Nintendo Music Released

The next out-of-nowhere surprise is the launch of Nintendo's newest smartphone app: Nintendo Music. Not to be confused with Wii Music, this is effectively their own little Spotify, where members of Nintendo Switch Online get to listen to video game soundtracks without any additional costs.

I gave it a try right away this morning and this is quite neat. The interface is clean and the playlists are extensive for the given games. At first I thought that these are only a sound selection, but those are the "highlights" with only the most important songs and you can also listen the complete soundtrack with everything.

For example, the default playlist of Breath of the Wild contains 62 songs, where you have the opening, the shrine music, the villages, the Champion themes, and so on. But the app also has the complete soundtrack with all 211 tracks, which only was available in Japan so far, like most of the official soundtracks. This one contains every piece of music you might want to listen to, including the DLC stuff and the epic trailer themes. It's a blast, and you also get a unique screenshot or image for almost every track to spark your memories.

Well, I don't know why the Windmill Hut theme from Ocarina of Time isn't part of the highlights, but at least it's there... And there are also playlists based on characters, which may even span different titles. Like, there is the Great Deku Tree, where you get tracks from both Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild. That's good to have when you're building the corresponding LEGO set, I guess...

The only problem with this app is the same as with any of the NSO offerings: they are drip-fed. So far there are 22 soundtracks available and they will gradually expand this over time, because Nintendo wants to keep this thing in the news. I can think of a number of reasons why they don't release all their old games at once to the service, since they still need to be tested and potentially re-rated, and so on. But in this case it's only music...

The biggest effort at this point should be translating all the titles into English and adding screenshots for every song. That's still a good amount of work, don't get me wrong, but hopefully this will see additions on a more frequent and extensive basis than what they are doing with NES, SNES, and so on.

Here's what soundtracks are included in the app as part of the launch, with the gaming system and the number of tracks in parenthesis:

• Super Mario Bros. (NES, 16)
• Metroid (NES / Famicon, 12)
• Dr. Mario (GB, 8)
  
• Kirby's Dream Land (GB, 15)
• Donkey Kong Country (SNES, 26)
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (SNES, 26)
• Star Fox 64 / Lylat Wars (N64, 39)
  
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64, 82)
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade (GBA, 100)
• Metroid Prime (GCN, 36)
• Nintendogs (NDS, 50)
  
• Tomodachi Collection (NDS, 62)
• Wii Channels (Wii, 62)
  
• Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 81)
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch, 211)
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch, 149)
• Super Mario Odyssey (Switch, 136)
• Kirby Star Allies (Switch, 213)
  
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch, 407)
• Splatoon 3 (Switch, 118)
• Pokémon Scarlet & Violet (Switch, 199)
• Pikmin 4 (Switch, 153)

The ones of bigger interest to this blog are highlighted, so Zelda fans will only get Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild for now, where they've started things with arguably the two most popular Zelda games. But we will certainly get more in the future, where The Wind Waker and Skyward Sword are already announced to come soon, among others.

However, let's hope that they will keep it simple and not bring the NSO Expansion Pack into this. It would be lame if you only could listen to the soundtrack of Tears of the Kingdom, for example, as long as you're paying for the advanced subscription.

But it would be compelling, because this is some very good value added to Nintendo Switch Online, where for me personally this is fantastic to have. I love listening to video game soundtracks, but I've gotten very lazy about managing MP3s on my phone, since there is Youtube and I rarely listen to music out in the wild. Right now I mainly have some indie game soundtracks on there, which I got from Steam: Hollow Knight, Death's Door, TUNIC, Dorfromantik, and some others. I also have some soundtracks from the Trine and Unreal series, where those are some great tunes.

As for Nintendo music, I have two MP3s from Spirit Tracks, the main themes, because that's the music you want to be listening to during a train ride, but that's really it. The other Nintendo-related albums on my phone are remixes, like Essence of Lime... So, having this app will fill a big gap for me and I love it.

In addition, you can create your own playlists, extend songs (which is very clever), and shuffle things while hiding certain games as spoilers. So, they have thought of everything important and I highly recommend to check this out.