Bonus!
I put together a little treat for all of you, I compiled some of my favorite NES music tracks into one kick-butt playlist! 37 tracks–one full hour of pure NES in-game rock! This is the music that I played to as a kid, and still listen to all the time to drive me and push me forward to get crap done. Enjoy!
Nintendo always had the best music. Cept for the Mario has died music. But who doesn’t know that iconic Mario theme.
Aw, bad memories huh with the mario death music? 🙂
We weren’t allowed to play video games if my grandfather came over. The flashing screen & the sounds drove him crazy.
What do old people know anyways? He probably thought that it was all done with puppets.
Great bunch of songs Gabe! Big thanks!
Of course!
I just came across your comic. Dude, it is awesome. I grew up during the same time, everything you write and draw about hits home. It’s almost like your writing about my childhood! Did you ever read Calvin & Hobbes? That was huge for me as a kid. I remember switching between Nintendo and my Calvin and Hobbes Collections on raining days. Don’t know if you were into it or not, but that would be awesome to see a strip about Calvin & Hobbes. Keep up the great work!
I loves me some Calvin and Hobbes, it’s one of he reasons I make Life In The Analog Age 🙂
I can see how some parents would less amused by the ‘noise’ emanating out of the room. This was certainly our soundtrack and I recall being really impressed at hearing those tunes coming out loud ‘n clear out of someone’s house sometime before I even got a Nintendo!
I love ’em. I think the limitations are what made it so interesting.
The music was pretty hypnotizing. It’s like it kept calling out to you and begging you to play more, and more.
Ha! Awesome! Glad you liked it!
I love chiptunes, then and now. As a musician I find it occasionally helpful to compose a song as a chiptune first before fleshing it out, as the limitations of the medium are great for inspiring creativity. It’s also fun to make fictional NES game soundtrack versions of existing songs, too.
(I do prefer the C64 SID chip to the NES’s sound generator, though; it only has 3 channels, but they can do WAY more.)
I love the C64 chipset too, but there are a lot more memories wrapped around that NES sound!
Cool songs!
Man, I still randomly get the Legend of Zelda tune stuck in my head from time to time.
I think it should play every time you leave your house to go do something 🙂
When I hear these songs, I also hear all the sound fx as if I were playing the game. Especially Contra Waterfall.
Awesome, just don’t scroll me off the bottom of the screen!
I think the first game that I remember digging the music enough to just sit and listen to it was DuckTales for the NES. It’s still got some of my favorite 8-bit music of all time. Somewhere I have a dusty tape of all the tunes from the game, made by holding a cassette boombox up to the TV speaker.
Awesome! I ove that music! I used to do the exact same thing! I still have my tape too 🙂
This is a great compilation — a big step up from cassette-tape mix tapes! Some real obscure gems — T&C Surf Designs, Fester’s Quest, Blaster Master… thanks!
My pleasure! I have more too, been scrounging them up for years 🙂