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[Poll] Nintendo Music

What is your favorite NES soundtrack?

  • Castlevania 2 Simon's Quest

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Dragon Warrior

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ninja Gaiden 2 The Dark Sword of Chaos

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Faxanadu

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Super Mario 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Crystalis

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mega Man 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Star Tropics

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Journey to Silius

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Excitebike

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Shatterhand

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Mother/ Earthbound 1

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Gremlins 2

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Final Fantasy 3

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    32

Lemming42

Arcane
Joined
Nov 4, 2012
Messages
6,806
Location
The Satellite Of Love
Final Fantasy unquestionably runs away with it. I do find Nobuo Uematsu a bit overrated, and the bulk of his stuff is derivative, but he can really make magic happen from time to time.

Also, it's SNES rather than NES, but bringing it up anyway. EarthBound was the best soundtrack ever in a Nintendo-system game. So much so that it completely blows gay shit like Zelda out of the water forevermore.





 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,719
Location
California
To me, the ultimate achievements of those old school soundtracks were:

(1) Songs that added an intensity of pace to the game -- Mega Man 2's Wily Castle is a great example of it, when you hear that song you want to rush forward into the level. Contra stage 1 is another. By propelling the player forward, these tracks helped make the games play in a more exciting way, rather than encouraging the forward-crawl pace that is sometimes more effective (but less fun). IMO, Simon's Quest's famously great tracks don't quite work in this regard because the game's controls are fairly sluggish, so even if you're excited by the music there's not much you can do about it.

(2) Songs that added an intensity of mood to a scene -- basically, early console games could to some degree convey awe by having a giant enemy or an insta-kill enemy attack or something, but other moods (tragedy, love, foreboding) were often accomplished only by music. There's more of this in 16-bit games than in 8-bit games, but even in 8-bit games, little things like Proto-Man's whistle accomplished a lot.

I would say that I have 20+ NES songs stuck in my head in category one and 20+ SNES songs in category 2, but strangely I don't remember that many SNES games having the same pace-setting music, except for maybe F-Zero.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,896
Excite Bike.



Such a simple tune.

The NES Batman game had some jams, too. I also faintly remember a lot of the beat 'em up games like Double Dragon and Ninja Turtles having dope music.

Edit: as good as I remember it. This track could probably be ripped to the radio if some producer wanted to be sneaky.

 

TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
5,815
Location
Cradle of Western Civilization
I like how the SEGA FAGGOTS are using Mega Drive (Genesis was only in the USA faggots) samples to compare with NES samples.... Really punks? How about you try going against SNES samples then, and get your asses owned?

Faggots. There is a reason SEGA failed, it sucked.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
I like how the SEGA FAGGOTS are using Mega Drive (Genesis was only in the USA faggots) samples to compare with NES samples.... Really punks? How about you try going against SNES samples then, and get your asses owned?

Faggots. There is a reason SEGA failed, it sucked.
genesis released years before the snes
 
Self-Ejected

Thac0

Time Mage
Patron
Joined
Apr 30, 2020
Messages
3,292
Location
Arborea
I'm very into cock and ball torture
Nobuo Uematsu

Uematsu begins to really flex his muscles on the SNES.
FFV and FFVI have incredible soundtracks, better than many FFs after them.

NES music is a bit simplicistic but FF2 had a few fun tracks. The second good thing that that game did next to spawning SaGa.
 

Morenatsu.

Liturgist
Joined
May 6, 2016
Messages
2,843
Location
The Centre of the World
I like how the SEGA FAGGOTS are using Mega Drive (Genesis was only in the USA faggots) samples to compare with NES samples.... Really punks? How about you try going against SNES samples then, and get your asses owned?

Faggots. There is a reason SEGA failed, it sucked.
ok then explain this faggot

actually this is cheating because this is with the FM module, plz poast famicom disk system in response. also i only know phantasy star dont hurt me

Seriously though, Nintendo is generic trash for the most part. Zelda's all right, and then...? Star Fox and Mother, I guess, but those aren't really real Nintendo games. What a totally fucking lame company. SEGA actually did interesting things (and died for it).
 

kangaxx

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2020
Messages
1,678
Location
atop a flaming horse
Sega > Nintendo without any doubt IMO. I had and loved both as a kid, but Sega's games always appealed to me a lot more.

Sega failed because they completely porked up with the Saturn's release (which I thought was alright, but lost out badly to PSX) and then the Dreamcast. It really had nothing to do with the Megadrive.
 

TemplarGR

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck Bethestard
Joined
May 30, 2013
Messages
5,815
Location
Cradle of Western Civilization
genesis released years before the snes

The Genesis was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.[c]


The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES),https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nintendo_Entertainment_System#cite_note-15 also known as the Super NES[c] or Super Nintendo,[d] is a 16-bit home video game console developed by Nintendo that was released in 1990 in Japan and South Korea,[16] 1991 in North America, 1992 in Europe and Australasia (Oceania), and 1993 in South America.

Oh noes..... 2 fucking years? That is a loooooooooooooooooooooong time, they are like, 3-4 console generations apart!

Faggot.
 

DalekFlay

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Oct 5, 2010
Messages
14,118
Location
New Vegas
I freaking LOVE Castlevania IV's soundtrack, but only vaguely remember the first three and am not sure they hold up as well. So I picked Mega Man 2, which I still remember a lot of and also really enjoyed.

I was more of a SNES kid because of my age I guess.
 

Reality

Learned
Joined
Dec 6, 2019
Messages
391
Richie is my go-to 2nd opinion on things like this and as far as I can tell his standout music for NES was something like

Gremlins 2, Journey to Silius, Rad Racer, Castlevania, Super Turrican, Gargoyle's Quest 2

For me personally

Megaman 2 >Castelvania > Mario 3 > Journey to Silius

I also want to shoutout to Solstice even though it's disqualified from having best Music due to basically only have title theme + 1 gamelong background theme

 

Gastrick

Cipher
Joined
Aug 1, 2020
Messages
1,733
Final Fantasy has some amazing songs, but Ninja Gaiden has the best soundtrack while playing. That's mostly because for half the game in Final Fantasy you are being interrupted by the battle theme.
1:12 7:10 15:23
 
Last edited:

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
12,873
Not NES, but still 8bit sound: Link's Awakening
 

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