Composer: Yuka Tsujiyoko

Something about the N64’s sound processing or perhaps just the sound library available to Nintendo and their affiliates during this era seems to do something very special for the sensation of “astral-tinged wonder.” A similar example to the spectacular Astral Observatory from Majora’s Mask or the Chamber of Sages from Ocarina of Time, the Shooting Star Summit and its musical theme ate integral to conveying the game’s scope as well as the cosmic, ethereal nature of a vital story location.

Found just northwest of Toad Town and a stone’s throw from the former site of Peach’s Castle, Shooting Star Summit is found against a backdrop of eternal night sky — not because there is no light, but so that it can be lit by stars. Shooting across the sky, crashing to earth with a lo-fi twinkle straight out of the 16-bit era, dotting the blackness of space with pulsating glimmer. Like the sacred locations in the N64 Zelda titles, you feel with every step that you are drawing closer not just to the plateau itself, like a purple-tinged version of King Bob-omb’s peak from Super Mario 64, but the place where earth and heaven meet. It’s only fitting, then, that this is where Mario and his companions hold court with the Star Spirits themselves, or at least their projected forms that you have yet to free from captivity across the other far reaches of the world.

Aside from the powerful synth chords that drive the cosmic nature of the soundscape, the other main pieces of instrumentation are the electronically-processed drums and a pair high-pitched chime-like timbres. The former contribute to the dream-like state that is still sought after today in lo-fi remixes, while the mesmeric chimes mirror those twinkling stars and ethereal inter-dimensional sense of travel. It’s no surprise to me that across multiple YouTube clips, one of the most common experiences detailed by various commenters were either of walking extra slowly to take in the music, or even visiting the summit and using the calming nature of the music to help them drift off to sleep.