Nintendo Music: Super Metroid Added

This is one of those titles that should have been in the Nintendo Music app from the very beginning, or at least added early on. An absolute classic. Super Metroid took a huge step in defining the Metroid series for what it still is today, where some of its music has been reinterpreted again and again, first and foremost the Ridley battle theme. It's certainly the Link to the Past of Metroid.

The music and overall atmosphere made me an instant fan when I had first experienced Super Metroid back in 2008, making me want to play all other Metroid games right after. But there is a certain charm about the old Sony soundchips that never could be quite matched, for better or worse.

Anyway, we got the three most important Metroid games in the library now: Metroid, Super Metroid and Metroid Prime. In addition, there is Metroid II and a sample of the Metroid Prime 4: Beyond soundtrack. You can still see Nintendo advertising the latter on social media on a regular basis, where hopefully this will lead to the complete soundtrack soon. And I expect Metroid Prime 2: Echoes to become another Nintendo Switch Online double release of both the game and its music.

Nintendo Music: Phantom Hourglass Added

It's been a while since the latest Zelda addition to the Nintendo Music app. And they are not exactly ending the silence with a banger, because The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has probably the weakest soundtrack in the series, right next to Four Swords.

There are a few standouts within those 80 tracks, like Linebeck's theme, but the rest of it either borrows from The Wind Waker or is quite minimalist. The worst offender is that cavern interior music, which plays the same five notes in a loop.

Still, I've always had a soft spot for the game and actually liked it more than its successor, Spirit Tracks. But the second Nintendo DS Zelda game certainly had the better soundtrack, there is no denying that. Maybe we will be getting this next month? Overall, I'm hoping that they will get back to a monthly streak and bring a lot more Zelda goodness over the course of the 40th Anniversary, like Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, Link's Awakening and Echoes of Wisdom.

Nintendo Music: Metroid II - Return of Samus Added

After Zelda II now comes Metroid II. And there isn't really much to say here. While I have a soft spot for the game, there is only one catchy tune here to listen to: the SR388 Main Theme. Most of the rest is just atmospheric noise.

The soundtrack of the remake was much better on that regard and I'm hoping they won't wait years before they add this one. Same with Metroid Dread. And now that Metroid Prime 4 is coming in less than two months, you would expect the soundtracks for Echoes and Corruption, maybe even Hunters. But maybe they are going to tie this to the corresponding Nintendo Switch Online releases, starting with Metroid Prime 2... Maybe next month?

But what needs to be added first and foremost is Super Metroid. I can't believe that this isn't part of the library yet...

Nintendo Music: Zelda II - The Adventure of Link Added

They've skipped August for their not-so-monthly Zelda soundtrack addition in Nintendo Music, but we've gotten Zelda II - The Adventure of Link today. While this game is among the least popular from the Zelda series, its soundtrack always has been awesome with some very catchy tunes, like the Palace theme, which has been prominently featured in all Super Smash Bros. games since Melee.

It's also worth checking out the Famicom Disk version, because there are some notable differences, starting with the title theme, which makes better use of the soundchip. The Battle song is also completely unique, where it may sound strangely familiar to you. That's because it was later remixed as the mini-boss battle theme in The Minish Cap.

Nintendo Music: Ocarina of Time 3D Added

Another month, another Zelda addition to Nintendo Music, this time with Ocarina of Time 3D. I already had speculated that we might see this when they added The Wind Waker, but with no link from or to The Wind Waker HD back in January. The reason is that these remasters / remakes got their own soundtrack CD release, which is what many of the albums in Nintendo Music are based upon. And that's exactly what we are getting here.

The differences between the Nintendo 64 and the Nintendo 3DS music are small, but you may notice some here and there, since the music for the Nintendo 3DS version was actually remade, as faithfully as that might be (Iwata Asks). The soundtrack does have less tracks (51 compared to 82), because it doesn't feature the "Get Item" melodies, for example, and also combines certain songs into one. But it comes with the orchestrated credits theme that was made for GREZZO's staff listing. That's from the good, old times, where these remasters still showed you the original development staff in their credits, as they should.

Anyway, it may feel a bit redundant, but this is nice to have nevertheless. I'm glad they added it to the library. Though, it's curious that they are prioritizing this over adding Majora's Mask. Maybe next month...

Nintendo Music: Tears of the Kingdom Added

There it is! Just in time for the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition release of Tears of the Kingdom, we get the entire soundtrack on Nintendo Music. It contains a total of 344 tracks, fully based on the official soundtrack from last year, track by track, which means that it also has all the trailer music. This new playlist is a beast to listen to and a gigantic addition with almost twelve hours, arguably the most important one for the franchise.

