The song from an official Super Mario game seems to be copied from an erotic animated film

Nintendo has been repeatedly accused of plagiarism for the soundtracks of its games. Think of the Overworld Theme from Super Mario World, which is very similar to Green Green by The New Christy Minstrels, or the Fairy Fountain Theme from The Legend of Zelda, which is very similar to Morning Glory by Tatsuro Yamashita. That said, one of the most peculiar accusations of plagiarism was made in the dark Mario Artist: Paint Studio, a piece of whose soundtrack is said to be copied from the erotic animated film Heavy Traffic by Ralph Bakshi from 1973.

The original song is called “Cartoon Time” and it’s very similar to the cat theme from the game where Mario becomes an artist.

A Convoluted Story

If you’re unfamiliar with Mario Artist: Paint Studio, don’t worry, as it was only released in Japan in 1999 for the 64DD, a short-lived subscription add-on for the Nintendo 64. It was developed by the British Software Creations and it was sort of a sequel to Mario Paint. Players could explore 3D worlds, modify the environment a bit, and make 2D drawings.

The account X No Context Super Mario was the one to notice the similarity between the game’s soundtrack and the erotic film’s one. In fact, listening to them they are really very similarso much so that one suspects that at Software Creations there were actually some fans of the cinematic qualities of Heavy Traffic.

Interestingly, a YouTuber had also noticed the strange resemblance in the past few days. ThomasGameDocsthis is his name, had in fact uploaded a video called “Nintendo COPIED this song from a movie”. As explained, The soundtrack for Mario Artist: Paint Studio was a collaboration between Chris Jojo, Martin Goodall and Suddi Raval by Software Project with Nintendo’s Kazumi Totaka. It’s hard to say who took care of the song in question, although the Time Extension magazine tried to contact the three English musicians, obtaining negative responses from Raval and Goodall and no response from Jojo. Considering that the latter was the head composer of the development studio, he could be the culprit, if we want to call him that, or the song could have come from Japan, also considering that the two who responded explained that their work was heavily modified by Totaka.