I think there are a lot of Nintendo fans whose knowledge of NES composers begins and ends with Koji Kondo. I could be wrong though!

Sorry Alexandra, that first sentence made it sound like I thought you said the NES port sounded better. I was replying more generally to everyone else. 

There were some awful Genesis soundtracks, but every time it comes down to the sound programmer/designer. There were very few North American Genesis composers worth a damn, and Maximum Carnage is one of the worst examples of that. But in the right hands, the Genesis could do beautiful music, in some cases surpassing…

The SMS version bested the NES one. NES fans rarely agree, but they often came over after school to play 2-player co-op on SMS, a feature sorely lacking on the NES port.

The Double Dragon OST is not better on the NES port than the arcade. Listening to it here, the arcade music sounds rough. But back in the day, listening to it on original hardware in its natural habitat, crammed in the back of a 7-11 between the molten nacho cheese dispenser and the Slurpee machine, those OEM speakers…

Must be nostalgia. My own nostalgia prefers the SMS version; at least it offered two player co-op play.  

I don’t know. I love the Genesis and it could do great bass in the right hands, but most soundtracks sound downright anemic compared to what the SNES can do effortlessly. Even from the beginning, SNES games tended to use a punchy 70’s-style bass guitar sound and kick that had real meat to it.

Done it again!  Hip Tanaka doesn’t get nearly the credit he deserves.  After watching the Diggin’ in the Carts series, I can totally hear the reggae influence in his music.  Anyway, happy Monday to us!

I love what you’re doing here, Alexandra! I don’t know how you’re going to keep this up on a daily basis, but I’m here for it!

True enough, but you have to be a fan of tearjerkers to enjoy it. 

There’s always the prequel:

Thanks for posting this! I was stuck in Saturnworld during this era so I overlooked a lot of great PS1 material.  

IKR?? The only other games I know it’s been used on are Rent-A-Hero and this, Ninja Burai Densetsu:

Love it! Also can’t wait to hear more of Chikuma’s work! Her SNES Bomberman output is fantastic.

Sorry, I can’t just leave well enough alone:

Here’s the Japanese version:

Call me mad. I have the vinyl and love it. It’s certainly not relaxing, but there are certain times when Hanzawa’s brand of intense insanity is called for.

Interestingly, there are two Genesis/Mega Drive versions of Marble Madness. The version released in the US was by Electronic Arts and had terrible music. Atari/Tengen created a version released in Japan that’s pretty faithful to the arcade, both in music and graphics.

Okay, first the bad: due to the way ads keep interfering with mobile device screen scroll, it’s almost impossible to do something as simple as read comments on Kotaku. Very frustrating.

You don’t have a right to choose to buy something from a place that doesn’t sell it, no matter the reason why it’s not sold there. It’s a grossly simple concept.