The Legend of Totaka's Song: The History of a Musical Easter Egg Found in Mario Paint & Other Games

In 1992, a new face at Nintendo came up with a little ditty and then planted it hard to find places...(Chapter Markers and more below…)

Episode information
GTV 166 “Name That Tune" Season 9 Episode 6
Original Airdate: March 18, 2024
Produced March 2-17, 2022
Recorded at Butsudan Studios and edited on my 14” MacBook M1 Pro! Edited and produced with Photoshop and Final Cut Pro, all paid for with Gainful Employment™ while riding the train to work and home, back and forth, day after day, and lunch breaks too!

0:00 GTV ID
0:16 Mario Paint and the Origins of Totaka's Song.
2:28 Game 1: X (GameBoy 1992)
3:20 Game 3: The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls (GameBoy 1992)
4:02 Game 4: Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins (GameBoy 1992)
4:22 Game 5: Link's Awakening (GameBoy 1993)
5:42 Game 6: VB Wario Land (Virtual Boy 1995)
6:04 Game 7: Yoshi's Story (N64 1998)
6:39 Game 8: Mario Artist Talent Studio (N64 Disk Drive 2001)
7:08 Game 9: Luigi's Mansion (GameCube 2001)
7:48 Game 10: Animal Crossing (GameCube 2001)
8:29 Game 11: Who's Dunnit? (e-Reader 2003)
8:44 Game 12: Pikmin 2 (GameCube 2004)
9:31 Game 13: Yoshi: Touch and Go (DS 2005)
10:00 Game 14: Animal Crossing: Wild World (DS 2005)
10:16 Game 15: Animal Crossing: City Folk (Wii 2008)
10:37 Game 16: X-Scape (DSi 2010)
11:05 Game 16: Animal Crossing: New Leaf (3DS 2012)
11:38 Game 17: Yoshi's New Island (3DS 2014)
12:01 Game 18: Mario Kart 8 (Wii 2014)
12:32 Game 19: Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer (3DS 2015)
12:53 Game 20: Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch 2020)
13:23 Games That Don't Have the Song
14:10 Wii Sports Does NOT Have the Song!!
15:48 Super Secret Awesome Mario Paint Easter Egg!

Partial Transcript
In 1992, Nintendo released “Mario Paint.” A game that wasn’t really a game, but a drawing tool, similar to Mac Paint, only without the massive cost of owning a computer. Mario Paint was very fun, but the side items in the game were also very memorable. If you were tired of drawing you could take a coffee break and try out the mini game Gnat Attack. As well, the title screen had some interesting sounds and animations that rewarded you for daring to explore with your mouse.

It was a great to help anyone using a mouse for the first time, getting a newcomer quickly oriented. Little did we know that one of the longest running Easter Eggs in video games would be first discovered here. If you click the O in the title, everything on screen explodes, scrambles then reconstitutes itself. After which a short jingle is played.

This little melody, 19 notes in length is known as Totaka’s Song, credited to its composer, a member of Nintendo Sound Team, Kazumi Totaka.

Games that followed Mario Paint, with Totaka on board, featured the same song. In most cases, the song was hidden, often discovered by accessing a secret area, or simply leaving the game on for a certain amount of time. Most of these Easter Eggs would go unnoticed, but eventually the dedicated few would piece the puzzle together; that Kazumi Totaka was hiding his now-famous tune, leaving the challenge of finding it up to you, the player at home.
Not every single game featured Totaka’s Song, but many have. While others where it has not been found are still believed to have the song hiding somewhere in the game.

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