JBCZ-9075~8: SUPER MARIO ODYSSEY ORIGINAL SOUND TRACK

[dancey]

Originally Posted by breath20kfire

What dancey said is true about these tracklists. I know that in track 7 of disc 2, the song is called YOU GOT A GRAND MOON! In the North American version of the game, it's called YOU GOT A MULTI MOON! So, I suggest we use the game's Music List from the North American version.

We would never localize a track title that is already in plain English in the Japanese version.

[cal]

Originally Posted by dancey

We would never localize a track title that is already in plain English in the Japanese version.

I think you're missing the point of what a localization is.

[Phonograph]

sorry but dancey is right about how it's in the db

take saga frontier, coon is used not riki unlike omble (bad localization for the jap)

[cal]

It's fine to keep things like that on the English tracklist, but the reason the localized tracklist exists is to use the localized names.

Unless you're talking about the (non-localized) English one already.

[dancey]

- Added additional arranger, performers from inserts
- Added additional album info from inserts
- Fixed some issues with the summarized track credits
- Changed "Center" to "Courtyard" on the Bowser Castle tracks.

No English tracklist in the insert (expected).

As far as localization issues, it just didn't make any sense.

There were two localized tracklists, one labeled North America, the other labeled English -- what's the difference? Then they were using different localized titles between both, which didn't make any sense at all:

Steam Gardens vs. Steam Garden
Top-Hat Tower vs. Hat Tower
Capture: T-Rex vs. Capture: Tyrannosaurus
Story Mission Introduction vs. Scenario Introduction
Lake Lamode: Ground Theme vs. Lake Lamode: Above Ground
... etc

Then there were formatting issues, like "Opening: Above Peach's Castle" instead of "Opening ~...~". and D1M13. Arbitrarily just localizing the title formatting but on what basis? The music list doesn't contain any tracks formatted in that manner except the Town themes. Same thing with changing 8-Bit Version to (8-Bit), though that is for the most part justifiable since the Music List has them that way.

Then there was just completely ignoring the existing localization where "Koopa Trace-Walking" should have been called "Climactic Duel!", since that's the Music Test title, but it wasn't.

Again, my version is not perfect by any means but the two previous localizations just looked like bad copy/paste jobs that were half-assed. If someone wants to put forth a better proposed localization I'm all for it. But honestly at this point I would just wait for English iTunes. It's bound to show up there.

[dancey]

Very strange to see a both karaoke version of "Jump Up, Super Star!" and "Jump Up, Super Star! ～オデッセイでっせい～" (D3M29,30) since they are identical songs...? Obviously the vocal versions are different because one is in English and the other is in Japanese, but I'm not sure why they would include the same karaoke track twice.

[cal]

dancey, how does the booklet handle BGM credits? Is composition/arrangement separated?

Because there's several tracks where 2 artists are credited:

Naoto Kubo & Koji Kondo (9, 40)
Naoto Kubo & Mahito Yokota (27)
Naoto Kubo & Shigetoshi Gohara (41, 42)
Shiho Fujii & Koji Kondo (37)
Shiho Fujii & Shigetoshi Gohara (43)

I assume one for composition and one for arrangement. Can you confirm?



(unrelated) By the way, Nintendo has shared a short recording video here: https://twitter.com/mario_odysseyJP/...65785535135745

You can see Naoto Kubo and Mahito Yokota at 0:48.

[dancey]

No, it's just composition. Or rather I assume it's just composition because it's simply listed as "Sound Staff" and I don't assume arrangement unless explicitly identified. The book lists it in the old style of using symbols next to tracknames to indicate composer, with a symbol legend at the end.

Here's the Disc 4 page with the legend: https://unsee.cc/51b8c719/. I'm sure someone will have scans up soon-ish.

[cal]

Alright, thanks. For certain tracks we can rule out composition at least.

For example, the music box tracks (disc 3, 24 & 25) credit Kubo and Tsuji. But they are arrangements of the main theme and theme song, both composed by Kubo. So we know that Tsuji's only involvement was as an arranger.

