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Discussion Best soundtrack in a Nintendo game

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Chain Chomp
Nintendo's games have a long history of musical excellence; what game(s) of theirs do you feel have their very best soundtrack, and why that one in particular?

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So many great and iconic Nintendo soundtracks it’s impossible to list them all!

A few of my favorites:
  • Super Mario Galaxy 1/2
  • Xenoblade Chronicles Series
  • Twilight Princess (pretty all Zelda games tbh)
  • F-Zero
  • Donkey Kong Country Series
  • Mario Kart 8
  • Kid Icarus Uprising
  • Super Mario World
  • Pokémon Series
  • Kirby’s Adventure
 
Super Smash Bros Ultimate

Ok that’s cheating, here’s some others I liked:

I’ve always been a big fan of the Xenoblade game soundtracks. It’s hard to pick a favorite between them especially with 1, X, and 3’s not being as easily available to purchase as 2’s and Torna’s, but maybe X’s? There’s a few clunkers, but the vibes are off the charts on the rest as Sawano gave us one of his all time best bombastic soundtracks. Speaking of RPGs, Super Mario RPG has a wonderful soundtrack and one I think about a ton too. Seriously love every track in that game.

I’ve been thinking about them a ton lately since Reboot Camp, but Advance Wars has an incredible soundtrack with so many amazing character themes. Reboot Camp in particular revamps the soundtrack and it sounds richer than ever. Andy, Max, Sami’s, and Eagle’s themes in particular are all super rad and there’s fun variety in there too with stuff like Colin’s and Sensei’s themes.

One last shout for now to the Metroid soundtracks outside of Dread. Super Metroid and the Prime Trilogy soundtracks in particular fill me with so much wonder and the vibes are immaculate.
 
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would be my pick, not only is it amazing but there's, what, 9 hours worth of music? It's absurd.

Other good shouts would be Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the Galaxy duology, Mario Kart 8 (including BCP music), Tropical Freeze, Breath of the Wild, Three Houses, and Origami. Yeah, it's biased for more recent games, but that's where Nintendo's been at their strongest IMO.
 
It's hard for me to not say Xenoblade 2 for the sheer quantity and quality of its bangers. But Tropical Freeze is also a contender.
 
Gosh, that's tough. I'm not sure if I can definitively pick just a single game.

Super Metroid + Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3 have some really great stuff in 'em. Most of the series does, which is why fans tend to dump on Dread's soundtrack. It really wasn't up to series standards, unfortunately.

The Animal Crossing games have solid OSTs too. Lots of nostalgia and melancholy in those hourly themes, but there's also a lot more, like all the K.K. Slider songs, the holiday themes, and so on.

Pokémon Ruby / Sapphire / Emerald will always be among my favorites. Tons of nostalgia there too. Sapphire was my first Nintendo game on my first Nintendo console (a Platinum GBA SP).

I'll also mention the Kirby series based on Gourmet Race alone. Always been one of the GOAT Nintendo tunes.

So yeah, hard to pick just one, but if I have to... it's Super Metroid. Hip Tanaka's work on Metroid 1 was incredible, but the impact Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano have had on Metroid's later musical identity is tremendous.
 
Probably Tropical Freeze. It's absolutely insane how many fantastic tracks that OST has.

In my heart though it's Metroid Prime 1 though. It has the most "uniqueness" and I have ridiculous amounts of nostalgia for it.

More recently though, The Oragami King is the only first party Switch game that I would say is outstandingly good.
 
While it's hard to mention the specific top pick, the Splatoon music is just too good for this world.

And speaking of Splatoon, did you know that in Splatoon 3 they are directly referencing Wii U sound in the soundtrack? Now you know.

 
WestEgg said:
It's hard for me to not say Xenoblade 2 for the sheer quantity and quality of its bangers. But Tropical Freeze is also a contender.
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It's a coin flip between these 2. Other games have great soundtracks as well but few have a consistently great ost with so many bangers as Xeno 2 and Tropical Freeze. That's what mostly sets them apart for me.
 
Not all Nintendo soundtracks are created equal, but when they go for it there's nothing like it.

For consistency, creative vision and utter joyful spectacle I'm still giving the nod to Super Mario Galaxy.

Honourable mention to Mario Kart 8 with it's enormous scale and range - a real achievement, especially after so many iterations with robotic MIDI before it.

Finally, I have to mention Breath of the Wild for my personal musical development, teaching me so much about harmony.

bonus points to skyward sword for nailing a very specific colourful and mythical vibe
 
There are many, but I immediately thought of the one in Super Mario 3D World. I absolutely love it.
 
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Super Mario Bros 3
Metroid Prime
Xenoblade Chronicles 3

I found it impossible to pick one; these were the first three that came to mind but as this thread is already proving, it’s tough to go wrong!
 
This is too broad a topic to really consider in earnest, but if we were to narrow it down to just the best Switch era soundtrack? My vote would have to go to Paper Mario: The Origami King.

200+ songs in every genre imaginable and every single one is an absolute banger. It's the soundtrack I keep coming back to the most outside of the game itself and it deserves the No1 spot for sure.
 
