Classical guitarist calls Super Mario 2 music “the hardest thing I’ve ever played”
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Super Mario Bros. 2 is notorious for a number of reasons, the most famous being that it wasn’t originally designed to be a Mario game. As any gaming nerd will tell you, the SMB2 released in America is just a re-skin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic, which is why our good friend Mario is suddenly throwing turnips and giant pink dinosaurs are shooting eggs at you. Put simply, it’s an extremely bizarre chapter from an otherwise consistent franchise.
Now, however, there’s another reason this little anomaly from 1988 should be considered so infamous. Apparently, its main theme is nearly impossible to play on classical guitar.
“This cover of the Mario 2 overworld theme took me a lot longer to arrange and prepare than I expected. It was also WAY harder than I thought it was gonna be,” writes YouTuber Sam Griffin, whose channel is filled with beautiful renditions of themes from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Final Fantasy VIII, and Undertale, all plucked out on nylon strings.
So, what makes the Super Mario Bros. 2 theme so much harder than all these other songs? Maybe it’s the constant walking bass line combined with the ragtime melody. Maybe it’s the sudden and inexplicable accelerations into double time. Or maybe it’s the thought that a Shy Guy could be right around the corner, waiting to strike.
Confusingly, Griffin still ends his video by referring to the tune as a “beginner’s guitar song” and challenging his viewers to go learn it for themselves. However, in the description of the video, he writes, “Actually, I change my mind, don’t go to my Patreon page and try to learn this. Unless you like pain and suffering…”
Yeah, we’ll leave it to the experts.
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20 Comments
It would work so much better on piano.
so many neat little vamps and odd rhythms in this song. it’s a pretty legit piece of jazz music.
Wow, i found that shockingly soothing… I played the video game version first which is incredibly jarring. But I would actually play the guitar version while i was cooking dinner or something…Just playing that walking bassline while also playing the melody was super impressive.
I thought I hated jazz before. Now I REALLY hate jazz.
you don’t like jazz?what if a dead-eyed white guy played the piano for you?what do you say about that, eh?
if you’re talking about harry conick junior …i agree.
I would tell Billy Joel to go home, he’s drunk.
You’re describing me playing the piano.I don’t like jazz.
I’m guess I’m a huge fan. It’s all about the notes they don’t play, and I fucken love it when jazz musicians don’t play notes.
Imagine how hard it was for the original guitarist to play it.
You mean Clapton?
i coulda swore that was steve marriot a bit druggy and speeds up
When you set the video to 1.25x speed, you really get an appreciation for how difficult it is. I say that because 1.25x sounds like the song exactly as it appears in game and holy shit just getting that close is impressive.
Not as impossible to play as that one, but this sounds really cool on guitar:
KIKO!!!!!
That’s fucking awesome.
I’ve always loved the SMB2 theme. But yeah, that’s clearly meant for piano. This guy killed it anyway though.
Title seems a tad deceptive (in fairness, it was his own).“Thing” surely must refer to either:hardest VG musichardest requesthardest electronic-to-classical guitar arrangement
It’s been 12 years, but I still think this is the definitive Mario 2 jazz cover:
the SMB2 released in America is just a re-skin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic[pushes up nerd glasses]ACTUALLY, this is a bit of a common misnomer. SMB2 USA is indeed based on the guts of Dream Factory: Doki Doki Panic, but substantial enough changes are made to it that the difference is not just cosmetic. Aside from the stuff we all know or could guess like changing the hearts to mushrooms and so forth, a few more changes were made to it to make it “feel” more like a Mario game— the most significant one being giving the player the ability to run (I can’t imagine playing the game without it), and taking away the hair-pulling necessity to beat every level with every character in order to get the real ending.
Also, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto wasn’t in charge of this game, but he did work on a good chunk of it— far more than he did the genuine Japanese sequel to SMB, which we in the States call “The Lost Levels” (and is closer to being just a mean-spirited ROM hack of the original SMB). So in some ways it’s more of a “real” Mario game than many might think.
Also also, a lot of younger people and/or those taking the macro view underestimate how the “weirdness” of SMB2 USA was kind of taken in stride upon its release. Sure, it’s strange that Mario & friends would go to some kooky Arabian dream world where they mostly threw stuff, but no weirder than the premise of the original game. And it was a time of weird experimentation with video games in general— look how the legit sequels to Zelda and Castlevania tried to break out of their predecessors’ templates!Finally, I’ll take any opportunity to recommend viewing Gaijillionaire’s in-depth explainer on what Dream Factory– not the game, but the mega-festival it was created as a loose tie-in for– actually was. I know the premise sounds dubious but it’s actually a very enchanting retrospective about a place & time the majority of us don’t know anything about, and the video does a stellar job of helping you understand this ephemeral event.