Happy Nintendo Music Thursday!
So, we have our answer as to what will happen to the Monday slot now that Mario Kart World's soundtrack is complete. Nothing. They're not using it anymore it would seem. A shame, but not too surprising.
But I must say, the first two drops post-MKW have been straight bangers, more than making up for the lack of a Monday drop. Last week, we got Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which is an incredible Fire Emblem soundtrack, and this week, we finally got another classic Mario RPG with Paper Mario 64!
Of the Mario RPG soundtracks on Nintendo Music, I believe this is the first one to either not be an original Switch game, or be tied to a Switch game, as was the case with Thousand Year Door and its Nintendo Switch remake. That's exciting, and hopefully means the remainder of the Paper Mario and Mario and Luigi games, plus Super Mario RPG (both the original and remake) come in due time.
I love the soundtrack of Paper Mario 64, it's easily one of my favorite OSTs on the N64. It's just got this heavily nostalgic vibe to it, probably helped by the primitive sound font of the N64, but also because I played the game on Wii U Virtual Console a good many years ago, so I do have direct nostalgia for it.
There are some real bangers on this soundtrack that I'm really happy to have, from iconic boss themes like "Attack of the Koopa Bros", "Ghost Gulping", and my personal favorite, "Freeze!", to the more serene, mystical, and sometimes uncanny tunes like "Shooting Star Summit" and "Crystal Palace Crawl". All around there's some really good stuff here.
I would love to see a remake of Paper Mario 64, if only to see what they'd do with this soundtrack were it to be given the TTYD remake treatment.
