How did they get away with this?

K

Kunmui

New member
I was watching the B:TAS ep "If you're so smart, why arent you rich?" last night, and noticed that all the sound effects in Edward Nygma's computer game came from the original super mario bros game. I dont know how the copyright for video game sound effects work, but werent said sound effects owned by nintendo? Or are sound effects public domain?
 
I don't know exactly how it works, but it's not the only case. Sound effects from Super Mario World were used in Roseanne, in the episode where DJ gets his Super Nintendo, and the sound effects from the Atari 2600 port of Donkey Kong are among the most used for generic video game sounds in TV and movies.
 
I've often wondered how they get away with this sort of thing myself. I've heard Mario sound effects used in quite a few cartoons over the years. They're so distinct that it's hard to imagine nobody catching on.

Back when it was the newest CN toon, I watched the premiere of Robotboy and the very first thing I heard was music from 'Super Mario Land 2' on the Gameboy, as well as several of it's sound effects. I'm by no means a fan of the show, but have caught a few other episodes on TV a couple of times since, where they still used the same track and sfx.
 
I think for stuff like that it's just not worth the time or money, and remember that a lot of your examples were before today's copyright protection crazy days we have now.
 
This is kinda common Ive noticed loads of Tv shows not just Animated ones have the Atari Donkey Kong sound effects in and this is still happening. A Psp game published by Sony late last year called Invisimals which is a game Simlar to Pokemon the monster Fire Dragon has Godzillas Roar for one of its a attack another Godzilla's Monsters roar is found in Super Metroid as well.
 
You'll notice sound affects from popular games in series overlap a lot.

This is because a lot of them come from places like FMOD, or companies who specialize in sound effects. FMOD is a pretty popular library of sound effects that A LOT of games and TV series draw from.

The only series I can recall off the top of my head that specifically used FMOD sound effects are Yu Yu Hukasho, Inuyasha and M.A.S.K.

Blizzard (WoW, Starcraft, Diablo) and ID4 (Doom Games) both use FMOD as their primary sound effect library.

If you listen closely, you'll clearly hear some of the same sound effects in WoW in Inuyasha.

I know there are TONS of examples around and I'm kicking myself that I don't know more right off the top of my head that specifically use FMOD.
 
This is actually one of my favorite absurd movie/TV cliches...that all people assume video games still have those "beep-boop-bip" sound effects and cheesy synth scores that they had back in the mid-late 80s. :p
 
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