Hello all, since I'm recently back into NES, I was wondering what the best soundtracks or NSF albums are? I've been quite fond of Double Dragon II myself, one of my fav games back in the good old days!

Tons of great NES music out there. I recently discovered Sound Adventure Hokkaido Serial Murders ~ Okhotsk Vanishes.

It wasn't first for NES, but the NES port has its soundtrack featured on disc 2 of some 2002 double-disc release.

For me, having heard almost all of the "released-in-America" NSFs out there, it's fun digging through the import-only stuff.

Ramza

Tons upon tons of great NES music out there! Try:

Batman
Batman - Return of the Joker
Battle of Olympus
Battletoads
Battletoads and Double Dragon
Bionic Commando
Blaster Master
Castlevania 1, 2, 3
Contra
Darkwing Duck
Deja Vu
Die Hard
Double Dragon 1, 2, 3
Duck Tales
Earthbound Zero / Mother
Faxanadu
Fester's Quest
Final Fantasy 1, 2, 3
Gargoyle's Quest 2
Goonies 1, 2
Gradius 1, 2
Gremlins 2
Guardian Legend
Guerrilla War
Gunsmoke
Journey to Silius
Jurassic Park
Kabuki Quantum Fighter
Legend of Zelda 1, 2
Little Nemo - The Dream Master
Little Samson
Mega Man 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (and 9 too)
Megami Tensei 1, 2
Metal Gear
Snake's Revenge
Metroid
Gimmick
Nightmare on Elm Street
Ninja Gaiden 1, 2, 3
Power Blade
Robo Warrior / Bomber King
Rockin' Kats
Rush 'n Attack
Rygar
Life Force / Salamander
Section-Z
Shadow of the Ninja
Shadowgate
Shatterhand
Solstice
Sweet Home
Tecmo Cup Soccer
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2
Tiger Heli
Top Gun
Trojan
Ufouria / Hebereke
The Uninvited
Willow
Wizards and Warriors 1, 2, 3
Xexyz
Ys 1, 2, 3

Phew! All of them are great, but if you want to avoid muddling through them all and just skip to the best of the best, my recommendations are: Batman, Castlevania 1, 2, 3, Deja Vu, Double Dragon 2, 3, Final Fantasy 3, The Guardian Legend, Guerrilla War, Journey to Silius, Mega Man 2, 3, 5, Metal Gear, Metroid, Gimmick, Power Blade, Rygar, Shadowgate, Shatterhand, Solstice, Wizards and Warriors 1, 2, 3. Sorry, I just can't narrow it down further than that, all of those are top-notch.

What you should do if you haven't heard it yet is drop everything you're doing and just check out Journey to Silius. Best 8-bit soundtrack ever.

I pretty much agree with DK implicitly on this topic. The only omission from his list that immediately appears to be glaring to me is the Kunio-kun/Nekketsu stuff. The ones that saw US and/or European release are:

Crash n' the Boys Street Challenge
Nintendo World Cup
River City Ransom
Super Dodge Ball

I excluded Renegade from that list, because it's poo. There are also several games in the series that never made it out of Japan:

Downtown Nekketsu Koshinkyoku
Downtown Special: Kunio-kun no Jidaigeki
Ike Ike! Nekketsu Hockey Bu
Nekketsu Kakutou Densetsu
Kunio-kun no Nekketsu Soccer League
Nekketsu Street Basket: Ganbare Dunk Heroes

I just heard it for the first time a few weeks ago and I don't find it difficult to agree. One of my few nitpicks with 8 bit music is that of Castlevania III. One could say there are two versions, since the Japanese version was slightly altered. Cognizant of this, I recorded the NES music straight to CD (from the sound test):

  http://www.mediafire.com/?jmmqnvf2jjt

 
  The Famicom versions of CVIII are on Dracula Best Vol. 1, but the NES versions never officially made it to CD.

  I still say that Madara is one of the better Famicom soundtracks, along with Lagrange Point (both Konami titles). And both were officially released, so one doesn't need to bother with emulation (which tends to underwhelm me, but it's good for sampling).

EDIT:

  While I'm here I might as well add the NES version of Castlevania II:

  http://www.mediafire.com/?yotmhmtmfgy

  Although it weighs in at 10 minutes and 25 seconds, it took me more than 3 hours to actually record the music. Since it doesn't have a sound test I had to play through all of it (had to look up that damned kneeling with crystal/dracula body parts stuff). Keep in mind that this differs from what is available on Dracula Best Vol. 1, as that weighs in at 8 minutes and 7 seconds, plus it's not from the NES version (they did include 3 tracks at the end of the CD).

I have many favourites, but the best of the lot are Mitsume ga Tooru (by the same guy who did Pocky & Rocky, I think) and Journey to Silius.

Best track? Stage 3 from Journey to Silius. It's amazing.

Good point on the Castlevania soundtracks, Jodo. It's very cool that you recorded those yourself. I'd be curious to know what your recording setup was and if you performed any sort of mastering.

It'd be more accurate to say that the American version of Castlevania III is the one that was altered. Akumajo Densetsu utilized Konami's VRC6 mapper chip to add extra sound channels: two square waves and a sawtooth. The extra squares seem to be used for sound effects so that they don't cut out music channels every time you jump or whip, but the sawtooth is used for the basslines. Not only does the sawtooth have a very different timbre from the usual triangle wave, it also has a wider range, resulting in some additional changes between versions. For instance, the bassline in Aquarius was firmly in the "piccolo bass" range in AD, but had to be lowered an octave to fit the triangle wave's range in CV3. The change was neccesitated due to the fact that the pins of the NES cartridge slot which would have connected the extra sound output were instead utilized for the NES' "lockout" chip - the source of all those blank, flashing and scrambled screens

The main difference in Castlevania II seems to be the addition of DPCM drum samples in the US version, which sounds a lot better than the Japanese one.

