Super Mario 64's water levels are where a children's game quietly introduces you to your own mortality. There isn't even an air meter: Mario just steadily loses a wedge of health every eight seconds until he stops being a plumber altogether. Over the top of that runs a soundtrack so serene it could be playing in the lobby of a very expensive hotel. Naturally I decided the correct response was to learn it on guitar instead of learning to breathe.
This is my guitar arrangement of "Dire, Dire Docks", written by Koji Kondo for Super Mario 64 in 1996. It's the same theme you hear in Jolly Roger Bay and The Secret Aquarium, and in-game it layers extra strings and percussion in and out depending on where you're swimming. I do not have an orchestra hiding behind the amp, so one guitar has to cover all of it.
How the Dire, Dire Docks chords work on guitar
The piece sits on G, and its signature move is the slide G – F – E♭: the I, then the ♭VII, then the ♭VI. Those last two are not in plain G major — Kondo borrows them from the parallel minor side of the key, which is why the theme never quite commits to sounding happy or sad. It just floats there, being wet.
Here's the gift for guitarists: all three are ordinary major triads, and each one is a whole step below the last. So it's one grip, slid down two frets, then two more. No new shapes, no thinking. Later on the theme leans on an E♭maj7, and that's where the lounge-jazz smell comes from — the major seventh of E♭ is D, so if you let an open D string ring over your E♭ shape, you get that colour for free. Worth knowing what a seventh chord actually adds before you go sprinkling them everywhere.
Beyond that it's the usual melody-and-chords job: thumb holds the bass, the melody sings on top, and you resist the urge to speed up. If your version sounds less "peaceful lagoon" and more "Mario is genuinely in trouble", slow it down by half. Tabs, PDF and Guitar Pro are on my Patreon — no pressure, purely for the riffs. Now go get some air.