Speaking of ripping off Holst...

[01d55]

After reading today's* newspost, I found a .zip of Holst's planets (in .mid format) and started looking through them for something recognizably Star Wars. I didn't catch anything in Jupiter or Mercury, but I did recognize Mars - but not from Star Wars! It sounds like Koji Kondo split that track between Mario 3 and Star Fox. Oh, and hey:

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Kondo was trained as a classical musician, and this shows in his more ambitious projects, such as the soundtracks to the Zelda and Star Fox series. These pieces are distinctively cinematic, reminiscent of John Williams' work on Star Wars or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The title theme to the 1986 The Legend of Zelda is grandiose for all its low fidelity. Several of Mr. Kondo's themes have been famously recorded with full orchestral backing, with several tours of his work featured highly in concerts presented planetarily.

Emphasis added by me.

Sure, it's Wikipedia "citation needed," but the bits I italicized were too funny to pass up.

* Tue May 22 2007

Morning edit: Listening to the mario track again, the resemblance isn't nearly as strong as I remembered last night. I blame Escape Velocity Nova for having the entire movement as its opening theme.