Official Mario and Zelda songbooks now available in English

The musician/gamer hybrid isn't as rare as one might think; spending five minutes on YouTube searching for "piano covers" is proof enough that the musically inclined among us are continuing to explore their passion for video games in creative and expressive ways. One of the major hurdles facing musical gamers (or gamicians, if you will) is the difficulty inherent in finding official sheet music or tabulature for video-game soundtracks. Songbooks are often expensive and in Japanese -- if they even exist in the first place. Now though, the hunt for gaming sheet music has just gotten a little easier.

Four officially licensed Nintendo-oriented songbooks are now available in The Queen's English from Alfred Music Publishing. The books, Super Mario for Guitar, Super Mario for Piano, Super Mario for Easy Piano and The Legend of Zelda for Piano each contain more than 30 songs from various games in their respective series. What's more, Super Mario for Piano and The Legend of Zelda for Piano are also available in ebook format on Apple's iBookstore.

Each book retails for between $16.99 and $19.99, and while Mario and Zelda aren't exactly obscure, there's something to be said for learning the classics. Let's hope this is the beginning of a new trend in localizing gaming sheet music; we'd give up an arm for a Mega Man 3 songbook. No, wait, we'd give up a leg. We need that arm to play music.