I'll agree that Madara (also a VRC6 game) is pretty badass, but although Lagrange Point has a few interesting tunes, it's more interesting because it uses the VRC7 FM synthesizer than it is because of what it does with it. The composition isn't as great as most other Konami games, and the sound also doesn't really "fit" with what NES/Famicom music sounds like to me, unlike other sound expansion chips.

Other Famicom-exclusive sound expansion includes the FDS (Famicom Disk System) - Falchion is a brilliant soundtrack, and the FDS versions of Zelda and Metroid are fun to compare to their NES counterparts; Sunsoft FME-7 (Gimmick!); and the Namco(t) 106 (Megami Tensei II and several others). Supposedly the MMC5 used in Just Breed also has extra sound channels but I don't hear it.

I faked a stereo signal with a Y-adapter, which I plugged into the CD recorder. I had set things up so I could monitor what I was recording, by also using a Sony A/V receiver. The actual recordings were made more than 6 years ago. A PC was not used as part of the actual recording process, as the results are not as good as going directly to components specifically designed for recording.

  I haven't done anything to the music other than making mp3s from the wav files.

  If someone else could do the same thing with Ninja Gaiden I and II and Batman, that would be great. I may get around to it, someday. The improved quality over the emulated versions makes the work worth it.

Y'know I ended up doing a similar thing a while back. The version of CV3 on Dracula Best was all fused together and annoyed the hell out of me. What I did was I got a program called Audio Overload by Richard Bannister. (I am a Mac user) From there I got the .nsf file from Zophar's Domain. You can type in the length of seconds you would like to record and bam your song has been recorded and looped. This works well on all NES games but in later consoles the author of the files tell the song not to loop anymore. I then bring the wav files to Audacity and fade out the last 30 seconds of the song.

Try it out sometime. You might like it. It takes considerably less time than the other method though I don't know how the sound quality stacks up.

Can't believe no one mentioned Legacy of the Wizard (DragonSlayer IV) by Yuzo Koshiro!

Just as with Streets of Rage on the Genesis, Mr. Koshiro demonstrates the vast difference that understanding sound technology on a video game system can bring to composition!

Battle of Olympus is pretty darn great as well.

I'll add some Follin Brothers love to this thread. They made some of the best music on the NES (and SNES) in terms of both composition and technical prowess. Be sure to check out the soundtracks from these games:

Sky Shark
Target: Renegade
Pictionary
Silver Surfer
Solstice
Treasure Master
Wolverine

And a few other games that weren't mentioned so far:

Home Alone
Beetlejuice
Time Lord
M.C. Kids
Maniac Mansion
StarTropics
StarTropics 2
Asterix
The Smurfs
Hero Quest
James Bond Jr.
Magician

I just tried it out and I like the wav creation function. I'm going to make a CD for my staff at work (they'll love it). While comparing my recording of Castlevania II to the emulated version, my recording has more lower frequencies that my ears can detect. Otherwise the songs are indistinguishable. If I didn't have the original recordings for comparison, then I'd swear the emulated versions are original. The differences between emulation and original become much more prominent with SNES music.

My personal favourite from Journey to Silius is Stage 1, but, damn, the entire soundtrack is just pure gold. Sunsoft was a fearsome force to be reckoned with back in the NES days.

If I'm gonna pick my all-time favourite NES track, it'd have to be the Entryway / Main Theme from Shadowgate. That piece has always struck me, there's this feeling of mystery and upcoming adventure/danger that I really dig.

Naoki Kodaka is the f---ing MAN.  I still listen to Blaster Master's OST to this day.

Daniel K, good choice.

Some big name titles had great music: TMNT (the platform/sidescroller), TMNT (The "Arcade Game") Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, Batman (another Naoki Kodaka composition), Kirby's Adventure. The entire Rockman/Mega Man series but Mega Man 3 especially. These are the ones coming to mind right now.

Yeah Journey to Silius rocks, but to me Batman still owns it. That score is absolutely badass, especially the first stage track. This is the first game where I would actaully listen to game music outside of the game and I mean literally: I would just turn on the game and rock the first stage.

One that I didn't see mentioned is Destiny of an Emperor. Check it out.

I'm glad you like that method at least for NES music. Its helped me with a number of soundtracks that I was not pleased with the quality of the OST's. Say hello to nice quality MegaMan.

Richard Bannister and R.Belmont also produce another program called M1 that gets the music out of arcade sets too. The only problem with the record in this program is that you have to listen to the length you would like to record otherwise its much the same process as AO.

Tell me, do you enjoy CV3 or CV3J music better? I am kind of split on it. The nostalgic sound of the NES really gets to me and while CV3J sounds really cool it doesn't hit me as NES.

I prefer the U.S. version, because that's the one I played. A lot. I beat it 3 times (18 years ago), using the same character. It did change, like Super Mario Bros., when the enemies got harder on the next go. I tried to beat it again nearly 10 years ago and got my ass kicked.

  But anyway, I want to mention something interesting which may or may not be well-known. I didn't know until just a few minutes ago. But the Famicom game called Kage = Shadow of the Ninja (U.S.) = Blue Shadow (Europe).

  http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/nes/data/587607.html

  If you haven't heard it yet, grab the Kage arrangement (first place) here:

  http://dod.vgmix.com/past/jul08/

  I've known about the great music from Kage for the past year and a half, totally unaware it had a U.S. equivalent.