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Koji Kondo, the original writer of this music, who I adore and am friends with, was a big part of this. I would talk to him back and forth: "Okay, what about this? What do you think if I did this for this?" because I wanted to incorporate things. Sometimes it's invisible, [or] just like an Easter egg. The harp might be doing a line from the select screen on Mario Kart that only happens when you're in the waiting room. There's a part [in the movie] where Mario and Luigi are in a waiting room, and I thought it'd be cool [if] within the score that's actually a mystery score, you hear the harp playing the waiting room music. I wanted to completely dive in and make [the film's music] a feast for people that watch it 1,000 times, or Mario fans, but [ensure it] also works on a dramatic level.

This score is big. It's orchestral, it's got choir, and it's got bands, it's got Italian instruments, accordions, live drums, mandolins, and whistling human voices. Also, I'm using eight-bit [sounds]. I'll be playing the drums, and all of a sudden the tom fill is just eight-bit tom fills. It's really eclectic, but at the same time, the goal was that it would work on a level that a score like [John Williams' score for] E.T. [does]. It has a transcendent nature; it is not limited by the polyphony you have on an eight-bit thing. It's not just porting over melodies from a game to a movie. It had to be so much more to capture what this film is.

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