Good NES and GB Music

I've been listening to a lot of NES and Game Boy music since finding a player that works on my phone (hooray Android!). Mostly Dragon Quests 1-3, but a bit of Pokemon (holy crap those battle tunes are amazing), Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, and Faxanadu.

Does anyone here have any NES or GB games where they really like the music? I've mostly been looking for RPG-ish stuff, especially things without noise "drums," but really anything goes. I need more stuff to motivate myself at work, as well as in my compositions.

PS if you want to download a bunch of video game music in the original format, go here: http://www.zophar.net/music.html and you can get players here: http://www.zophar.net/utilities/audio-players.html

Lots of good RPG soundtracks on the gameboy. To list a few (that I don't think you've mentioned...)
- Final Fantasy Adventure
- Final Fantasy Legend I & II
- Lufia 3
- Dragon Quest Monsters and Dragon Quest 4.

Does GBA count? I liked quite a bit of the stuff on there- especially some tunes from the Golden Sun series!

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For NES, I like the soundtracks to Mega Man 1-6 (Cassock's Fortress Stage 1 music being my favorite there), Super Mario Bros. 1-3, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, Kirby's Adventure, and Tetris (Nintendo > Tengen and NES > GB on the music, as far as I'm concerned for this game).

My only recommendations for the Game Boy are Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening and Super Mario Land.

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Wait, are you telling me an Android is capable of playing emulated music? NSF, SPC, USF, PSF, etc.? If so, holy hell, I really should have put that on my Christmas list!
(For those who don't know, emulated soundtracks almost always come with an option to loop a song indefinitely, no pauses or breaks or fades or anything! It's amazing, I've listened to some of my favorite tracks for hours on end in Winamp without stopping)

Okay, so, old Game Boy and NES soundtracks. Here's some of my favorites, not including titles that have been mentioned several times already:
-Mega Man V (GB) (has original music not found on the NES games)
-X (GB) (you know this one from Super Smash Bros. Brawl)
-Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GB)
-Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GB) (yes, they have different soundtracks)
-Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (GB)
-Wario Land II (GB)
-Castlevania III (Famicom) (this version sound waaay better)
-Kirby's Adventure (NES)
-Mega Man 10 (Wii) (but they made an NSF file for it anyway)
-Ninja Gaiden (NES)
-Blaster Master (NES)
-Metroid (NES)
-Kid Icarus (NES)
-Mappy Kids (NES)
-Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES)
-Fire Emblem Gaiden (Famicom)
-Duck Tales (NES)
-Contra (NES)
-Mother / Earthbound Zero (NES)

If it's RPG-esque music in specific you're looking for, my topic picks from the above list would be all of the Legend of Zelda soundtracks and Fire Emblem Gaiden.

Whoa, thanks for all the recommendations guys! I've downloaded a bunch of these, and they're all amazing so far. Final Fantasy Adventure has a super melancholy soundtrack by the way...I like it, but it just sounds so sad



Yeah, it's a free app called Droidsound. It's a bit wonky (you have to add each track to a playlist or it will just play the first track and skip to the next game), but it's super awesome regardless.

I wanted to add a forgotten favorite to my list: Gargoyle's Quest. What an amazing soundtrack. I could listen to this all day.

EDIT: Holy crap all those Final Fantasy games on the GB have amazing soundtracks. I think I need to get these and play them actually, especially since I'm on an RPG kick right now.

EDIT 2: Lufia 3 has an even-more-amazing soundtrack. There's just tons of songs, and they're all great. This game must be massive, too, because there's at least 60+ full fledged songs on here. Yet another game I need to play.

While it isn't RPG music, Deja Vu for the NES has a highly atmospheric soundtrack. It's very groovy but also mysterious. Easily my favorite music on any NES game.

i think we left out the double dragon games for the NES! 2 easily has some of my favorite game music. EVAR. in fact, i started the DoubleDragonRPG purely on account that i had found some double dragon music on vgmusic.com.



i totally agree. it really creates some ambience and would make for an interesting RPG.

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If you like chiptune stuff, the soundtrack to VVVVVV (titled PPPPPP) is quite fantastic. It isn't NES/GBA, but it sounds like it.

I'd also recommend the soundtrack to Super Meat Boy (every song in that game has an "8-bit" equivalent) if that's your dig.

All the Castlevanias on the NES have fantastic music.

Anything Sunsoft put out also has great music (Batman, Blaster Master, etc.). Capcom also did a pretty great job (Mega Man, Duck Tales).

Golden Sun on GBA had some decent music. And all the Castlevanias on the GBA as well.

Why just NES/GBA? You do know the SNES had the best game soundtracks ever on it, right? :P

Also, this sucker is pretty freaking fantastic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93nIljXpqUY

@Baconlabs

There are emulators for NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, GBA, and PSX on Android. I got them all working on my Kindle Fire, no problems.

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What program do you use to extract the audio tracks for Droidaudio? I plan on listening to some tunes at work on my tablet during my shift.

Also, is there a droid app which can extract the music from actual ROM files, or better yet, can Droidaudio just be set to play directly from a ROM file(like a playlist), that would be totally awesome if it could?

Heck yes, I totally agree. The reason for the NES/GB fixation is twofold: I'm obsessed with chiptunes, and SNES music is too good to rip off.

But seriously, I feel like the SNES is the bridge between NES style chiptunes and music using more conventional instruments. The sampling is so good that if I was going to imitate the SNES in my compositions, I might as well just use real instruments. The problem is that I can't play any real instruments...plus I'm better at Chiptunes.

(Thanks for the recommendations BTW. VVVVVV is an amazing game overall; I need to actually go pay for the soundtrack.)



Droidsound plays NSFs and GBSs and pretty much any other old-school music file. You don't need to extract them, you can just download them from Zophar and then put them in the MODS folder on your SD card, which should be created the first time you run Droidsound.

As far as playing the music from the ROM files, I'm not sure, but you should be able to pretty much find everything at Zophar's anyway.

On top of everyone's recommendations, I'll add the NES version of Maniac Mansion. Some of the character themes are top-tier.

Also this is cheating, but Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is a GBA game, but has a retro soundtrack.

This is also cheating, but I've seen Youtube videos of people making NSF versions of newer game music, using a tracker. I remember seeing an extensive list of Sonic 3 & Knuckles done this way. Search for Famitracker: everything done with it should technically be possible on the NES.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDA5XthEyKw

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Man, Harmony of Dissonance's soundtrack is brilliant from a composition standpoint. I wish the instruments used were a bit more, er. Modern. But the songs themselves are beautiful.



I liked this pretty well, but...somehow I still like the chiptune-y version better. Perhaps I am becoming a chiptune snob?

The battle theme from Dragon Warrior (Quest) III (NES) if my most favorite battle theme ever, especially remixes I've heard over the years. Of course, Dragon Warrior III is among my most favorite games ever anywho.

Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxDXaJkyNPY

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