We'll have to take a close look at the other tracks with multiple artists credited.

[CHz]

Nintendo does that "list the arranger and composer together" thing a lot and it's kind of annoying.

All the songs that co-credit Kondo with either Fujii or Kubo are arrangements of stuff from a previous Mario game. I'd guess 4.27 is the same (a Galaxy jingle?) but I don't know off the top of my head what that is if so.

[RBM95]

Originally Posted by CHz

I'd guess 4.27 is the same (a Galaxy jingle?) but I don't know off the top of my head what that is if so.

It's an arrangement of the "New Power-Up Found" jingle from Super Mario Galaxy.

Also, the RC Car Challenge music is actually a remix of the Mario Circuit from Super Mario Kart, so the composer of that should be Soyo Oka (I assume the soundtrack wouldn't credit her since she is not currently affiliated with Nintendo).

[dancey]

Originally Posted by CHz

Nintendo does that "list the arranger and composer together" thing a lot and it's kind of annoying.

All the songs that co-credit Kondo with either Fujii or Kubo are arrangements of stuff from a previous Mario game. I'd guess 4.27 is the same (a Galaxy jingle?) but I don't know off the top of my head what that is if so.

So if I'm understanding this correctly:

- Yuki Tsuji should be removed as composer, added as arranger (doesn't look like she has any unique compositions, just two music box jingles)
- Mahito Yokota should be changed to "feat."
- Shigetoshi Gohara, Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii should be added to arrangement
- Soyo Oka should be added as a "feat." composer.

Originally Posted by RBMNintendoGamer

It's an arrangement of the "New Power-Up Found" jingle from Super Mario Galaxy.

Also, the RC Car Challenge music is actually a remix of the Mario Circuit from Super Mario Kart, so the composer of that should be Soyo Oka (I assume the soundtrack wouldn't credit her since she is not currently affiliated with Nintendo).

I noticed that on play-through. I think Run, Jump, Throw! Stage 1 is from Mario 64 but I don't think anything special needs to be done since it's C/A Koji Kondo.

[CHz]

Originally Posted by dancey

- Yuka Tsuji should be removed as composer, added as arranger (doesn't look like she has any unique compositions, just two music box jingles)
- Mahito Yokota should be changed to "feat."
- Shigetoshi Gohara, Naoto Kubo, Shiho Fujii should be added to arrangement
- Soyo Oka should be added as a "feat." composer.

The only part of this I'm not sure about is adding Gohara for arrangement, but only because I haven't bothered to check out any of the songs he's co-credited on (based on the titles, they do look like arrangements of other things). Everything else sounds good.

Originally Posted by dancey

I think Run, Jump, Throw! Stage 1 is from Mario 64 but I don't think anything special needs to be done since it's C/A Koji Kondo.

It sounds original to me, although it is very much in that old Kondo athletic theme style.

[dancey]

Goharas tracks are all just very weirdly ambient or in a distinct eastern style which leads me to think that he just arranged them. I’m not familiar enough with the source material to know if they are somewhere else on the album, though.

[dancey]

Made those changes, except for Gohara. Update that after you review it or let someone know!

[cal]

I wouldn't tag Yokota as featured considering he was the music director. Featured is used for people who had zero involvement in the making of the soundtrack.

[dancey]

Music director does have zero involvement with composition though, especially when the only thing they are credited for is an 8 second jingle from a previous series. That’s not composition.

[cal]

What I mean to say is that as music director, it's very possible that Yokota chose for that jingle - his composition - to be used in the game. Which would mean the original composer was involved in some way.

I know it's just a 8 second jingle but still...

[dancey]

I don’t think we can assume that, though. Music director just doesn’t translate to composition, even more so when it’s just one track and 8 seconds.

[dissident93]

I also think we shouldn't tag Yokota as "featured". He was directly involved with the game's development, even if he didn't compose anything new. "Featured" to me is when the composer's work was used without any direct involvement from them. I think the system needs a better way to handle this, perhaps by adding a music director tag?

[dancey]

Originally Posted by dissident93

I also think we shouldn't tag Yokota as "featured". He was directly involved with the game's development, even if he didn't compose anything new. "Featured" to me is when the composer's work was used without any direct involvement from them. I think the system needs a better way to handle this, perhaps by adding a music director tag?

Yes, that would be more appropriate but I don’t think it’s a likely implementation (new features are super slow to be implemented, if at all).i look at it this way: If I’m a fan of Yokotas work and want to look up other things he worked on, I don’t think I would care that he was a music producer on an album. That doesn’t necessarily correlate to the artists style or direct influence on the music. His job is to direct the team of composers to make music that best fits the game, not that best fits his style. If I saw this work linked to him compositionally but then saw he didn’t actually compose anything significant, I’d be at best annoyed I had to click into the album and review it to see that, or at worst annoyed that I bought something in error.

I realize that his style is probably synonymous with Mario series, at least this generation, but it’s too thin of a correlation to make. He is a featured composer because he didn’t compose the work for this album. Someone took his previous composition and arranged it for this game/album. In the absence of an actual musical director or producer role, feat. is the more appropriate link.

IMO.

[cal]

Originally Posted by dissident93

I also think we shouldn't tag Yokota as "featured". He was directly involved with the game's development, even if he didn't compose anything new. "Featured" to me is when the composer's work was used without any direct involvement from them. I think the system needs a better way to handle this, perhaps by adding a music director tag?

I've actually wanted a "music producer/director" tag for a long time. It'd be a trivial thing to do. I could probably have it added tomorrow if I asked nicely.

The problem is:
1. There's 75,000 entries in the db - that's a ton of work!
2. Most people don't include this credit when adding info.

I'm the kind of person that wants tags for everything. The way I see it: the more data we track, the more comprehensive the db becomes. But what do you think?

[dancey]

Originally Posted by nextday

I've actually wanted a "music producer/director" tag for a long time. It'd be a trivial thing to do. I could probably have it added tomorrow if I asked nicely.

The problem is:
1. There's 75,000 entries in the db - that's a ton of work!
2. Most people don't include this credit when adding info.

I'm the kind of person that wants tags for everything. The way I see it: the more data we track, the more comprehensive the db becomes. But what do you think?

Tags for everything would be ideal, imo. This is, after all, a database, and what good is a database that only has a limited/selective amount of information? The more, the better. There would be a few downstream issues with that, though.

- Should it display in the Album Info Bit section with the rest of the primary album information (catalogue number, release date, composer/arranger/performer?)? I'm not really for or against it but the more we add, the busier it gets.

- Your note that there are 75,000 entries in the DB means there's a ton of existing albums that would have to be reviewed and updated. Not necessarily a bad thing but with the limited time and limited group of admins/staff/trusted editors, probably an impossible task. Not ideal, but you could always just implement it "going forward" and then touch old(er) things up as needed/as noticed. It's a bit optimistic and perhaps unrealistic to expect database entries to be truly "complete". The data in this (and any) database is really a living, breathing entity that constantly changes over time.

- Someone will need to make a determination on what to roll up into one tag, or whether to roll up at all. For example, are "Music Director", "Sound Director", or "... Producer" the same thing? If so, do you use a single tag or do you just have unique tags across the board? My preference would be unique tags. It allows infinite artists to be assigned infinite roles. But that is assuming the schema supports it, which I am not familiar with. A lot of stuff on the site feels static, at least on the frontend of things.

- Users entering the information may not enter it, either from a reluctance to link so many artists manually, or from just not having the information available at the time of add/edit (i.e., they're just adding it from a web source or something that isn't the physical product sitting in front of them).

