day. So it's unsurprising that, even 20 years after it's release, new and unexpected Smash Bros. records are still being broken.

The Super Smash Bros. series is well-known in part for two things: its fun and chaotic fighting mechanics, and its interesting and clever credits sequences. And Super Smash Bros. Melee is no exception. Melee made the credits sequence a fast paced, chaotic first-person space shooter where the names of the various creators of the game fly past the screen and the player has to shoot them with a laser beam.

The minigame isn't easy though, as the credits for Super Smash Bros. Melee have 190 names, and for 20 years, no one has recorded themselves getting all 190. Until this week, when a Smash Bros. player named Martin Zarate managed to do it and put his recording up on YouTube. Which is a pretty big milestone from one of the biggest games celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

This all started when a YouTuber named Nathaniel Bandy put out the call on YouTube and Twitter on January 23rd. He'd be paying a bounty of $3000 out of his own pocket for the first person who could verifiably record themselves hitting all 190 targets in the Super Smash Bros. Melee credits minigame. According to Martin, it took him over 50 hours of practice before he was able to make the complete runthrough; it took a lot of practice and memorization.

This isn't the first time Smash fans have had more fun with Melee's minigames than with the main game. Late last year a group of fans created a randomizer for the game's famous Break the Targets minigame. It's amazing that, even 20 years later, people are not only still playing Super Smash Bros. Melee, but finding new records to break. This one in particular sounds like it took a lot of hard work and practice, and required a lot of skills not normally used in Smash play. Certainly a different set than is required to unlock every single character in Smash Bros. Melee.