Smash some Bros and steal some gold as you jam to these tunes.
What better way to showcase the best of Nintendo music on a console than to point directly towards that generation's Smash Bros. game? All of Nintendo's best franchises come together to duke it out and strut their stuff, and we get to explore a great amalgamation of their collective and combined worlds. What does this mean? Remixes, of course!
Also on show here is the incredible Wario Land: Shake It!, the game that captured the greedy adventuring essence of the Wario series and beautified it with stunning animation. It's not much of a surprise to say the music was stunning, too.
The soundtrack to Super Smash Bros. Brawl was a game music enthusiast's dream come true. Not only was almost the entire soundtrack comprised of exciting, updated remixes of classic Nintendo themes, but many musicians within the industry collaborated to create additional tracks beyond the default selection, and players could actually choose which songs would play in each stage.
Besides the expected remakes of classic music, the game also featured a great original score for the menus and mini-games. Who could forget that Latin theme song sung during the opening sequence? In all, the game contained 258 songs! Among my favorite tracks from the game, I've included the Mushroomy Kingdom Underground theme (possibly the coolest rendition of the classic Super Mario Bros cave music), and the exciting remix of King Dedede's timeless theme to make up for the lack of a Kirby soundtrack on my top 10 list. And to be clear, I like both versions of Ashley's theme from WarioWare; I just included the Japanese version here because I appreciate the inclusion of both versions in the game, and it's likely to be less familiar to our Western readers.
| SSBB Main Theme | Mushroomy Kingdom Underground |
| King Dedede's Theme | Ashley's Theme (Japanese) |
The entirety of this game was animated beautifully, with some of the smoothest movement I've ever seen on a video game sprite. The experience was like playing a cartoon, and thus the soundtrack of course needed to match the on-screen action. Each level has two main themes: a main tune that would play during the exploration and adventuring, and an enhanced version that would kick in when you trigger an alarm sequence and have to race back to the starting point before the gate closed and trapped you there.
The soundtrack has plenty of styles incorporated into the composition—jazz, swing, Latin fusion; you never quite know what to expect until you dive on into the level. My favorite track by far is Mt. Lava Lava, which is one of my favorite pieces of game music ever. I can and often do set this track on a loop while writing or drawing and idly hum along to the point where I almost forget that it's playing, until I suddenly notice I'm loudly singing out the tune a-capella style several hours later. So mesmerizingly catchy!! Also below is a cool remix of the GameCube Wario World theme music, glitzed out for the Glittertown level.
| Glittertown | Mt. Lava Lava |
| Stonecarving City Escape | Foulwater Falls |
