Game Soundtracks For Your Soul: Level 15

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With Nintendo announcing its planned November 11, 2016, release of the Classic NES with 30 games last week I was hit with a flurry of video game audio flashbacks. Learning that the new mini Nintendo could not have any additional games added to it, I thought about some of the games I still had in my NES collection that I wish were included.

So in this edition of Game Soundtracks For Your Soul I’m looking back at a few NES games that had some incredible soundtracks. Come on in to relive some of my personal favorite NES game scores which include music to robots, soldiers, and space  animals.

Now some of you may be wondering why I didn’t include a number of NES titles in this post. For starters I’ve already covered quite a few in previous Game Soundtracks For Your Soul entries. This includes: Battletoads ^[2], Silver Surfer ^[3], Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers ^[4], Bigfoot ^[5] and Friday the 13^th & Jaws ^[6]. 

Although she has only composed the music for a few video games Tomoko Sumiyama really hit a home run with her score to Konami’s Cyber Stadium Series Base Wars. If you didn’t play Base Wars growing up, it was a robotic take on baseball. Some robot players could literally float in the air, which made them solid outfielders. Stealing bases usually lead to robot on robot carnage, where you fought your way to get on base. The music that played during the ball games was groovy and reminded me of a street brawler like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – the sweet music made baseball cool!

Although Base Wars was definitely groovy, Tomoko Sumiyama’s NES masterwork was her score to Konami’s Bucky O’Hare.  I recently replayed this game and although it can dish out the punishment, the score kept me coming back for more of it again and again.

My personal favorite tracks are “Planet Select” with grand sustained notes and snare percussion encouraging you as a player to take on the challenging missions as they are thrown at you. “Green Planet” is such a wonderful layered melody with a pulsing beat, “Red Planet” know how to rock, and “Yellow Planet” has a meaner more aggressive and light sound balancing each other out, and “Game Over” which I heard countless times just sounds so great I always hit continue to be welcomed back by the sound of “Planet Select”. Tomoko Sumiyama, I can’t thank you enough!

Lastly, a game I wish was included on the upcoming Nintendo release is Taxan’s G.I. Joe A Real American Hero. I borrowed this game from a friend in grade school, and kept it for a very long time. Not only was the gameplay awesome, so was the music. The song I remember the most was the title screen music. The music was composed by Nobuyuki Shioda and Yūsuke Takahama.

This is the music that will get you pumped up and ready for battle. Rapid fire 8-bit excellence.

And the music of the first mission in the Amazon jungle is just as catchy. Man after listening to this again I’m going have to track down a copy of this cartridge.

So now that I’ve covered the games I think should have been included on the upcoming Nintendo simply for video game music’s sake, what game do you think should have been included?