Listen to this incredible remastering of the Super Mario World soundtrack

Fans are remastering the soundtrack for Super Mario World, creating uncompressed versions of the original tracks that were never possible on the Super Nintendo hardware. The Super Mario World The restored project is in progress, but you can now hear nine tracks from the original game on The Brickster’s YouTube channel.

Like Brickster explains on Twitter, this is not simply the case of taking the tracks from the original game and cleaning them. Instead, creators like Moola, michael02022 and unknown are tracking the original samples used to produce the tracks and reconstructing the songs, without having to compress them to fit the insignificant 64kb of audio RAM on the SNES console.

In fact, tracking these samples was helped by last year’s Nintendo gigaleak, which contained the original source code for Super Mario Advance, Brickster explains. Since that Game Boy game, you’ve reused samples of Super Mario World, the team was able to use it to track the uncompressed samples used in the original SNES title.

Listen to the new tracks side by side with the originals and the difference in quality is stark. The new tracks sound brighter and more vivid, and while the music is still obviously synthesized, it almost feels like real instruments are playing every sound, instead of a computer. But there is also something about them that looks distinctly weird. This song was originally composed with very specific hardware in mind, and there is something strange about hearing it in this high quality. It’s like playing a SNES game on a modern TV without scanning lines.

Regardless of whether you prefer these tracks or the original ones, it’s still an excellent project. Brickster says the team is still working on releasing more tracks, which means that this is unlikely to be the last time we’ll hear from Super Mario World Restored project. In the meantime, the 2018 Nerdwriter1 video offers a beautiful overview of how Super Nintendo music worked.