Personally, I don't often add artists that aren't composer/arranger/performer because there is no quick, easy way to do it. Adding things like Conductor or Engineers is just painful. More so when I do it and the DB is slow. Triple so when I have to go back and edit/remove incorrect artists and have to type DELETE in for every single thing I might need to remove. I imagine if a Producer or Director role was added it'd fall into the same category (for me). This is mostly a UI/UX issue which is a probably a larger topic for discussion, but it is certainly a factor in something like this.

It is also, to me, not an important "core" data element, it's a "nice-to-have" ancillary data point. The "core" data elements for an album are "What is it", "When was it released", "where can I buy it", "who are the major artists on it [composer/arranger/performer]", and the album info dump of insert data.

[cal]

Originally Posted by dancey

Should it display in the Album Info Bit section with the rest of the primary album information (catalogue number, release date, composer/arranger/performer?)? I'm not really for or against it but the more we add, the busier it gets.

It would be a minor credit like engineers and conductors and would only be visible from the artist's page. Ideally, I think there should be some way to view this information from the album page. But that isn't possible with the current system.

Originally Posted by dancey

- Your note that there are 75,000 entries in the DB means there's a ton of existing albums that would have to be reviewed and updated. Not necessarily a bad thing but with the limited time and limited group of admins/staff/trusted editors, probably an impossible task. Not ideal, but you could always just implement it "going forward" and then touch old(er) things up as needed/as noticed. It's a bit optimistic and perhaps unrealistic to expect database entries to be truly "complete". The data in this (and any) database is really a living, breathing entity that constantly changes over time.

I suppose you have a point. "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now."

As for the second thing... While it might not be possible to track everything, I do think there's a more we can do. Look at IMDb or AniDB as examples. They have tags for literally every possible role. We have 10 tags total. Even some current roles could be optimized. For example, imagine a sub-tag for performers where you could specify which instrument was performed.

Originally Posted by dancey

Someone will need to make a determination on what to roll up into one tag, or whether to roll up at all. For example, are "Music Director", "Sound Director", or "... Producer" the same thing? If so, do you use a single tag or do you just have unique tags across the board? My preference would be unique tags. It allows infinite artists to be assigned infinite roles. But that is assuming the schema supports it, which I am not familiar with. A lot of stuff on the site feels static, at least on the frontend of things.

Unique tags would be my choice as well but I'm not sure if it would be possible on the current system (I, too, don't know how things work on the backend).

Originally Posted by dancey

- Users entering the information may not enter it, either from a reluctance to link so many artists manually, or from just not having the information available at the time of add/edit (i.e., they're just adding it from a web source or something that isn't the physical product sitting in front of them).

I was trying to make a point that it's difficult to retroactively add new tags because some users only include the credits that we currently track. Obviously things could be different moving forward.

Originally Posted by dancey

Personally, I don't often add artists that aren't composer/arranger/performer because there is no quick, easy way to do it. Adding things like Conductor or Engineers is just painful. More so when I do it and the DB is slow. Triple so when I have to go back and edit/remove incorrect artists and have to type DELETE in for every single thing I might need to remove. I imagine if a Producer or Director role was added it'd fall into the same category (for me). This is mostly a UI/UX issue which is a probably a larger topic for discussion, but it is certainly a factor in something like this.

As long as you leave the info in the notes, someone else will surely take care of it for you. Also, deleting things has been a lot more manageable ever since the mass delete feature was implemented.

[breath20kfire]

Here it is! Taken from the Super Mario Wiki, this is my tracklist and I know all of them very well. The Music List is part of the game after all.

[dancey]

Originally Posted by breath20kfire

Here it is! Taken from the Super Mario Wiki, this is my tracklist and I know all of them very well. The Music List is part of the game after all.

I'm deleting this (again) because you didn't address any of the previous problems brought up.

