Nintendo Nintendo Music

[Fire Queen]

move over, spotify. sit the fuck down, apple music. who even invited you, tidal? pandora, last.fm, amazon music, quaking in their FUCKING boots. napster rolls over in its grave. why? there's a new game in town...



that's right, idiots. nintendo FUCKING music. in classic nintendo fashion, this was a shadowdrop a couple days ago that was available immediately. if nothing else, this is at least finally a justification for why nintendo is obsessed with scrubbing their music from streaming services (even if i still think that's a stupid decision)

in all seriousness, even if no one was lining up to have yet ANOTHER streaming service on their device, how is this thing? well...

PROS

• launched with at least one game's music available from: NES/Famicom (more on that in a sec), SNES, Game Boy, N64, GameCube, GBA, Wii, DS, and Switch
• the original Metroid's soundtrack is available both in NES format and the original and superior Famicom format. is that that big of a deal? absolutely.
• apart from Famicom Metroid, it also includes Tomodachi Collection on DS, meaning we may get more Japan-only releases in the future?
• the library isn't comprehensive currently, y'all know nintendo loves to drip feed stuff like this. that said, some all-time soundtracks naturally made the launch list: Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Country, Splatoon 3, OoT...
• ...and i'm biased but thank goodness it launched with the FE7 soundtrack
• on that note, for games unlike Splatoon where the in-universe music doesn't come with in-universe album art, the "album art" for each song on older systems is a screenshot from when that song would have been playing during the game. for games like FE7 with a hundred songs, this is some crazy attention to detail that this person who loves detail appreciates.
• comes with a feature to loop a track for 15, 30, or 60 minutes. nintendo is COMING for those youtube mixes. but if you wanted to listen to Aquatic Ambience from DKC for an hour, now you can without going to a youtube video. wow, technology
• by the way there IS an album specifically for music from all the different Wii channels and you KNOW they got the Wii Shop Channel
• comes as part of the Nintendo Switch Online basic membership, not even the expansion pack. so if you already have that it's basically free
• no ads in sight
• also includes playlists for specific moods and characters, although the offerings are a bit sparse at the moment. but you bet your ass there's a Bowser playlist.

CONS

• NSO membership is the only way to access this at the moment so if you don't have that you're shit outta luck
• the launch offerings, as mentioned, are predictably sparse. SM64 didn't make the initial cut! most of the initial offerings are switch games, which makes sense, but c'mon.
• no web app, so only available on smart devices for the moment. not sure if that will change in the future but my hunch is no
• here's my biggest gripe: there is currently no way to see who actually made the music you're listening to. nintendo as of late seems to want its consumers to treat the process of creating games like a black box where every part of a game is made by Nintendo and you don't need to worry about getting any more specific than that. but it's gotta be so fucking insulting to the composers who actually made this music that they took the time to find screenshots for each song but did not take the time to do something so simple as to list a composer. when you click the Additional Info on a song, all that comes up is the copyright information. no individual name. and like, sure, you don't need that to tell you Koji Kondo composed SMB, and i don't need it to know that Yuka Tsujiyoko composed FE7, but it's information that would be so easy to add. it's a glaring omission from an otherwise fine product

final verdict is that it's worth a download if you have an NSO subscription already, but i don't think it justifies the cost of the subscription by itself. it's nice that you don't need the Expansion Pack for it, but as someone who is the type of person to read the wikipedia page for something i just finished watching/playing/reading, that snub to composers stings.

 

[shortkut]

Does it have the chrono trigger soundtrack?

 

[Crystal]

Well that's a funky perk for NSO members! I kind of like that they did this, it's thinking outside of the box!

 

[Fire Queen]

Does it have the chrono trigger soundtrack?

nope, only SNES games at the moment are SMW2: Yoshi's Island and DKC. to that end, 100% of the currently available games to stream music from are first-party, so it's unclear if Chrono Trigger would ever make the cut

 

[shortkut]

nope, only SNES games at the moment are SMW2: Yoshi's Island and DKC. to that end, 100% of the currently available games to stream music from are first-party, so it's unclear if Chrono Trigger would ever make the cut

Not worth it then

 

[Quagmire]

Kind of cool, I dont think music is one of Nintendo's strong suits, especially post N64

It isnt bad, but I dont find it memorable.

I am also old school, I like having all my music locally on my phone, I have playlists I've been building for 15+ years, custom tracks (like splicing together Brain Damage and Eclipse on Dark side of the Moon so If Im listening on shuffle I get both) plus a lot of fan remixes that arent all on spotify.

 

[Tommy Boy]

Oh good, right when Animal Crossing music is no longer stuck in my head, I am presented this.

CONS

• here's my biggest gripe: there is currently no way to see who actually made the music you're listening to. nintendo as of late seems to want its consumers to treat the process of creating games like a black box where every part of a game is made by Nintendo and you don't need to worry about getting any more specific than that. but it's gotta be so fucking insulting to the composers who actually made this music that they took the time to find screenshots for each song but did not take the time to do something so simple as to list a composer. when you click the Additional Info on a song, all that comes up is the copyright information. no individual name. and like, sure, you don't need that to tell you Koji Kondo composed SMB, and i don't need it to know that Yuka Tsujiyoko composed FE7, but it's information that would be so easy to add. it's a glaring omission from an otherwise fine product

Wholeheartedly agree with this point. I was shocked to see they're still just slapping a Nintendo label on it all. Sure Nintendo owns the rights to all of their music, but they can at least shout out the fucking composers and writers.

Not related, but this is why C418 stopped making music for Minecraft. When Minecraft was solely owned by Mojang, Mojang allowed C418 to license the music to them for royalties. It's safe to say that C418's music is monumental to Minecraft - they are practically timeless classics. When Microsoft acquired Mojang, they told him they had to sell the rights to his music to Microsoft to continue producing for the game. Long story short, he said fuck no, so now we have Kumi Tanioka and Lena Raine instead! Fuck big corps.