The Nintendo Mystery

The mysterious Totaka Song is a short, 19 note, looping tune, hidden in some titles of Nintendo games


The Totaka Song

Nintendo games are great, along with the music tracks and pieces that came with the game. It really pumps up its entertainment value. But did you know that there is a piece of music that is tucked away with many Nintendo titles? It's a short, 19-note, looping tune, hidden in some games that can only be played by waiting in a screen for some minutes or clicking an item. This piece of music is like an Easter egg. This was known as the Totaka song.

The Totaka song was first discovered in Mario Paint, released in 1992. Clicking the letter O in the end of MARIO will turn the letter into a bomb, and then exploding all the letters across the screen. The background music will stop, and the Totaka Song will start to play. This is why most people called it the 'Mario Paint Song', and was thought to be the first instance of the song. But after that, the song was actually discovered in a Japanese-only Game Boy game X, that was released long before Mario Paint was. X's contained a hidden bonus track that was the Mario Paint song, which later on was renamed to Totaka song. Other games include Zelda: Link's Awakening, Yoshi Touch & Go, Luigi's Mansion, and Animal Crossing.

The Totaka song also appeared in Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins. Lose all your lives to get to the Game Over screen. Wait in the screen for 2 minutes and 30 seconds, and the Totaka song will start to play. In Yoshi's Story, waiting in the Trial Mode screen will also cause the Totaka song to play after the background music stopped looping.

In some games, there seems to be no way of accessing the music. That means, waiting or pressing something won't play the music. Dumping the contents of the game's ROM would reveal the Totaka song, however.

As of February 2007, people are actively seeking for other games that included the Totaka song. Of course, the games are limited to those titles the person responsible for the song, worked on. These include Wave Race 64, Wii Sports, and the coming Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

The person responsible with this easter egg music was Kazumi Totaka. Totaka is a Japanese music composer and voice actor. He composed music for many major Nintendo games. He worked on every game that song appeared.

It's still fun to discover that these type of Easter eggs exists, and that people are actively hunting for them.


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Copyright 2007 by Sonicsoft Corporation
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