Official(?) Nintendo Consoles Music Thread v2.0

People being 'arseholes' (i.e. doing something that the rules totally allowed) about picking games was half the fun!

I wanted to give Smurf's sterling effort some time in the sun before yakking on about my own games.  Hopefully enough time has past where Smurf doesn't mind me treating y'all to the glories of Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin.  It's maybe a bit one-note, but what a note it is!  (Also: YouTube suggested the Mizutsune theme to me while listening to these, which tells you a lot of what you need to know.)




The lava level theme is probably my favourite level piece apart from the final one. Could have been a pick for Pumpy Day.



The other side of the coin: here's the music around your rice farm during summer.  Lovely cheerful stuff, and also definitely my next pick for the 'summer music thing' we did last year.



Final dungeon music!  So musical spoilers, natch.  I love it, but you see what I mean about one-note?  Everything's traditional Japanese music and electric bass, which I think is tremendous but may not go down so well for people who aren't massive weebs.  Let me know?

Recently I reviewed FlingSmash, where I said things like "it's a sweaty pile of arse to play", "you're utterly wasting your time" and "do you think '90s Arcade Racer is still coming out?".

It's rubbish, but there's one aspect of it that's actually not too bad at all, and that's it's music:







...and then lastly, this tune. It's probably my favourite thing about the whole game - it would fit in nicely with any of the Yoshi games.

You're not wrong about Flower Garden! It reminds me a fair bit of Knitty-Knotty Windmill Hill from Woolly World; and of course it's better than any music from Crafted World.

I'm not sure if any of you are into Grime, but I noticed a recent track from D Double E (he did that IKEA Christmas track) has a song on his latest album that has a Chrono Trigger sample. He had a popular track called Street Fighter Riddim ten years ago - so clearly a SNES head.

Not big in to Grime but I can get on board with that, game music really should have been sampled more than it has, it instantly makes a song so much better. Did we all hear Post Malone's effort from his Pokémon 25 concert? It's already a cover of a Hootie and the Blowfish song and also features the Cianwood City theme in parts but I like it, would have preferred they leaned more in to the Pokémon sample though.



Gonna add to this post with more Pokémon music! I realised that a few recent Nintendo games with very good music didn't get covered in this thread so here's the first with some tracks from The Crown Tundra DLC



There's yet first one and its very much the kind of thing we've heard in Sword/Shield with an understandably wintery vibe, never tired of this as I made my way through the Tundra, there's a lot to it but it comes together well.



Then we've got everyone favourite daddy Peony and his theme which I think really fits his goofy, try hard character, it's the kind of music that says "when this guy's around you better pay attention".



The final song is from Freezington which I'm so glad is the base of operations as it's a lovely calming bit of music that never failed to make me feel at peace. Its also another example that proves snow based areas in videogames have the best music.

Oh man, I thought I'd replied to GJones already.

I really dug those D Double E tracks, especially the SF one. One of the things I love about British Hip Hop is the sense of humour it has compared to a lot of po-faced American stuff. Give me Tinie and Dizzee over 50 and Dre any day of the week . . .

This track really stood out to me when I was playing through Bowser's Fury. Lovely stuff!

I had a few I was gonna share from Bowser's Fury and that was the main one, as soon as I heard it I knew I'd remember it, perfectly fit the tone of the island too.

I quite enjoyed this one too, was quite impressive how they had something different for each island.

The main theme when you're moving across the map was great too

I'll listen to those when I've played BF!

The game I'm playing has some belting tunes, but I'll give BF its time in the sun first.

Time in the sun over: as you probably know, I've been playing Bravely Default 2.  They got the composers from the original game back on board, which had one of my top five soundtracks in gaming ever; and it shows, oh boy does it show.  I don't care how much or how little you care for the game, I won't hear a bad word said about the soundtrack.  Here are a few of the best that I can provide without many spoilers.




Let's start with an obvious crowd-pleaser.  Belting boss battle music?  Yes sir!  They only get wilder, but here's an earlier offering so that we aren't spoiling too much.



Brilliant special move themes are back!  This one's the prim proper princess' theme, and is possibly the only good thing about her.



The theme of fighting soldiers of the very definitely not Russian evil empire.  An absolute bop, this.

BONUS - late-game pick:

 

For maximum effect, have a brief listen to the game's main theme first.  You're hardly hamstringing yourself, it's another lovely tune.



How good is this boss music?  I'm really here for this tune, much more upbeat and rocking than most of the boss battles, but without overdoing the electric guitar like in most of Second.  This is definitely a, 'You can do it!' theme.  Spot the main theme kicking in too!

And of course there's a brilliant final boss theme, but it's mostly a brilliant final boss theme because it mixes in music from the rest of the game, so I won't post it here.  I'll just listen to it myself.  Lots.

Bowser's Fury talk:

 

I've finally played it!  I did feel that the music was much better than SM3DW's.  Those tunes were top, but my personal fave is probably Mount Magmeow.  Walking into that gate, it really sounds like you're into the endgame.  That violin!  That brass!

I have to pick Smurf up though: something different for almost every island.  Mount Magmeow also played on Rolling Roller I believe.  Crisp Climb is unique I think, and also one of my faves.  Lovely waltz.

Anyway, it was the 3DS' Tenth Birthday recently!  I wonder if anyone noticed? Music feature time:

The 3DS' Top Ten Soundtracks

It's unavoidable that there'll be some overlap with Buska's NIN TEN YEARS project, but I'm going to try and focus on tunes at least that I (and he and anyone else) didn't pick for that.  To make this easier on myself, limit the selection, and make it more of a celebration of the actual 3DS, I'm also going to avoid using any remakes.  So: which ten 3DS games that I played had the best soundtracks for me?