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The N64 midi sounds dated now, but there is something genuinely magical about the soundtrack to Mario 64. Yes, you've got the upbeat big band stuff like BoBomb Battlefield, which is a classic by itself, but you've then also got pieces like Dire Dire Docks, which is just a transformative, mysterious, utterly beautiful track. It's not just that the game is stuffed wall to wall with bangers, it's that the soundtrack scope was absolutely unprecedented for a platformer at that time.

Even the file select screen gets it's own bittersweet, nostalgic theme. The file select screen!
 
JazzPotatoes said:
The N64 midi sounds dated now, but there is something genuinely magical about the soundtrack to Mario 64. Yes, you've got the upbeat big band stuff like BoBomb Battlefield, which is a classic by itself, but you've then also got pieces like Dire Dire Docks, which is just a transformative, mysterious, utterly beautiful track. It's not just that the game is stuffed wall to wall with bangers, it's that the soundtrack scope was absolutely unprecedented for a platformer at that time.

Even the file select screen gets it's own bittersweet, nostalgic theme. The file select screen!
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I love the soundscape of Mario 64 and the N64 Zelda’s. Something about that and visual effects of the time like skyboxes and fog really made those games feel like such melancholic, sort of lonely experiences for me as a kid.

As to the question, I’m not sure what the answer is but I’d feel pretty confident that it’s one of these:

Xenoblade 2
Xenoblade 3
Donkey Kong Country 2
Tropical Freeze
Rhythm Heaven Fever
 
If the Donkey Kong Country games are considered "Nintendo games" for the purpose of this thread, then my vote goes to Diddy's Kong Quest.

If not, then I choose Super Mario Galaxy.
 
Xenoblade and Bravely Default (is that counts).

Bravely Default was the only game where, when I entered a new town or got in a boss fight with new music, I'd let it loop before progressing. When Xenoblade was released a year earlier to us on Wii, though, it showed me that there actually still was great melodic music in modern games
 
I suffer severe brain damage when I have to choose which Xenoblade or Zelda game has the best soundtrack. How am I going to choose between all Nintendo games in history?
 
Since my favorites, the DKC franchise, has been cited, I also wanna give a shout out to Advance Wars. It really is understated how stellar of a soundtrack these games have, and it only gets better and better with each game.
 
either donkey kong country 2 or animal crossing gcn

dkc2s ost couldve been released standalone as an electronic ambient album a la aphex twin and no one wouldve batted an eyelash. i really love tropical freeze's ost as well and at one point probably wouldve said i put TF above DKC2 but over the years have gone back to preferring what wise did with the snes' music capabilities vs tf's live instruments.

seriously ever single track on that ost is memorable in one way or another. from the bombastic power of the main theme to the absolute groove of hot head bop to the ragtime take on gangplank galleon with rattle battle to the contemplative melancholy of stickerbush and forest interlude, the ost just doesnt miss.

as far as the animal crossing series goes, i think every entry has music that is in the upper echelon of video game music. not a bad ost in that series, period. i do think that the original gamecube (or n64 i guess? i actually dont know if there are ost differences between animal forest 64 and what ended up being the international gamecube release) soundtrack is particularly special though. i think games like new leaf and new horizons have done a good job maintaining animal crossing vibes, but the original was much more experimental with the sounds and melodies it used. the songs are totally unique and experimental without sacrificing memorability and catchiness. on top of that they managed to make songs that are maybe 1-2 minutes long loop for an entire hour at a time that are still enjoyable to listen to for that long.
 
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It's Majora's Mask for me.
The amount of sheer emotion packed in songs like Oath to Order, Final Hours and of course Song of Healing are just on another level.
 
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Johna X said:
Mother 3 surely a contender
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Also gonna shoutout Rhythm Heaven Megamix or DS or Fever I mean the producer is an actual musician so
But seriously so many bangers, the vocal songs in particular go hard and I hope with things like Jump Up Superstar and that weird SwSh song that wasn't in the game showing a vocal increase that it can lead to them localizing it if we get a new one (Megamix vocal songs (besides "I'm A Lady Now" which was always english) had vocals replaced with trumpets)
 
is very hard for me to just choose one soundtrack of a Nintendo game or franchise, if i have to pick my favorites i would choose: Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess
Super Mario Galaxy 1/2
Kirby Planet Robotbot/and the Forgotten Land
Bayonetta 2/3
Donkey Kong 64/Donkey Kong Country 2
Metroid Prime 1
and Mario e Luigi Bowser Inside Story
 
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I know Nintendoland hasn’t left my head in a decade, so that deserves some points from me.
 
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Galaxy 2, Wind Waker or Metroid Prime.

Too hard to chose between the three.

The beautiful orchestrated works of Galaxy 2
The open ocean Irish tunes from Wind Waker
The atmospheric bliss that is Metroid Prime.
 
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The music of the first donkey Kong country is one of the things that made me like video games in general, like Mute City or the main themes of Metroid, even if one of them makes me think of Hurricane by Bob Dylan.

That said, more recently, I was really blown away by the music of the last 3D Mario. Whether it’s the unforgettable symphonic music of both Mario Galaxy, the awesome jazzy atmosphere of 3D world or the extraordinary soundtrack of Super Mario odyssey,.
 
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