‘I Drove All Night’: how Nintendo gave Roy Orbison one of his biggest hits
Roy Orbison was one of America’s defining songwriters, first establishing himself in the rockabilly age of the 1950s and penning some of the most iconic anthems of that era. His lasting legacy has never particularly waned, with each new generation finding solace in the distinctive and timeless vocals of the songwriter. However, it is difficult to think of anything that is further away from the life or discography of the legendary songwriter than video games. In fact, if there were a Venn diagram of video games and Roy Orbison, the circles would be in different postcodes.
At least, not many people would think of combining Orbison with the world of video games. After all, the songwriter led a fairly analogue existence – his first records were released on 78rpm shellac discs, and he never lived to see the digital age of MP3 downloads or gaming PCs. Nevertheless, there are a few bizarre, almost unbelievable connections between Orbison and the pioneering Japanese video game colossus, Nintendo.
Firstly, in this strange journey through hyperspecific Roy Orbison trivia, Nintendo used the name and image of the songwriter as the inspiration for Roy Koopa, a servant to Bower’s children, who first appeared in Super Mario Bros 3. The character’s dark sunglasses are anonymous with Orbison, although the exact reasons for Nintendo choosing to base a character off of the iconic rockabilly singer remains unclear, Roy Koopa has appeared in various instalments of the Mario series over the years.
Even more unbelievable, Nintendo has an odd link to Orbison’s track ‘I Drove All Night’, released in 1992, three years after his untimely death. If you go back and watch the music video for the single, you might be able to spot the various references to Nintendo throughout, including a white “Mario Brothers” van, a “Dino Dogs” sign with a striking resemblance to Yoshi, and a “Princess Brakes” box which seems to show a caricature of Princess Peach on it. Although, at the time, few people might have noticed these subtle messages, the choice to include Nintendo advertising in a music video for Roy Orbison remains a fairly strange choice.
On one hand, the game was released in 1992, during a period when America’s youth were captivated by the video game world. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) had been released only a year prior, and Nintendo was going full throttle in trying to hook kids onto video games, which it did fairly successfully. As you might expect, the company took advertising very seriously. Even still, Orbison hardly seems like the kind of artist Nintendo would select to subtly advertise to children, given that his audience tended to be much older.
The answer to these questions lies within the obscure compilation album Nintendo: White Knuckle Scorin’. Licensed by Nintendo and released by MCA Records in 1991, the album features performances by the likes of Dire Straits, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, Sheena Easton, and, you guessed it, Roy Orbison. In fact, ‘I Drove All Night’ was released through the compilation album one year prior to being issued as a single in its own right.
Nintendo: White Knuckle Scorin’ was released with two aims in mind: advertising Nintendo to the youth of America, and paying tribute to Bobby Brooks, who had died in a helicopter crash in 1990. Brooks had been passionate about promoting literacy to children, and this compilation album aimed to follow a similar path, including a Mario comic loosely based around childhood literacy, as well as the recently released SNES game Super Mario World.
Brooks had been the talent agent of Orbison, along with most other artists featured on the compilation album, which likely explains his bizarre inclusion on the Nintendo album, as well as the strange imagery hidden in the music video for ‘I Drove All Night’. Either way, it seems as though the posthumous release of one of Orbison’s final songs is inseparably linked to Nintendo and the video game boom of the early 1990s.
Strangely enough, the success of the SNES and Super Mario World was not carried over into Nintendo: White Knuckle Scorin‘. The youth of America during the early 1990s was taken with Mario, Luigi, and Princess Peach, but they did not seem to feel the same way about Dire Straits, Roy Orbison, or Crosby, Stills and Nash. However, the release of ‘I Drove All Night’ did inspire something of a resurgence in Orbison’s popularity, with the single reaching number seven in the UK singles charts, providing Orbison with one of his last hits.
