SG Choice: The NES Songs that Should Be in Smash Bros.

Welcome back, true believers, to the latest installment of Source Gaming’s semi-new, semi-regular series on music we want to see added to Super Smash Bros. The problem here is that there’s so much music we’d like to see! Just one SG Choice? Not nearly enough. So we’re gonna have fun with these and find as many unique prompts and fields as we can.

For instance, today we’ll be looking at the ole’ Nintendo Entertainment System—and its Japanese counterpart, the Nintendo Family Computer. The NES / Famicom is the birth of modern Nintendo, and previous Smash Bros. games have justifiably pilfered from it extensively. Games like Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, and Mega Man 2 have seemingly all of their music already in the crossover in some capacity. But that just means there’s more out there, greater deep cuts and ignored tracks throughout Nintendo’s wares!

Wolfman Jew: The first song that struck out at me from this prompt was the “Title” theme to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Zelda II occupies a space in Smash music not unlike Fire Emblem Fates or Majora’s Mask where the crossover prioritizes only one piece of music—in this case, the classic “Temple” theme that Smash Bros. Melee lovingly remixed. But I love the title screen music, too. There’s a grandeur to it, and especially its higher quality version remix courtesy of the Famicom Disk System. It’d be an amazing track on a stage like Hyrule Castle, Skyloft, or Temple itself.

By this point, the legacy of the FDS’s music is well known to plugged-in gamers, and by this point it feels like the console’s de facto musical mascot is Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse, which took already great compositions to a new level. Dracula’s Curse already has three songs in Smash, as well it should, but there’s no reason this legacy can’t get more attention. One fun option might be “Riddle,” a somewhat less memorable track—it’s only gotten two in-series remixes over the years, as opposed to the dozens for “Vampire Killer” or “Bloody Tears”—but it’s also just so good.

Without an FDS version of its own, Kirby’s Adventure ended Nintendo’s time on the NES by pushing the original console’s sound to its limits, and the ensuing music is excellent. Smash knows, since it’s adapted many of the game’s songs already. But I’ve always felt that the series could stand to remix the game’s final boss theme, “Nightmare Wizard.” It has this cool, spacey energy completely at odds with the overbearing final boss music the rest of the series would opt for. While those songs are great on Fountain of Dreams, this one could be great on Halberd… or Fountain of Dreams as well. That’s where the final battle takes place, sort of.

Speaking of games with a lot of attention already, Mega Man’s NES offerings are already pretty well established—at least, the games people like are. It’s hard to find more material from Mega Man 1 or 2 that hasn’t been used. But the Blue Bomber’s got a lot of great material even in his lesser outings. Take “Knight Man” from Mega Man 6. Is Mega Man 6 a particularly well liked game? Not really. Are its Robot Masters largely bizarre racial stereotypes and also a centaur for some reason? Of course! But Knight Man’s theme is really, really good. The NES offerings in Smash are by and large from true classics of the era; they represent games that have defined Nintendo, Japanese gaming, and the video game industry at large. But the console also had lesser tier entries that deserve a bit of recognition just the same, and that’s something that the music (and spirits, and trophies, and… ) of this series has done forever. This one could stand to have it, too.

Here’s a weird option: Adventures of Lolo! HAL Laboratory’s charming puzzle game has absolutely no presence in Super Smash Bros., which I attribute to some obscure legal issue we’ll never know about, maybe stemming from the game being fully owned by HAL (which is still an independent company). Or maybe Sakurai just prefers their puzzle games about self-replicating box horrors. Anyway, the earworm of a song that is the “Game Theme” would be pretty great in some form. Stick that sucker on Pictochat or Duck Hunt, and you’ve got yourself a fun B-tier music track to work with.

Those of you more familiar with the soundtracks of the NES and Famicom are definitely aware that the average length of their songs is… rather short, usually due to hardware limitations. This can make finding good options hard for, say, an unpaid writer trying to make a unique listicle. Because of that, most of the tracks are best served as additions to larger remixes. So: here are some songs I think could be used in various Smash Bros. medleys or as bridges for sequences in larger remixes. “Pipe Maze” (Super Mario Bros. 3)! “Cave Theme” (Super Mario Bros. 2)! “Medusa” (Kid Icarus)! “Tourian” (Metroid)! One of my absolute favorite songs from Smash Bros. Brawl was the “Famicom Remix,” and to a lesser extent its replacement in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Another one would be really, really cool.

NantenJex: For many of Nintendo’s classic franchises, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tends to represent them through 1-3 pieces of music, often the original track unaltered and then a remix or medley of some kind. Ice Climber, Duck Hunt, Balloon Fight, Wrecking Crew – they all follow this same pattern. But there are more classic franchises that Nintendo could pull from for music and just haven’t yet, outside of brief snippets in the song ‘NES Medley’ which they then cut in Ultimate and replaced with the less diverse ‘Famicom Medley’. It’s a travesty!

So I want to give those cut games their deserved due in this article, starting with music from Famicom Detective Club Part II. Given the remake on Nintendo Switch, the series is more relevant now than it was back when Ultimate came out, so it’s about time it got some music tracks of its own, and there’s no better choice than “The Girl Who Stands Behind”, the games main theme. Its use of jazz and ability to capture a sense of mystery really represents the franchise and would be a perfect song to listen to on a stage like Fourside (if Super Smash Bros. let us play any song on any stage).

Now the thing with a lot of these classic games is that many of their ‘songs’ are less than 30 seconds in length, sometimes even as low as 4 seconds. This is probably why Super Smash Bros. does medleys and remixes for the classic franchises so often, as it’s the best way of making a full song from the game’s soundtrack. For Urban Champion, that would probably be the ideal solution but we can’t do that in this article. So instead, I’m going to put forward “Street Fight Area 2” as my choice from this game as, of its three fighting songs, it is my favorite and it is actually the length of a full song. Getting something from Nintendo’s first fighting game within its most popular fighting game seems like it should be a given.

And lastly, from the games that were cut with ‘NES Medley’, and thus had their Super Smash Bros. music references removed, we have Soccer. This one is in a similar situation to Urban Champion, where I think a medley would be the ideal outcome (although in this case I would want the medley to encompass all of Nintendo’s generic sports games in one song) but if I have to pick one song then obviously the only choice is the “Match theme” that plays when you actually play a game of soccer.

Hamada: Like I said in a recent article, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is amazing, and I can’t wait to write about it (since submitting this, I actually did). But what does the only reason to own a PS5 have to do with NES music, you might wonder? Well, one leitmotif that’s all over Rebirth’s outstanding soundtrack is that of the Chocobos, which got its start all the way back on Nintendo’s classic console. Specifically, Final Fantasy III’s “Chocobos!” is the first instance of the complete melody (though, FFII marked the birds’ true debut), so that’s the one we’ll be sourcing. As for where a remix or medley could go, there are so many instances of the song they could pull from, so they ought to get creative. And with the Chocobos already enjoying a recurring Mii hat and sharing a Spirit with the Moogles, they’ve already got enough of a presence in the crossover to deserve this.

But that’s our ideas. We recognize here at SG HQ that this is a bit of a refined and limited topic, since the NES and Famicom had such limited audio and their games have already been raided by Smash Bros. Still, we’re sure we’ve missed at least a few golden oldies, so make sure to throw one we missed in the comments.