Kondo was hired by Nintendo in 1984 as their first dedicated composer and is currently a Senior Officer at their Entertainment Planning & Development division.

[1] Kondo began taking Yamaha Music classes from kindergarten, where he learned to play the electronic organ from the age of five.

"[5] Kondo was the third person hired by Nintendo to create music and sound effects for its games, joining Hirokazu Tanaka and Yukio Kaneoka.

His second work at Nintendo was an instruction manual on how to program Japanese popular music into the Famicom using the peripheral Family BASIC.

The game's melodies were created with the intention that short segments of music could be endlessly repeated during the same gameplay without causing boredom.

The main theme is iconic in popular culture and has been featured in more than 50 concerts,[2] been a best-selling ringtone,[7] and been remixed or sampled by various musicians.

After the success of The Legend of Zelda, he provided the score for two Japanese-exclusive games, The Mysterious Murasame Castle (1986) and Shin Onigashima (1987).

[10] Since then, he has been collaborating with other staff members at Nintendo, advising and supervising music created by others, as well as providing additional compositions for games, including Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Super Mario 3D World.

He performed piano with the American rock band Imagine Dragons live at The Game Awards 2014 ceremony in December 2014.

[19] Kondo's music for Super Mario Bros. was designed around the feeling of motion that mirrors the player's physical experience.