- The in-game music list only has 82 tracks. This album has 136 tracks.
- You didn't even use the full 82 tracks titles in the localization you posted, or you wrote them incorrectly (Capture: T-Rex is called "Fossil Falls: Dinosaur" in the music list, Riding a Jaxi is called "Tostarena: Jaxi" in the music list, etc.)
- You arbitrarily formatted tracks that are not localized in the music list and just assumed the formatting (Opening: Above Peach's Castle)

[MBgov1133]

Can I suggest something in regards to the English tracklist?

If the song title is just the same as the stage name, would it be preferable to use what's in the in-game jukebox for the song titles?

I'd assume not since it does have different formatting (such as colons and parentheses in various places that the Japanese tracklist doesn't have), but I figured I'd ask and suggest this anyway.

On a different note however, I find it funny that Soyo Oka isn't credited in the booklet for the OST. When I imported the CDs into iTunes, the default tracklist did credit her for the RC Car Challenge track. Not sure if someone from Nintendo inputted that tracklist since it can all be user-inputted, but it's something funny to see regardless.

[dancey]

Originally Posted by MBgov1133

Can I suggest something in regards to the English tracklist?

If the song title is just the same as the stage name, would it be preferable to use what's in the in-game jukebox for the song titles?

I'd assume not since it does have different formatting (such as colons and parentheses in various places that the Japanese tracklist doesn't have), but I figured I'd ask and suggest this anyway.

That would be a localization, and while there is nothing wrong with that, since the music test only has 86 tracks and this album has 136 tracks, that leaves some tracks entirely without a localization, at which point you have to either attempt to localize the rest yourself (by attempting to follow the same formatting conventions and using localized names) or you have to have 60% localized and 40% not, which just looks strange.

I lean more towards the first option (trying to localize to the best of your ability the tracks that are not localized), as long as you can comment and justify the 50 unlisted tracks you try to localize. It's also going to require you to match up the audio from the Music List to the album to make sure they're actually the same track.

The issue with the previous localization was the inconsistency with which it was localized. Some tracks from the music list were completely omitted, some tracks were changed, some were formatted seemingly arbitrarily. Overall it was just wildly inconsistent. Someone can surely do better, but I'd strongly recommend commenting and justifying so other people can review it given how contentious/popular this album has been (for editing)

[Rew]

Originally Posted by dancey

That would be a localization, and while there is nothing wrong with that, since the music test only has 86 tracks and this album has 136 tracks, that leaves some tracks entirely without a localization, at which point you have to either attempt to localize the rest yourself (by attempting to follow the same formatting conventions and using localized names) or you have to have 60% localized and 40% not, which just looks strange.

I lean more towards the first option (trying to localize to the best of your ability the tracks that are not localized), as long as you can comment and justify the 50 unlisted tracks you try to localize. It's also going to require you to match up the audio from the Music List to the album to make sure they're actually the same track.

The issue with the previous localization was the inconsistency with which it was localized. Some tracks from the music list were completely omitted, some tracks were changed, some were formatted seemingly arbitrarily. Overall it was just wildly inconsistent. Someone can surely do better, but I'd strongly recommend commenting and justifying so other people can review it given how contentious/popular this album has been (for editing)

I think I'd like to take a stab at it this weekend. Localizing is kind of becoming my "thing" lately. :P

[RBM95]

Originally Posted by MBgov1133

On a different note however, I find it funny that Soyo Oka isn't credited in the booklet for the OST. When I imported the CDs into iTunes, the default tracklist did credit her for the RC Car Challenge track. Not sure if someone from Nintendo inputted that tracklist since it can all be user-inputted, but it's something funny to see regardless.

I personally guess she wasn't credited because she wasn't actively involved in Odyssey unlike all the other composers / sound staff, or probably they couldn't credit her for some legal reasons as she is no longer part of the company.

That's not really the first time it has happened either; in the Samus Archives CD the two songs from the original Metroid were given a generic "Nintendo" credit on the CD-Text instead of Hirokazu Tanaka, who left Nintendo in the late 90's.

EDIT: Oh, I didn't read properly that iTunes bit. Then if that's the case maybe that's managed differently? I'm not that familiar with iTunes tbh