Nintendo Treehouse Describes How ‘Jump Up, Super Star!’ Was Localized Into English

Nintendo Treehouse recently revealed on Tumblr what happened backstage in the process of localizing Jump Up, Super Star, the song we all know as ‘that vocal theme from Mario Odyssey’. It turns out that the Treehouse crew bumped into some roadblocks along the way.

According to Rob Tunstall, the first draft of the localized set of lyrics sounded like this:

Oh we’re ta- / -king a trip / Here we go it’s time to raise the sails
The wind is dancing at our backs

Flip a coin / Make a wish / and the goddess might just blow a kiss
Boy I’d say your fortune’s looking good

Le-et your love shine as bright as the lights in this whole wide wonderful world
Jump with me / (grab) coins with me / Oh yeah!

Together we can live our dreams /
This love is what it seems /
So keep your chin up as you trek alone/
And when the tears they start to fall /
There’ll be no need to fear ‘cause /
I’ll be your 1UP girl

So let’s all jump up super high / and high five in the sky /
There’s no power-up like da-a-ncing /
You know that I’m the superstar /
No one else can take you this far /
I’m flipping the switch / are you ready for this /
Oh, let’s do the Odyssey

Odyssey, ya see!

After a few more slight changes, they made a mock video that was shown off to the staff in Japan:

The feedback that returned was illuminating, showing that there were too many Mario references for the song to have a connection with people unfamiliar with the series.

After a few more tries and changes, they settled on the final version, which is even used in the Japanese region version of Super Mario Odyssey as well (with the original Japanese vocals available as an unlockable).

According to Tunstall, the ‘sales’/’sails’ pun was not intentional at all. You can read the full post by clicking this link.

Super Mario Odyssey is currently available on Nintendo Switch.