The Top 100 NES Tracks (with 15 runner-ups) According to The Shizz
Early last year, I gave my 0-100 opinion on 1723 individual tracks from the soundtracks of games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. The above is the result of my ratings combined with those of 99 other 8-bit game music enthusiasts.
I participate in the community of the fanbase of The Minibosses, a rock band which exclusively covers video game music from the NES. We’re known as The Shizz, after the domain which hosts The Minibosses’ forum, as well as other indie outfits in the Phoenix, AZ area. 100 members of The Shizz participated, but only 11 of us were able to complete them all, including myself. I don’t want to do the math on 1723 times ~1.5 minutes per listen for all of the nominated tracks, but it was at times a grueling processes. However, I’m proud to have participated, and I like the fact that I gave the lowest average rating out of anyone who gave more than a couple hundred ratings. Here is a big list of my ratings, in descending scores.
After a year’s worth of deliberation (mainly taking screenshots and getting people to write the reviews), the organizer for the project, someone I know simply as “juef”, has released the results. He did a countdown sort of thing, but I figured I’d wait to let you guys see the results in their entirety. Most tracks can be listened to via a Flash player right on the page, but that will sometimes not work correctly.
As far as the results, they don’t look at that much like mine, which is to be expected. A lot of “popular” tunes found their way to high positions, but that wasn’t too excessive. I’m only really butthurt about Godzilla #2 coming in 189th place.
Well you pretty much have all the songs that I can remember liking in the top 100, with the exception of Spelunker and Deadly Towers. Though you still have them in the top 200, while they get zero love on the final list. The final results on the Shizz are all out of whack if you ask me. But I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that we played and liked a lot of the same games.
all i’m saying is silver surfer in @ 57 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-J0H5ah1G7A
That Silver Surfer track slowed down a little and put to guitars is awesome. I’ll have to let you listen to the cover that my friends’ band does of it.
The discussion on The Shizz about the results is pretty funny. You have the obvious complaint about why X track is on the list and/or why Y track is missing, but you also have arguments on what time signature a certain piece has: http://theshizz.org/forum/index.php?/topic/36785-top-100-nes-tracks-the-results/page__view__findpost__p__1098149
Almost as much as the concern for how generally popular a game is having an effect on the ratings, you have the opposite case of virtually unheard-of titles getting an underground push of attention. Mr. Gimmick is one such title. Way too many of The Shizz have such a hard-on for the music. They’re like the hipsters’ hipsters. I don’t see what others see in the soundtrack, and what’s more is that the tracks I did rate semi-high didn’t end up high in the overall rankings.
I always thought Solstice had good music. At least the one song. Bionic Commando was pretty tight too, as was Metroid. Clearly, the Shizz people like Mega Man a lot too.
No One Lives Forever
Side Scrollin’ Poonblasters…why’d that get left off?
Almost 2 years later, I was listening to some of the above music and just realized that 2 of the tracks that you mentioned (Silver Surfer by Mike and Solstice by Tim) were composed by the same dude: Tim Follin. Maybe you should look up his stuff. In my opinion, he’s the best NES composer that didn’t come from Japan.
Sweet.