Best 8-Bit Soundtracks

What is it about 8 bit music that is so great? How many hours have you spent playing a game on the NES where the song was just the same 60second track playing over and over for the entire level..yet you never get sick of hearing it. Of course there are plenty of games where listening to that 1 loop is enough to drive you mad but that’s for another topic.

Rather than ramble on any longer ill get straight to the point and list off some of the best soundtracks from 8-bit games

Mega Man 2

There are so many Mega man games and they nearly all have great soundtracks but for me the 1 i remember best was Mega Man 2. You know from the very start when the game loaded and started slowly rising up the side of the skyscraper then upon reaching the top being rewarded with the awesome intro tune. When you finally give in and go to start the game the main menu gives you another great track

Power Blade

By far my favourite 8-bit game sound track out there is from Power Blade. The game is in many ways like Mega Man having similar style gameplay and having a badass looking main character but 1 of the best things that it also shares in common with mega man is its awesome soundtrack. Each stage in this game has its own song and nearly all of them were songs that you just wanted to kick ass to! I find them all great but its a close draw between sector 5 and 6 for the best song


Castlevania

Anyone who had a NES or has played NES games knows of the soundtrack for this game. The song to the first stage being the most notable of them all and most likely 1 of the most covered NES songs on youtube..for good reason too!

Contra/Probotector

This game released in europe with a different name and had 2 robots instead of 2 soldiers as the characters but the soundtrack remained the same for this which was good news as almost all the stages had an awesome tunes. Only negative was the awful sound the game made when you died but if you were pro enough to play and never die it was a great soundtrack to listen to.

Super Mario Bros 2

This games sound track seems to be a bit different from the 1st and 3rd and there is a reason for this, Although its considered a Mario game its really just a re-skin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic which also contained the same soundtrack. Regardless of the reasons this game has a nice soundtrack and was also a fun game.

Anamanaguchi

While not officially a sound track and not a piece of music that appeared on a NES console its worth mentioning for the love of 8-bit music. Anamanaguchi are a modern band that use an NES system to create their music. They wrote the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs The World which looked more like a 16-Bit SNES game than an 8-Bit NES game but the soundtrack while not officially 8-Bit does sound more or less like something from a NES game. The music is catchy and in most cases very fast pace which is everything good in an 8-Bit track!

3 COMMENTS

  1. There were a wide range of 8 bit systems back in the 80s, 8 bit doesn’t mean NES by default. The Commodore 64 has a more powerful sound system than the NES and consequently many of its game tunes are more sophisticated than any tune in a NES top ten list.

  2. Batman 1 , has the best OST in 8bit gaming history .

  3. @MokilokD Why the unnecessary comma and redundant spaces? You need to go back to school and learn how punctuation works if you struggle with simple grammatical structure.

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