But of course they shouldn't stop here. Hopefully, the soundtrack of the Link's Awakening remake will be coming soon, to cover as much from the Nintendo Switch as possible. There has yet to be an official soundtrack for Echoes of Wisdom, where they will probably release that first, before they add it to Nintendo Music... Which means that it could still take years before it appears in the app, given that they bother with releasing a CD version of it to begin with, but I personally liked the game's music quite a lot.

The soundtracks for A Link Between Worlds and Majora's Mask are also good candidates to be dropped at any point. With Twilight Princess I'm guessing that they might wait for the game to be included into the Nintendo Switch Online library, where they could even do like a double release, where you get the GameCube game and the soundtrack in the same week. This could also be true for stuff like Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, but those have low priority and first there needs to be Nintendo DS games.

Anyway, there was no new Zelda music last month, but instead they have added a "Best of: The Legend of Zelda series" playlist, which is so shallow that it wasn't even worth mentioning until now. At least they are updating it when adding new games, where in case of Tears of the Kingdom they've added the main theme, the opening and Lookout Landing...

Nintendo Music: The Legend of Zelda Added

If they keep adding Zelda titles to Nintendo Music at this rate, then we may see a complete collection at some point in 2026, during the 40th Anniversary. They could even use the anniversary as an excuse to add things like the 25th Anniversary Orchestral CD that came with Skyward Sword. I also expect the Tears of the Kingdom soundtrack to arrive in June, when they are releasing the Switch 2 update for the game and new amiibo.

Anyway, the original Hyrule Fantasy was just added with 12 tracks. It's very basic, where they probably should have added The Adventure of Link along with it, but still nice to have. And they have also added the Famicom version, which has some differences here and there, most notably the title theme, because the Famicon had a wavetable sound channel.

Nintendo Music: A Link to the Past Added

Sorry for the silence lately, but I've been very busy with some other hobby projects and there weren't many Nintendo news to talk about: But this will certainly change with the Nintendo Switch presentation in early April.

What's not so silent is Nintendo Music and here we finally have another album for the Zelda franchise with A Link to the Past. 31 tracks filled with classic 16-bit tunes will give you a good amount of retro charm, where some of these tunes have endured the ages, with the themes of Princess Zelda, Hyrule Castle or Kakariko Village reinterpreted by recent games, such as Echoes of Wisdom.

Of course this is all from the SNES, so in the future it would be awesome to get the first disc of the "Sound & Drama" album as well, containing nine re-arranged tracks in much higher quality. Those were even used for the live broadcast of Ancient Stone Tablets, one of the Satellaview-exclusive games based on A Link to the Past, so maybe they could turn this into an album for that game.

Also, no additions for Metroid as of yet. But I suppose they are saving those for when we are getting closer to Metroid Prime 4.

Nintendo Music: The Wind Waker Added

Let's start the Zelda year 2025 with some small news, where another game has been added to the Nintendo Music catalogue – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. It's based on the original Japanese soundtrack for the GameCube title, which comes with 133 tracks in total, including the "Game Demo Theme" at the end, which is from the Master Quest bonus disc trailer.

Curiously, they haven't linked The Wind Waker HD from the Wii U to this, but the remaster also got its own soundtrack in Japan with the "Sound Selection". They also had adjusted the quality here and there, which might mean that The Wind Waker HD will get an individual entry in the future of Nintendo Music. The same might be also true for Ocarina of Time 3D at some point, which got its own CD for the 25th Anniversary.

But before they add any of these more redundant soundtracks, they should focus on getting as many of the other (Zelda) games in there as possible. Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom would be especially nice to have.

Nintendo Music: Skyward Sword Added

Nintendo Music has received regular updates since its launch at the end of October, with a new soundtrack coming every Tuesday. This week we're finally getting a new Zelda title up in the lists with The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

This is based on the official soundtrack that was released three years ago, which offered 187 tracks in total. You may notice that the Nintendo Music release is one track short – that's the Wii Channel jingle that came at the very end.

They've also added four games to the search lists, where it simply links to an existing soundtrack:

• Metroid Prime Remastered (Switch) → Metroid Prime (GCN)
• Skyward Sword HD (Switch) → Skyward Sword (Wii)
• Mario Kart 8 (Wii U) → Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch)
• Breath of the Wild (Wii U) → Breath of the Wild (Switch)
  

That does make sense for the most part, since the music didn't really change between these releases. Only in case of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe they added a lot more, where they could offer a playlist that only has the Wii U music in it.

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, and shuffle things while hiding certain games as spoilers. You can also extend songs where applicable, so that they loop like they do ingame (which is very clever). They have thought of everything important and I highly recommend to check this out.