Koji Kondo

Japanese composer born in 1961, hired by Nintendo in 1984 as the company's first in-house composer and now a senior officer in its Entertainment Planning and Development division. He is best known for scoring the Super Mario and The Legend of Zelda video game series. His Super Mario Bros. theme became the first piece of video-game music preserved in the American National Recording Registry. He was born in Nagoya on 13 August 1961, took Yamaha music classes from kindergarten, played the electronic organ from the age of five and the marimba in his school band, and studied in the Art Planning Department of Osaka University of Arts without a classical training. He applied to Nintendo as a final-year student in 1984, the third person the company engaged for music and sound and the first there to specialise in composition; his opening assignment was the audio design of the arcade Punch-Out!!. Super Mario Bros. followed in 1985, The Legend of Zelda in 1986, Super Mario World in 1990, Super Mario 64 in 1996 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998, the last score he wrote alone. The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences took him into its Hall of Fame in 2024.