Your favourite SNES music remixes

[WavyGravy]

Fragmare has some really cool demakes, some of them SNES games, for the Atari POKEY chip. I really like the POKEY, it's got a very distinctive and crunchy sound to it, especially when used correctly to account for the detuning it introduces at higher pitches.

 

 

 

[Tanooki]

Geez that Pokey sound is impressive given its roots, that's really pushing the envelope there on all those 16bit selections.

 

And I don't really have a dislike or beef with the Genesis/MD, it's just that I think most people were either saddled with GEMS or a general lack of skill/time...laziness?  Often you'd get this tinny audio, muffled or muffled and garbled sampled audio, it just was a bad look for the system with that going on.  Yet when you do get a few people who do some really competent work, it does rival the cleaner audio sample based tracks the SNES had, and even based on a genre of sound could exceed it because of the type of track being attempted.  Typically I think the PCE's audio DPCM or otherwise trounced the Sega hardware in general, visually same thing too across the board with graphics in relation to sprites, detail, color which is a bit pathetic comedic given its even older by a couple years meant to compete with the Famicom.

[Wayler]

Getting back to official releases, this might bring some memories if you happened to own Killer Instinct back then, as the original copy came with an "awesome" soundtrack CD: Killer Cuts. This was my first taste of an arranged soundtrack and heck, any soundtrack release for that matter, so it was pretty special. And the contents are pretty special too. Sure, it just oozes 90s sound, genres are thrown into a blender and is campy as hell. But I just head-bop and smile every time listening to this. Jago's Theme is a brilliant encapsulation of the potpourri of sounds this album has to offer:

 

 

When Killer Instinct made a comeback in 2013, I was glad to find out they did justice to the original songs, with every character theme giving a nod to the Killer Cuts versions. I think the new composer Mick Gordon even admitted somewhere that the original soundtrack was one of his favorites growing up and he did a fabulous job with every track, throwing himself in with insane dedication. The guy even taught himself Tibetan throat singing to give amazing vocals to the new Jago's theme! I haven't played a single second of the new version but seasons 1-2 are in my top 3 favorite soundtracks of all time. 

 

[Cris1997XX]

Since you guys mentioned Simon's Theme from Castlevania 4, I might as well post this remix too 😄 

[SlidellMan]

@Wayler I remember that album back when I was subscribed to Nintendo Power in the mid '90s. It was in a summer '95 catalogue if my memory is correct.

[Tanooki]

@SlidellMan No what that had was the Play it Loud soundtrack, I have that, it's pretty nice but it's pre Killer Instinct.  The KI tracks were only packed into every release (and console box too release) of KI for the console in a nice sleeve.  I've had the game for years (replacement copy) with manual but about 6mo ago I finally got a copy of the CD again in the sleeve locally and man it was a flashback, a real trip, @Wayler is right about that totally.  I put it along with all my other CDs onto my phone to mess with...and now that I am just realizing this, somewhere in my phone update it was LOST...grr... I know I burned it, need to replace my tracks...NOW.  Thanks for the realization.

[Wayler]

This is an album I'm still trying to hunt down, as it fetches a steep price even in Japan: Rockman X by Alph Lyla. Though initially I was quite disappointed. Mega Man X OST is tailor-made for metal but here they chose to go with a jazz fusion hybrid approach. Perhaps they thought a hard rock album was too obvious and I can appreciate their out-of-the-box (ugh) thinking on this one as over the years it has really grown on me. There's still that great energy and forward momentum to the tracks. At times though, the songs are so heavily arranged that it's a bit hard to decipher the source material, but hey, that's jazz for you I guess.

Edit: I'm still waiting for that metal album though.

Edited January 15 by Wayler

[Tanooki]

I really really want the Nintendo Super Famicom Game Music CD, but I can't figure out a fair price for it.  For about 2 years now it just sits and spins son ebay, NEVER ONCE HAS SOLD but a bunch of greedy Japanese sellers keep propping it up around the usually $100-150 range to rot usually without offers.  I just saw one at 87 shipped with offers, threw a lowball to see how much flexibility this guy has.  I have a limit I'll tolerate with international shipping.  I have them as MP3s but they're a bit crappy since I had to extract them from a YT channel because a game music site(the one I found with downloads) wasn't the same disc but had overlap and missing stuff. :\

 

The CD is fun, the first like 1/3 is orchestra/real instrument selections of various first party titles, then the rest is all SNES samples nice and clean.

