What are your favourite SNES soundtracks?

[V0RT3X]

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What are your favourite Soundtracks from this awesome little 16bit system?

Mine are below this little story. (Skip it if you want)

Back when I was a kid, a friend of mine got one for christmas and invited me over to play it with him. We went to a game rental store and got to pick out some rentals to play over the weekend so I picked out Super Star wars and he ended up picking Mario Kart.

Once we got back we turned on his nice big CRT and got comfortable to experience 16-bit gaming.

First game we stuck in was Super Starwars and needless to say I was blown away! This was so much better than I expected. . (I had the original NES version by JVC and wanted to see what was different)

Probably the first thing I was impressed with was the soundtrack, it actually sounded more like an actual orchestra and not chip music like my beloved NES did. I was pretty much blown away, this was like next level stuff!

After leaving that day I tried pretty hard to convince my family we needed one, but it was seen as a unnecessary expensive toy. Besides going outside doing physical stuff was so much better right

Long story short, I ended up never getting a SNES for quite some time (Years in fact) because my parents didn't think it was any better than the NES. That is until it died one mysterious night and I needed a replacement. (This crime went unsolved btw)

That of course ended up being the N64, but that's for a whole different Thread i think.

Anyhow here's to this wonderful grey machine!

A few of my favourite soundtracks. (Complete with Youtube Links)

Donkey Kong Country Series


Chrono Trigger

[yellowmix]

Great choices, agreed. Chrono Trigger had so much talent on that team.

I was excited for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, a port from the NES games, which had awesome music. But they decided to not just port the music to the new chip capabilities but "enhance" it with the powerful 16-bit sample SRAM. It was absolutely butchered, think bad PCM brass with cheap reverb. The gameplay itself was very good, close to the original. The cutscenes looked rushed. For those reasons I'll fire up the original NES games to play it.

Best for me is Secret of Mana. Very carefully selected samples well-suited to the material and a bold direction. The composer is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroki_Kikuta

[funky lime]

The Secret of Mana soundtrack is what made me want to be a musician, 26 years ago! Hiroki Kikuta is a beast. His Seiken Densetsu 3 soundtrack is really awesome too (and so is the game, not available in English though without a patched rom). He even got to do like 8 different boss battle themes, and there's also some odd time and chromaticism sprinkled throughout. The sonic aesthetic isn't really as "clean" as Secret of Mana but the composition is definitely on par in my opinion.

I'm also partial to Nobuo Uematsu's FF2(4) and FF3(6) soundtracks. FF3 in particular had some really memorable stuff in it that fit the setting incredibly well.


If you're into this stuff, I assume you're familiar with the YouTube channel ?

i actually started to do a jazzy rendition of a Secret of Mana tune a year or two ago, never finished it but you can check out the abandoned attempt at https://soundcloud.com/halfwalkmedia/mi ... bite-test2

[sinemotor]

Anything from Square really. Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Romancing SaGa and Final Fantasy V in particular. oh and Zelda of course.

However SNES isn't really from my generation so I played those games with emulators. I'm much more familiar with PS2 soundtracks.

[V0RT3X]

Great choices, agreed. Chrono Trigger had so much talent on that team.

I was excited for the Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, a port from the NES games, which had awesome music. But they decided to not just port the music to the new chip capabilities but "enhance" it with the powerful 16-bit sample SRAM. It was absolutely butchered, think bad PCM brass with cheap reverb. The gameplay itself was very good, close to the original. The cutscenes looked rushed. For those reasons I'll fire up the original NES games to play it.

Best for me is Secret of Mana. Very carefully selected samples well-suited to the material and a bold direction. The composer is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroki_Kikuta

I was playing that Ninja Gaiden Trilogy track you speak of recently on my Super NT and enjoyed the gameplay, but I never heard the NES soundtrack to compare it to. I'll have to check that out.



Secret of Mana is another excellent soundtrack, actually I was really really impressed with that one. There are definitely some winners in that soundstrack.


Favourites

- A curious Tale
- Phantom and a Rose
- Into the Thick of it (This easily sounds like it could have been on the N64)
- Dancing Animals
- In the dead of night
- Mystic Invasion (Love the drums in this)
- Spirit of the night (Interesting progression in this)
- The Wind never ceases
- Eternal Recurrence
- The Legend
- The Dark Star
- Prophesy
- Ceremony (Really well done creepy track)
- The Curse (Another good creepy track)
- Now flightless Wings
- I closed my eyes


Stuff I didn't like at all
- It happened late last night
- A curious happening

The Secret of Mana soundtrack is what made me want to be a musician, 26 years ago! Hiroki Kikuta is a beast. His Seiken Densetsu 3 soundtrack is really awesome too (and so is the game, not available in English though without a patched rom). He even got to do like 8 different boss battle themes, and there's also some odd time and chromaticism sprinkled throughout. The sonic aesthetic isn't really as "clean" as Secret of Mana but the composition is definitely on par in my opinion.

I'm also partial to Nobuo Uematsu's FF2(4) and FF3(6) soundtracks. FF3 in particular had some really memorable stuff in it that fit the setting incredibly well.


If you're into this stuff, I assume you're familiar with the YouTube channel ?

i actually started to do a jazzy rendition of a Secret of Mana tune a year or two ago, never finished it but you can check out the abandoned attempt at https://soundcloud.com/halfwalkmedia/mi ... bite-test2

I like your jazzy rendition! It's actually pretty good

I thought the Secret of Mana soundtrack was definitely inspiring as well.

I never really had a chance to play through the Final Fantasy games you mentioned. I'll have to do that and get back to you.


Another great Gem which blew me away with the sample playback capabilities of the SNES. I liked that they went with ambient background sounds for some levels. It was a nice change.




Also this was actually pretty good.

[yellowmix]

I was playing that Ninja Gaiden Trilogy track you speak of recently on my Super NT and enjoyed the gameplay, but I never heard the NES soundtrack to compare it to. I'll have to check that out.

The NES version is a chiptune classic, and translating it with sampled acoustic PCM sounds like the brass, electric guitar, etc. turned into something completely different. If they stuck with synthesizer sounds then I feel it would have retained the charm. You can compare the two with these videos (expand the description for timed links to specific songs):





Gonna listen to the two you posted, I'd never actually played those games.

funkylime, I really liked your jazz version.

[Zombie Queen]

Consoles were practically unavailable here when I was a kid. But I did rediscovered them much later. One title on SNES shines particularly...

[fedexnman]

An old one but Konami Castlevania for regular NES , ..... Sega Genesis , Streets of Rage 1-3 , Ecco the dolphin , Sonic . SNES outside of Streetfighter 2 and F-zero I just didn't find myself playing much games over the Genesis. The regular NES man Ninja Gaiden I lived that series ... I had Ninja Gaiden on the 1st gen Xbox too ...

[jisatsu_koui]

Always loved the OST to Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Even if you don't enjoy the game, the soundtrack is great.

[logifuzz-vst-plugins]

I had to do this, sorry.

[Vee Nee]

Vortex (btw, is it just an accident the topicstarter have a similiar nickname?). This game seriously wandered me. With 3d graphics, with it's difficulty and it's soundtracks. I even recorded it to a cassette.

[mgelon]

Terranigma is generally lesser known and had some great songs: