Listening to Nintendo music is not easy. It's not available on streaming platforms, so I usually end up searching YouTube for songs by animal crossing and metroid. Because of this, I was hoping that Nintendo Music, a new app that launched by surprise last week, would be my one-stop shop for listening to Nintendo soundtracks. But while it presents some clever ideas, there are a lot of frustrations and strange decisions on Nintendo's part that mean it's not quite what I expected.
Navigating the app, which is available on iOS and Android but only accessible to Switch Online subscribers, feels a lot like other music services like Apple Music or Spotify. You can explore individual game tracks or carefully curated playlists with themes like characters, Pokémon battle songs or tracks you might want to listen to on an extended loop. It is thoughtfully organized by game. The fictitious bands in Splatoon 3 everyone gets artist pages with bios. the page for Animal Crossing: New Horizons includes playlists for KK Slider performances and instrumentals, and if you want to listen to a full Kapp'n Sea Shanties playlist, that's also available.
The extended loop feature is my favorite part. For some songs, you can choose to extend them to 15, 30 or 60 minutes. I have already used it quite a bit to work with music from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; The soothing piano sounds of “The Great Plateau” are still exquisite seven years later. I also like that you can add games to a “spoiler prevention” list to hide information about a game you may not have played yet, which could be a good way to stay on top of a final boss for a game you might want to play. . to play.
There just aren't many games in the app.
But Nintendo Music doesn't have many game soundtracks to listen to. Nintendo has over 40 years of titles they could have included, and right now there are only 25 games to choose from. there are only two zelda games: Breath of the wild and Ocarina of time. fire emblem It is the only Game Boy Advance game. There are three NES games and two of them are metroid. Technically, one of the “games” is the Wii Channel music (which, to be fair, is full of hits).
I could go on, but the thing is, Nintendo Music isn't a complete collection of the company's vast musical history. Since most of the soundtracks are for Nintendo Switch games, it's more of a collection of Nintendo games. recent musical history, but it seems like a big mistake not to be able to listen to any of Super Mario World in the application.
That will start to change, and probably slowly, if the trickle of Switch Online retro games is any indication. A day after the service launched, Nintendo added x.com/Nintendo/status/1852215844421669245″>the soundtrack for Super Mario Bros. Wonderand on Monday, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest was also available. In it Nintendo Music Reveal TrailerThe company showed that Wii Sports, Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Splatoon 2and F-zero x they are all ready to come into service, but only on a vague “over time” schedule.
Nintendo Music also does not give credit to the actual humans involved in creating a song. That means, interestingly, that the fictional bands in Splatoon 3 They have more prominence on Nintendo Music than the legendary Koji Kondo. (Nintendo has a weird thing going on with the credits right now.)
The app has other problems as well. You can't extend some songs and there's no indication why, which is really annoying. One of the first songs I wanted to test the feature with was Metroid Prime's Soothing “Phendrana Drifts” music, but it's not possible, which, since it's one of the main songs you hear on loop while exploring that area of the game, doesn't make sense to me. Sure, you can set the song to repeat, but that's not the same as an hour-long extension. And when you select the length you want to extend a song, the entire song starts over; It's a small thing, but I wish the app could make the extension happen without the brief but jarring interruption.
And unfortunately, Nintendo Music is currently only available on iOS and Android – there's no web or desktop app. I'd really like to listen to Nintendo Music from a Mac app or on my desktop browser; is not compatible with CarPlay or Android Autoany.
For songs that are currently available, Nintendo Music is great. But there are so many things missing that part of me wonders if Nintendo launched this service before the launch of the Switch's successor so it could be added to the service later. It's a similar sentiment to frustrations with other recent non-Switch Nintendo stuff, like the alarm clock and the Nintendo Museum; They all have good ideas but also some strange limitations.
Nintendo Music just isn't as deep as I'd like it to be. It means I'll have to keep tracking down a lot of music on YouTube.