10-6:

 

10 - Kid Icarus Uprising  Didn't even mention this one in NTY!  It's chock-full of triumphant blasting music.  Dark Pit's theme is probably the obvious pick, but there's a bit when you're suddenly put in charge of a dog for - what, a minute?  And it's got great music.  Sakurai you mad bastard.  Let him make something that isn't Smash!




9 - Kirby: Planet Robobot  Mostly here on the strength of its ending suite, which I did last time - but I didn't play the piece that kicks the epic final battle off.  Spoilers:



Yep, that's a Kirby game piece.


8 - Paper Mario Sticker Star  My go-to for music you like in games you don't.  I normally lead with Snow Rise, an absolute bop; or Gooper Blooper, which I'm reliably told needs context.  The soundtrack drops off a bit outside those, but here's a nice cheerful piece:




7 - Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds  Lots of tremendous renditions of LttP themes, including the Milk Bar where it does acoustic renditions of those.  I used a bunch of its pieces in NTY, including The Dark World 2: Electric Boogaloo, so here's something equally dramatic that didn't get a look in.



Bonus points: cute octopodes theme.


6 - Pokémon Sun/Moon  Every Pokémon game, even the lazy ones, has great music.  This was not a lazy one.  Vast Poni Canyon is still my go-to for work and stuff, but neither Buska nor I picked a (populated) town theme during NTY, and there are some top ones.  That needs remedying:

5 - Pokémon XY

I just prefer the soundtrack for these, not sure why.  Nostalgia?  Regardless, I normally pick the champion's theme here, with its bells and them, and maybe that sells the soundtrack short.  Some lovely music if you look just a bit.  Here's my favourite 'cave' piece from the series:




4 - Super Smash Bros. for 3DS

Would be higher up if it (a) wasn't essentially a compilation and (b) hadn't been immediately superseded by For Wii U in the same year.  Cracking music, especially on the Zelda side.  Here's one of the few good things about third-party characters in Smash:




3 - Gunman Clive

Arty shooter-platformer Gunman Clive gets this high up for consistency.  Seriously, listen to them all: not a duffer among them, all cowboy whistles and spacey synths.  I'll arbitrarily pick the first one:




2 - Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice

I'm probably being unfair to Dual Destinies, not putting it in my list: but its best and most memorable themes make comebacks in SoJ anyway, and SoJ is by far the better game.  I normally go with the big dramatic pieces from here, and for good reason.  Here's the best witness theme the series has ever had, and the only good thing about the fourth case:




1 - Bravely Default: Where The Fairy Flies

I don't think anyone's surprised to see this here.  Flawed JRPG, brilliant soundtrack.  It's all too easy to pick one of the rocking special move themes, or their live versions, or the BRILLIANT final boss music, as if the entire soundtrack isn't full of utter bangers.  Here's the basic battle theme.  It's better than anything in most games.




That's more than enough from me, in my third post in a row:
What are your top ten (or fewer) 3DS soundtracks?

I'm not sure I could put together a top ten, but I'll absolutely take any chance I can get to talk about Pocket card Jockey:







And of course, Super Mario 3D Land. Pick any remix of the main tune you like, but this is the first one that popped into my head:

Less than ten is absolutely fine - I'm glad anyone else wanted to pick anything!

Start Running Hope is absolutely pure Pokémon town theme and I'm here for it.
Yes Come On Solitaiba is absolutely pure Pokémon cycling road theme and I'm here for it.
Jazz Racing Jam is... a sudden twist into Ace Attorney. Basically: I can see why you chose that game.

I can do a Top 5  

That's three valid choices I've played bits of, and two games I've not played that are both very Mas.  That Theatrhtyhm video made my eyes hurt. How long does that take to learn/master!?

Scullion reviewed an utterly unremarkable looking game last week, with a quite remarkable piece of music. Excuse the meme visuals:



Goes up(?) another level at 0:58.

I think that's hit the "we need a Seal of Quality" barrier; Nintendo used to be too picky, but someone doesn't know how music works there - they've used some automatic thing a piece of software made, and went "yeah that'll do, I don't suppose anyone else knows any better".

I think I love it, it really is so bad it's good and the memes I've seen attached to this song have made me chuckle numerous times.

Same, I've kind of come full circle on it to the point where I find myself singing 'nothing's gonna stop me now' to myself and then regret my life choices.

I don't know if you folks know or already discussed Sam Griffin's guitar channel on YouTube, but I really love this video of his in particular.



He's such a great guitarist, watching his stuff actually inspired me to get back into guitar and buy a classical. Don't be put off by the end of this video if you don't know his channel, he does a silly outro for all of them and some are pretty funny.

Anyway, I probably would not have guessed this was one guitar player if I heard just the audio.

It's usually a safe bet that we won't have covered your favourite... er... cover artist unless it's one of the big ones, just because there are so many on there. Also normally I personally prefer the original tunes.

I will definitely make an exception in this case though. A really nice cover of a piece that works perfectly on acoustic guitar, and he's very good. Shame about the Patreon outro really.

Great stuff, it's mad that this is such a good tune yet it's still probably outside of my top 5 songs from this game, that's how high the bar is. You're right about that outro though, he's like a completely different person when he's talking.

Watch a few more of his vids and you’ll get his shtick. Lots of other great Nintendo tunes.

If you know any other good cover channels please share!

I don't really I'm afraid. I only listen to the obvious ones like Mr. McGroove. (What in the name of Patrick Swayze is Friday Night Funkin'? Why does it have a track called 'MILF'?)