What were your favorite NES game soundtracks

[4300]

Contra and Lifeforce hit me with the feels everytime. 

[asponge]

On 1/2/2022 at 5:59 AM, 4300 said:

Contra and Lifeforce hit me with the feels everytime. 

I've played NES Contra hundreds of times, maybe over 1,000, I don't know.  I've never given much thought to the music because it's always  been there, but in taking a moment to really listen I have to say it's really good, especially for this type of game where you're constantly on edge and moving forward.
 

Some of my personal favorite NES music comes from Blaster Master: 

Area 1 Forest
https://youtu.be/KCRot9Y9NIY?t=41

 

Area 4 Catacombs
https://youtu.be/KCRot9Y9NIY?t=288

 

Area 6 Icy Caves
https://youtu.be/KCRot9Y9NIY?t=451
 

 

[+Psionic]

Lots of favorites on the NES.  Too many to list, really.  You won't hear his name mentioned very often and the games he worked on won't win many awards, but I always enjoyed the soundtracks of the games that Hirohiko Takayama did for Atlus (Gotcha!, The Karate Kid, Xexyz, Friday the 13th).

[crade]

On 9/24/2021 at 7:59 PM, Tanooki said:

The usual suspects from Nintendo, or the big franchise mainline stuff like Castlevania, Turtles, Mega Man, they're obvious.

How about...

Super Dodgeball (Team USA, stage 1)

 

Another is Gargoyle's Quest II, picked A Long Time Ago (opening credit story roll) but really listen from 0-5min, shares the music with Gameboy original, just enhanced for each of those 5 clips)

 

Raise you!

 

[Tanooki]

5 hours ago, crade said:

Raise you!

 

Dude...solid.  I don't go on and on about it but I've had a hands off more than on huge care for famicom famiclone stuff and the wack pirates that come out, not the gutter trash persay, but that small level of quality brought by some insane pirates on a binge where they don't dial it in but really try.  REX Soft is one of the champs in my book.  I knew of Boogerman, but they have some fantastic work under their belt such as "Wu Shi Hun" which is a seriously high quality Samurai Spirits conversion that works amazing (and their other 2 are solid too with KOF97 and DBZ which are fighters too.)  REX alone proved how good 1vs1 fighters could have been, they trump the very nice TMNT TF Konami put out way late in like 1993/94.

 

They didn't do it, but Super Fighter III while piss poorly named is by far the best clone of Street Fighter II CE for the FC/NES...9 fighters, moves intact(though some oddly have the motions changed others don't) and has some really smooth graphics, a little stiff doing moves and the music isn't a match but not garbage.  I have a small (around 20) FC clone / boot library, had more in the past though.  One of my favorites is a very recent one though from 2017 where Infidelity created a mega MMC5 hack which I lucked into on a new FC board, slick red translucent shell, and nice sticker -- Super Mario Allstars+Mario Bros Arcade Edition all on one cart, beats the SNES even in some ways such as save anywhere and 4 of those saves per title too.

[crade]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

I knew of Boogerman,

Boogerman 1 and 2 are different games.  Boogerman 1 is probably better overall, but I was pretty struck by how cool the music is in Boogerman 2.  It's definitely my favorite soundtrack from a pirate. That video doesn't really do the game justice, the graphics don't glitch like that vid shows if you play the cart on a nes/fc..  probably the mapper isn't emulated correctly.  But the music is mostly intact, although it still sounds better to me on real hardware it might just be my imagination

[Tanooki]

11 hours ago, crade said:

Boogerman 1 and 2 are different games.  Boogerman 1 is probably better overall, but I was pretty struck by how cool the music is in Boogerman 2.  It's definitely my favorite soundtrack from a pirate. That video doesn't really do the game justice, the graphics don't glitch like that vid shows if you play the cart on a nes/fc..  probably the mapper isn't emulated correctly.  But the music is mostly intact, although it still sounds better to me on real hardware it might just be my imagination

Oh no real hardware is a must.  I had a run of that problem just yesterday really.  I went and took another swing at a pair of FC games (famiclone, multicart) that were just NOT working, one was just dead, the other was only pulling 1 of 4 games.  I had forgotten unlike most of the stack I got in the mail recently that I only used those 2 on a FC Mobile 88.  The famiclone is Super Fighter III (the best made SF2CE clone on there) and it was rotten, had to deep hard nasty clean that board, and once I did get it working, the audio was not great as it should have been.  I took it to my top loader with my honeybee, suddenly the audio improved to actual music vs confusingly misfiring whatever...and the multi found the other 3 games.  You still just can't trust stuff no matter now nicely cloned, short of a FPGA at this rate, which is what I'm kind of using there given the hi def nes kit inside that top loader.

[TeddyKoolz]

On 1/1/2022 at 1:04 AM, XT said:

In my humble opinion, one of the best soundtracks not already mentioned would have to be Sky Shark.

 

Sky Shark (NES) Music / Soundtrack

Sky Shark music and game is dope and classic.

[electricmastro]

 

Edited April 22, 2022 by electricmastro

[CMR]

 

Compile always had cool soundtracks for their games.

[atarilovesyou]

My favourite NES soundtrack was Rygar...every track is amazing and memorable. Close runner up is Ninja Gaiden.  And Battletoads rounds out the top 3.

[ZippyRedPlumber]

I like anything with Arpeggios, they're kinda like my "Cow Bell" in a way, The works of Tim Follin, Jeroen Tel, Johnathan Dunn, etc. I love them all!

 

That's why my Lyra 2600 game had arps in it's title screen.

 

And yes I referenced SNL lol

[Wayler]

Tim Follin truly was a master of NES composing and sound quality and I think the Solstice intro is his magnum opus and the single greatest NES song created. It's too bad he peaked on the NES imo, I don't think his SNES stuff reached the same levels.

 

Same goes for Sunsoft.

[Astro Rabby]

Hard to pass up the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games.

ESPECIALLY Final Fantasy 3. Uematsu REALLY knew his way around a chiptune by the end of the famicom's life. Shame we didn't get it stateside.

 

Just the regular battle theme is a sight [sound?] to behold.

 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Astro Rabby

[TeddyKoolz]

On 1/1/2022 at 1:04 AM, XT said:

In my humble opinion, one of the best soundtracks not already mentioned would have to be Sky Shark.

 

Sky Shark (NES) Music / Soundtrack

Sky Shark soundtrack was dope and dramatic at the same time. Word Up.

[TeddyKoolz]

On 4/24/2022 at 10:59 PM, CMR said:

 

Compile always had cool soundtracks for their games.

I used to own that game. Amazing soundtrack and addictive. Yes Indeed.