nesdev.org

Hello all!

I am pleased to present you the results of a project I started last year in hopes of finding out which were the best individual tracks for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Long story short, 1725 nominated tracks were rated by people from The Shizz community. Thousands of ratings have been cast, and many efforts were made to make this as objective as possible (notably, to rate a track, one had to listen to at least one loop of it, and the game or track title were not revealed until the rating had been cast. 115 tracks stood out and have made the podium.

Initially, we planned on more epicness with the revealing of the results (such as hardware recordings from a modded NES), but for a few reasons, we gave up on some of them.

Nevertheless, please enjoy the results!

I bet Wily Stage 1 from Megaman 2 takes first place.

good idea, did not know some of these songs.

I love it! Great work guys! Everything from screenshot, through NSF player, to the direct download of NSF! REALLY looking forward to the complete list!
THANKS!

All the results are posted now. Organization, online player, and reviews were really nice, but honestly, I'm disappointed with the results.

The list is simply flooded with Mega Man and Castlevania songs (14 songs from CV3 alone) and few other games, but many other games known for great music and many popular songs weren't mentioned at all. In total, there are only 42 unique games in the list (115 entries).

Clearly, no tech or composing skills were taken into account at all. Few rather mediocre songs were included, that not on par to the others both by tech and composing, probably just by the nostalgia factor.

Inclusion of songs that use sound extensions like VRC6 and FME-7 in the list is not really understandable, it is Top 100 NES songs after all, not Famicom/NES. If it should include Famicon-only games, there are other games that use extensions, with nice music.


Here is just a few games/songs that should be in the list, to my opinion, right off the top of my head. I'm sure there are many more:

Robocop 3 (title song, how it was even possible to not mention it?)
Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge (at least the title song)
Mission Impossible (at least level 2)
Chip & Dale (last level)
Duck Tales 2 (at least last level)
Battletoads
Battletoads and Double Dragon
Choujin Sentai Jetman
Contra Force
Dragon Fighter
Final Mission
Gun Nac
Power Blade
Power Blade 2
Recca (the only game with techno music on the console)
Zen Intergalactic Ninja

Dwedit wrote:I bet Wily Stage 1 from Megaman 2 takes first place.

Congratulations for your bet DWEdit.

And I haven't other comments to say exept I agree with the list pretty much. Lots of CV and Mega Man songs, unsurprisingly, but those are the NES games with some of the best songs.
There is still a couple of soungs I'd have made in the top few that aren't here, especially from Battletoads or Double Dragon or Dragon Quest series, but well there is tunes from games I barely knowns existed (Silver Surfer, Journey to Sillius) that are pretty good either.

I'm glad Solstice's title screen made it this high on the list, I love this song and I throught nobody give this game credits for it's music so I'm glad it's there !

Something fun is that the list mixes Castlevania 3 and Akumajo Densestu versions of the songs, and they always chose the version I'd prefer too.

I never really loved MM2's Wily 1 stage music. I actually liked the Wily 2 stage music more even though it was repetitive. It doesn't help that 90% of all Mega Man remixes are MM2 Wily 1. Needless to say I liked just about every song in MM3 more

Shiru wrote:Ferrari Grand Prix Challenge (at least the title song)

Sounds choppy in the YouTube video for some reason, it's not really like that (tried both the NTSC and PAL versions on an emulator).

Yes, this one and few other songs from my post sounds bad in the videos, I just haven't found better versions on youtube.