Your favourite NES music?

[bostjan]

Post your top three NES/retro-game songs.

We were talking about old games in another thread, and Faxanadu came up, and I remember the music from that game really crushing it, so I started blasting old NES songs...

This one, in particular, really grabs me, from the game we were discussing:


Here are my top 3 favourites:

Silver Surfer Stage:

(love the "sweep-picked" part at 1:15)

Crystalis Mt. Sabre Theme:


Marble Madness Intermediate Race:


Of course, the mainstream games mostly had great music. Super Mario Bros. theme music is the most iconic, the Legend of Zelda has epic music that fits the game perfectly. Contra's music kicks ass...

But I played a lot of horrible NES games as a kid and I usually loved the music, in spite of however frustrating the game was to try to figure out.

 

[TedEH]

Not quite NES buuuuuuuut how about some original Gameboy tunes?



I think this is why I liked Kirby so much when I was younger- the music was just excellent. Great use of the hardware, great sense of melody, great sense of mood and velocity. The gameboy game had a music test mode, and I made good use of it.

Edit:
Arguably, lots of those tunes are taken from the NES game anyway, but the gameboy is where I encountered them first.

 

[spudmunkey]

I can't think of video game music without thinking about Mega Man II, and I can't think about Mega Man II without thinking about the Duane and Brando cover/remix.

 

[ThomasUV777]

A must in every NES music topic:

 

[Womb raider]

Pretty much anything from Metroid, especially this:

 

[HeHasTheJazzHands]

 

[spudmunkey]

I think for me, the ones that stick with me the most are definitely the ones that I played endlessly when I only had a couple of games.

• Super Mario Bros. (the first one, with Dunk hunt)
• Dragon Warrior (the first one, known elsewhere as Dragon Quest)
• 3D World Runner
• Adventure Island II
• Mega Man II

For a long while, those were our only games, so we played each one for HOURS and hours. We didn't have a lot of money, and SNES was already out. Dragon Warrior, I actually got before I even had an NES. I saved my allowance to buy a subscription to Nintendo Power when they were giving away copies of Dragon Warrior with a subscription. So I had DW for...I wanna say over a year before I even had an NES. I'd bring it to my neighbor's house to play when they were playing BB gun tag or something..it was the only time I got to play something newer than the Atari 2600 we had at home, besides the Sega Master System they also had, that was hooked up to a black and white TV in a back bedroom, and the cart slot was broken so you could only play the games saved on the console...a rambo-type game and a motorcycle game, if memory serves correctly.

 

[Ralyks]

The Mega Man III theme was already posted, sooooo....

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

A lot of my favorites have been posted so...





I can go on and on about the music of the original 6 Megaman games. 2's Willy's Castle 1 will be posted no matter what, so here it is. I'm also posting V's Wily Castle as it's not only underrated but it's also by Yoko Shimomura, aka Kingdom Hearts, FFVX, most of SF2 (including Guile's Theme).



Ditto with the FF series. All 3 had some great moments but I'm going with Eternal Wind from 3 as it's just gorgeous. Uematsu was really pushing the hardware to it's limits and for NES standards it was all the grander.



I personally prefer Tim Follin's SNES outputs like Solstice 2 Equinox, Plok, Spider-Man & The X-Men (actually everything he does is great), but if I were to pick a NES game (and since Silver Surfer was already chosen), here's the original Solstice.



It took me a few years to realise how much I've actually listened to David Wise throughout my gaming life. I'm going to go for the original W&W and this stage was really cool.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

An obscure one. Astyanax was rather average overall, but I loved it largely because of the music and the Ninja Gaiden esque storytelling. Speaking of which...



It was a tie between this and the first stage of NG2, but I'm going with this one. I was so happy hearing an awesome remix of this song as Ryu Hayabusa's theme in Warriors Orochi 3.



Obvious choice.

I could go on and on and on....

 

[Ralyks]

I’m pretty sure all Capcom music from the NES and Super NES is fantastic, or at the very worst, good.

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

I’m pretty sure all Capcom music from the NES and Super NES is fantastic, or at the very worst, good.

Look up Alph Lyla. It was Capcom's house band that wrote all the classic NES/SNES music.
Fun fact, most of the Capcom music staff at the time were women.

Another Capcom classic:

 

[downburst82]

Its Super NES but I think F-Zero definitely deserves a mention

 

[Ralyks]

Its Super NES but I think F-Zero definitely deserves a mention

The select time music is possibly the most chill menu music ever

 

[NickLAudio]

Definitely my fav...



And favorite remake of it...

 

[Bloody_Inferno]

Definitely my fav...

If you haven't done so, you should check out the Hard Corps Uprising OST:



It's done by the guy who did the Guilty Gear/Blazblue soundtracks.

 

[777timesgod]

Probotector's end credit for Game boy?

 

[Ordacleaphobia]

Just about anything from Chrono Trigger.
Seriously, whoever composed for that game knew what they were doing. Maximum comfy.

 

[mongey]

I can’t speak for the nes version as I haven’t played it. But rygar has the best old school game music in the existence.

 

[NateFalcon]

Battletoads, Skate or Die 2, Ghosts and Goblins...people already nabbed Castlevania 2 and Ninja Gaiden lol