This is incredible! What a neat idea! :D
I would love to have access to the scripts, but strictly to toy around, as I'm quite unfamiliar with the NSF and Mario Paint Composer formats. Someday, perhaps :)
How do tracks from games with expansion chips sound? If they're not too bad, I'd love to hear something from Gimmick! Perhaps Dr. Mario tracks would be better adapted, though...
This is like the opposite of a RPG run: there's so much stuff going on we'd need 50 pairs of eyes to even partially understand what's going on! Needless to say, this run is amazing and will be my favorite ever for sure.
Congrats on the progress and thanks for sharing the WIPs!
Actually, the whole ranking is going to be revealed. But I think everybody has a different Top 100; for many, it'd be worth rating the tracks just to discover some new ones that didn't make the list. I have left the rating page up, just use your username and start right away if you want :)
You guys have very good ideas :) Indeed, such a project should probably be redone, ignoring some of the obvious tracks or popular games (which brings nostalgia to so many people...). When all tracks are reavealed, a complete list of the rankings will also be. Just above #115 are many very good tracks in lesser known games, such as Jackal, Mitsume ga Tooru, Toukon Club, Ferrari - Grand Prix Challenge, ...
I'll even say that through this project, I have discovered many of my now favorite NES tracks, many of them from games I had never even heard of before!
Choujin Sentai - Jetman track 9Dragon Fighter track 4Sky Shark track 1Heavy Barrel track 32
And just so many more...
Apparently the rating system is still in place. Not that rating songs has any relevance to the results at this point but it's actually a lot of fun. The system is really well made.
Thanks! :)
Indeed, rating the tracks is long, but making a personal Top 100 has been even more gratifying to me than the official list. See this post for links to the ratings you have done so far, a list of the ~1725 tracks, and even personal rating statistics if you want! :)
Many have shared your opinion on the community's forum. I can't write better than he does and he's one of the few people who volunteered to help in writing the reviews, so while some don't agree with what he writes, I appreciate his help, and it certainly makes some discussions more interesting.
Also, he and Norrin_Radd have split the remaining reviews 50/50.
Maybe the list could be organized in a different format, where it is a list of the games with the best OST.
I haven't followed the project closely, but someone in the same community has already done something like it. He's rather knowledgeable about how NES music was made and its technicalities, so it's a rather good read.
I can't say that I disagree with some of your comments, but since the track ratings were made by people from a community (one that enjoys VGM, that is), I guess many people actually like those tracks. Yet, even on that same community, many people (including its reviewer) found that some tracks weren't deserving to be on the list, such as MM3's Shadow Man.
My personal opinion is that nostalgia couldn't be abstracted from the ratings; when a game is good and you've played it though your whole childhood, you actually can't tell that it's not extraordinarily good.
Finally solved the problem about the Ninja Gaiden NSF not playing entirely. It's either a bud with FlashNSF or with Not So Fatso, I can't really tell. Anyway, no more YouTube links or broken NSFs, just clear your cache and all should be good now. If it happens again (which shouldn't), I'll be able to fix it quickly.
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This is nice. I hope for some Batman and Rygar. And Blue Shadow of the Ninja. Judging by how similar the music there is to Shatterhand, I'm guessing it will be popular.
Without speaking for the list, I must admit Shadow of the Ninja blew me away. I had never even heard about the game, and nhow it definitely contains a few of my favorite NES tracks.
Back on-topic, are any of the songs cutting off for anyone else? For example, the Ninja Gaiden Opening 2 piece cuts off before really getting started, for me.
Aw crap. I don't understand why FlashNSF does this, but no, you're not alone. I'm gonna try to fix it, but until then, downloading the NSFE (or NSF) is the best way to listen to the track.
Ahhh yes, the eternal MM2 vs MM3 debate... In the same community where this project began, there was once a 'Top NES soundtracks', in which MM2 and MM3 actually tied! IIRC, MM2 won just barely after a tie breaker.
Any particular track from MM3 makes you prefer it?
Thanks IronSlayer, but it's a community's opinion, not mine :) I share your opinion entirely, though!
I can't deny the list will include many tracks from the Mega Man and Castlevania series. However, I can assure you there will be some hidden gems as well!
Also, when the list is done being revealed, I will post the full ranking of the 1725 tracks we rated. Between tracks #115 and #200, there are many I had never heard about and yet are still incredible.
Glad you all seem to enjoy!
I didn't reveal all the results right away for three major reasons:
1) Many would simply skim through the list looking for titles they already know. One of the points of the list is to allow people to discover hidden gems, as the track rating was 'blindfolded'.
2) Suspense :)
3) Track reviews aren't finished yet :P
I know it's impossible to please everyone with such a list, but since this is a collaborative effort, hopefully the results will be satisfying to most!
Hello all!
I am pleased to present you the results of a project I started last year in hopes of finding out which were the best individual tracks for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Long story short, 1725 nominated tracks were rated by people from The Shizz community. Thousands of ratings have been cast, and many efforts were made to make this as objective as possible (notably, to rate a track, one had to listen to at least one loop of it, and the game or track title were not revealed until the rating had been cast. 115 tracks stood out and have made the podium.
Initially, we planned on more epicness with the revealing of the results (such as hardware recordings from a modded NES), but for a few reasons, we gave up on some of them.
Nevertheless, please enjoy the results!
I just happened to watch a TAS by a japanese taser last week, and every single thing that wasn't perfect I noticed is corrected by this TAS.
And then some more.
And then some more!!
It's incredible. It's everything I dreamed a Cave Story TAS would be, and more. My brain melts just thinking about how much planification and headaches creating this run must have implied. It seems that every upgrade increased the entertainment by quite a lot.
Thank you nitsuja for this run, which I can honestly say is my favorite video ever from TASVideos!
OOooooooooohhhhhhh! The yellow one, I got from McDonald's as a kid. I'm 99.9% sure, but I guess it must have been distributed from more than one place.
I'd be talking out of my behind if I said I could hear a difference between the 15 files. Somehow though, I've managed to in other blind tests that feature the kind of music I listen to more frequently.