Edited January 15 by Tanooki

[SlidellMan]

I'm surprised that no one has brought this remix of Counterattack '91.

[Wayler]

11 hours ago, Tanooki said:

I really really want the Nintendo Super Famicom Game Music CD...

 

The CD is fun, the first like 1/3 is orchestra/real instrument selections of various first party titles, then the rest is all SNES samples nice and clean.

That album has my favorite rendition of Red Canyon from F-Zero:

 

Did you know that F-Zero got a somewhat similar treatment to Mega Man X? There was a commercial release of mainly sax jazz for the music. Earlier I said that Alph Lyla's jazz fusion take really grow on me but I really, really dislike this album. I mean, I like some sax here and there but you cannot use it as a main instrument an the entire album, or then you have to do something different with the sound. I never can get into this even though I have tired a few times. It ends up sounding too samey and boring, although the arrangements are versatile. Shame, F-Zero deserved better.

 

Something like F-Zero: The Graded Driver 2201 would have been far better as an official release. This is an arrange album from a doujin publisher: earth Japan SOFT. Fire Field just comes blazing out of the gates. But one thing, whywhywhy put the last race as your second track of the album??? They have to be in order people! I hate when albums do not present their music in chronological order, it is a journey through the game as well as a musical experience.

 

[SlidellMan]

This is just groovy, nothing else needs to be said.

[Tanooki]

Oh I like that graded driver setup so far, have it going into firefield right now.  That seems like a nice one to get on a CD (then onto the phone.)

[Wayler]

Let's bring some peace here also. I enjoy the occasional calmer remix here and there. Here's a nice acoustic rendition of "What the Forest Taught Me" from Secret of Mana.

 

It is from an unofficial and free remix album Spectrum of Mana. Almost 4 hours of music dedicated to this single game with countless of talented musicians participating. These kind of albums are usually a very mixed bag for me but I found quite a lot to enjoy here (mainly because 1/3 of it is metal/rock).

Here's links to the whole album:

https://www.spectrumofmana.com/music.html

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ3O_ALHjyJKG_aKGxDkPg2HFFlr9L5We 

 

[SlidellMan]

Here's a sweet remix of As Wet as A Fish:

 

[Wayler]

Here's a weird and obscure one. 20th anniversary a TRIBUTE to GAME-sounds for music-CD

It's a game music tribute album made in 1998 spanning (at the time) 20 years of gaming, starting from Space Invaders (don't know how they were able to pull off a 4 minute song from it but they did). The line up is mostly weird Japanese games with a few familiar ones thrown in and also oddly Myst. SNES gets some songs and the best IMO is the wonderfully haunting opening from Otogirisou (a sound novel game, which I bought a copy because of just this cover). I was lucky enough to snatch a copy through some online store as it seems to be a rarity.

 

[Wayler]

The six Konami Battle albums are the holy grail of video game music for me. I remember in the era of Napster there was a Castlevania cover floating around supposedly done by Alice in Chains that was in actuality taken from a Dracula Battle album. Upon learning that there were six whole albums of this hard rock goodness, I knew some day they would be mine. Took me over 20 years but I was finally get them during my previous proxy stints. 

 

For the purposes of this thread there aren't a whole lot of SNES songs in them but as we seem to have a "post a Simon's theme" vibe here, this is THE definite version for me:

 

[Tanooki]

I do like the Dracula Battles, but oddly this post pops up as hours ago I was listening on YT to the first of those because it came up as i was hunting for examples of Akumajo Dracula the Best 1 and 2.  I want to get those due to the pure tracks on them, but the rock style stuff on that other can not be denied.

[Wayler]

On 1/28/2024 at 5:33 AM, Tanooki said:

i was hunting for examples of Akumajo Dracula the Best 1 and 2

Akumajo Dracula Best 2 is an excellent release of the Super Castlevania IV soundtrack. I like the little ambience enhancements here and there. And combining the stage 3 tracks to an epic 8-minute journey was a fantastic choice. My only nitpicks were that the secret room song is in the wrong place and the password theme is barely heard in the beginning. So I had to make my own version. Oh and the second cd is completely useless. Who listens to Game Boy songs on a cd? Ear piercing madness.

[newtmonkey]

@Wayler

Nice!  I used to have the two Dracula Battle CDs back in the day, when I was a carefree and irresponsible student maxing out my credit card on import games and video game soundtracks bought downtown in Chinatown.  Sadly, I sold both Dracul Battle CDs at some point, probably to help pay off that credit card debt haha.  Some great music (especially that Theme of Simon Belmont you linked)!

Edited January 29 by newtmonkey

[Tanooki]

Ehhh I like Gameboy chiptune music, and when I had the Castlevania collection for Switch I bought the slight upgrade for that CD, it has like 3-4 GB tracks or so on it and they're fine.   Both those discs would be appealing to me so I have them on a bit of a watch list.  I'm just not quite sure what is fair vs extortion since nearly all posted don't get bought, so it's like whoever is dumb enough to jump first will set the bar.

[Wayler]

You are a weird one Nooks. I personally draw the line to NES. Some of the sounds that machine produces are quite enjoyable and the melodies are killer but I never have just sat down and listened to NES music or put them on a CD.

 

******

 

Anyway, back to the topic. As I'm playing through Seiken Densetsu 3 currently, this piece came to my mind as I heard the original "Innocent Sea" in the game. It has to be one of my favorite non-rock remixes of all time, all the way back from 2003, from the best days of VGMix. The site has been long gone, but there's a great archive to sift through. I don't normally listen to classical music but pancakechef has made a string + piano arrangement that is filled with such beautiful sadness and loss that one has to take pause to let it wash over you.

https://vgmixarchive.com/songs/vgmix2x/pancakechef - Sea Breeze Strings (Seiken Densetsu 3).mp3

[Tanooki]

I imported a few first party discs.

 

There's that recent Konami disc, but these two are the others:
https://www.mariowiki.com/Famicom_Sound_History_Series:_Mario_the_Music

https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Sound_History_Series:_Zelda_The_Music

 

The Actraiser score I've slipped in here before the second disc is a mix of SNES rips and the PC-88 release so that's another

And I have the Cotton Reboot 2 CD case and the 2nd disc in that one is 68000 sharp soundtrack on that one as well.

 

There are the Final Fantasy discs, but none-square did state side (or the SD2/Secret of Mana) were rips they redid them with real instruments.  I've got that classic Kefka's Domain 3 CD FF3(6) US sound track along with the Japanese SD2(SOM) disc as well which are fantastic, quite a few uplifting to sad to just relaxing tracks in both.  There are the imported FF1, 2, and 4 CDs I have as well, same as much, no straight copies of the audio.

 

Nintendo did have the Play it Loud CD soundtrack which has numerous SNES scores on that from quite a few first party popular releases.  I'd recommend that one, it's not toxic on ebay like a lot.

 

[Wayler]

4 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Nintendo did have the Play it Loud CD soundtrack which has numerous SNES scores on that from quite a few first party popular releases.  I'd recommend that one, it's not toxic on ebay like a lot.

Eh. I don't really understand these compilation releases. You get snippets from some games but not the whole OST. I guess they serve a purpose as a sort of sampler for a company or game genre, which I guess was the point here. But the choices are quite boring and obvious (Ken Griffey excluded) with only 6 games and most of them have their standalone releases. And the aggressively stupid 90s look and title really makes this a hard pass imo. 

[Wayler]

Back on topic. Looks like the Japanese really love their Jazz Fusion because Super Mario World also got its share with an official release. It's a pretty comprehensive 2-disc set with the first being dedicated to arrangements and the second is the OSTs for SMB1, 3 and SMW. No SMB2 though, I guess it wasn't canon back there. The first CD is your Jazz Fusion take on Mario music. It's a bit too smooth for my tastes and there's way too much sax again at times. But I really like this groovy track "Mario! Stay Alert!", which is a medley of the underground and haunted house themes:

 

[Radio F Software]

I've lurked sites like OC Remix for as long as I've been on the web and to this day I still listen to remixes that I fell in love with 20 years ago. I appreciate that OC Remix has updated their website to keep up with the times and offers things like in-browser streaming/playback. They also uploaded their entire back catalog to YouTube which makes creating playlists of music simple.

 

When I worked in IT I used to put on OC Remix playlists and listen along and one day I heard this thing and it blew me away.

 

Like, dude, it's just tennis. Calm down. But this mix is incredible. I don't even like tennis but I couldn't get enough of this track when I first heard it. I read "SNES remixes" in the thread title and this was the first thing that I thought of.