The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which has passed 7.5 billion yen at the Japanese box office and is still on a long theatrical run, is finally arriving in physical form. iam8bit japan & asia (U/M/A/A Inc.) began selling the domestic CD and 2LP vinyl editions of the film's original soundtrack on September 9. Following The Super Mario Bros. Movie, this sequel expands the stage into outer space. How were melodies long beloved as game music re-sounded at full-orchestra scale? For anyone who loves scores, this is a release you cannot miss.

The Double Responsibility Brian Tyler Took On

The music is by Brian Tyler, returning from the previous film. A Hollywood heavyweight behind more than 100 films and TV series including the Fast & Furious franchise, he received BMI's highest honor, the Icon Award, in 2022. On this job he carried, I think, a double responsibility. One was to raise up, in sound, the scale of a film set in space. The other was to keep Nintendo's "sound of Mario"—the motifs written by Koji Kondo, etched into ears worldwide for nearly 40 years—intact, yet make it ring anew. According to the press release, this film too centers on a full orchestra while weaving Kondo's original motifs throughout.

Easy to say, but in practice it is a tightrope walk. A game-music motif has the strength to signal "this is Mario" in just a few bars. Drop that sign into the thick texture of an orchestra and, done poorly, the quotation floats awkwardly on top. Erase the motif too much and the very necessity of "being Mario" fades. Tyler translated this sign into the grammar of film music through Hollywood-style thematic development—varying and growing the theme across the work.

When Game Music Is Promoted to a "Film Score"

In recent years, opportunities for game-derived music to sound in concert halls and cinemas have exploded. But what makes Galaxy Movie interesting is that this is not an "orchestral arrangement of game music"—it is a score newly written for the film. The original Super Mario Galaxy theme does show its face, but less as a quotation than as a subject that drives the story, woven through the whole work. The memory of the game functions inside the timeline of a different medium, the film. You could call it the moment game music shifted its role from "material" to "narrator of drama."

  • Domestic CD: two discs, colored Mario red and Luigi green by disc, with liner notes by former Famitsu editor Rolling Uchizawa. Price 4,980 yen (tax incl.).
  • Domestic 2LP: a Japan-exclusive colored vinyl inspired by the red Luma, with a luxe jacket featuring glow-in-the-dark and foil finishes. Price 12,480 yen (tax incl.).
  • Also: an iam8bit-exclusive purple LP and a galactic-blue cassette—collector-tempting variants abound.

What It Means to Hold a "Galaxy for Listening" in Physical Form

In an age dominated by streaming, why a glow-in-the-dark 2LP? Because this soundtrack is designed not as a mere record of a film score but as "an experience of owning a story world." It is a fittingly iam8bit job from the company that has led game-music physical culture—spinning the galaxy carved into the vinyl's grooves once more on a turntable is part of the concept. Melodies inheriting Koji Kondo's DNA pass through Hollywood orchestration and settle onto a Japan-exclusive colored disc. Game music and film music, Japan and Hollywood, shake hands on a single record. The border-crossing of scoring has taken yet another concrete form.