A new update on Nintendo Music has got older fans reminiscing over that time Shigeru Miyamoto himself authorised a Super Mario Land rap song.
Like almost everything Nintendo does, there seems to be little logic behind which soundtracks the company adds to its Nintendo Music app and which are ignored. The incredible Mario Kart World soundtrack, for instance, is nowhere to be seen, with Nintendo instead prioritising the likes of Yoshi’s Crafted World and Wii Fit Plus.
Today’s addition is the soundtrack for Game Boy game Super Mario Land, which is comprised of just 33 tracks and can be listened to in its entirety in less than half an hour.
Its arrival, though, has unlocked a deep-seated memory in anyone who was around during the 90s, and that’s that Super Mario Land had an officially approved rap remix.
To anyone who wasn’t a 90s kid in the UK, this will sound like nonsense, but British musician Simon Harris and his Ambassadors of Funk project released a rap single called Supermarioland that used music and sound effects from the Game Boy game.
Surprisingly, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto himself permitted it, with Nintendo even assisting with the official music video, which was filmed at the Chessington World of Adventures theme park and can be viewed on YouTube here, as pointed out on ResetEra.
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The single was released in 1992, two years after Super Mario Land, but it did coincide with the release of the sequel Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (which was the first appearance of Wario).
It managed to come in at number eight in the UK charts, which was successful enough for Nintendo to properly collaborate with Ambassadors of Funk on a full album of Mario-inspired rap tracks in 1993.
This was titled Super Mario Compact Disco, which included the original Supermarioland single as well as songs based on other games like Super Mario World and Super Mario Kart. There’s even a whole single sung from the perspective of Princess Daisy.
It’s such a strange yet novel part of UK game history, and we honestly wouldn’t have thought Nintendo would acknowledge it ever again. And yet it released a remastered version with additional tracks for the Super Mario franchise’s 35th anniversary in 2020, which is more effort than anything Nintendo’s done for the 40th anniversary this year.
These songs will likely never arrive on Nintendo Music but both the original and remastered albums are available on the likes of Apple Music and Spotify if you’re at all interested.
If you’ve not actually played Super Mario Land, we recommend it as it’s quite unique among the 2D Mario platformers, with power-ups not seen in other games and 2D vehicle shooter sections.
It’s readily available for Nintendo Switch Online subscribers via the Game Boy library. Speaking of retro games on Switch, a December update recently added two more Nintendo 64 platformers – Rayman 2: The Great Escape and Tonic Trouble – as well as Wario World for the Switch 2 exclusive GameCube library.
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