Legendry shitty music in old games

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

Street Fighter 1 is… rough. Not just to play, which is a whole thing that can be okay at some points and painful the next, but the audio department is rough. The choice to focus on this screeching sound for a majority of the soundtrack was… a choice.


A reminder that this is 1987 Capcom. They made great music at the time.

 

[_Lorenzo_]

 

[Deleted member 560402]

WORST RPG BATTLE THEME EVER

Post automatically merged: Sep 22, 2025

EXTRA SUGER. EXTRA SALT.

oh god i hate Birthday Cake. >_< it's the one track THE ONE TRACK i don't like in JSRF.

 

[NeonKnights]

Post automatically merged: Sep 22, 2025

 

[Deleted member 560402]

Post automatically merged: Sep 22, 2025

would you believe Back To The Future got a music patch? :D

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5075/

Post automatically merged: Sep 22, 2025

would you believe Back To The Future got a music patch? :D

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5075/

and there's a graphical improvement hack that combines the music hack!

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2638/

 

[EGOMANIACKID]

the battle theme in the original Dragon Warrior for the NES. not only is it pretty annoying, but at least you have to hear it every 5 seconds too

 

[Adrastia]

I want to preface this by saying that I actually like Deadly Towers. But this theme.... You see you die a lot so... Well get used to it. You will be hearing it. A lot. Over and over.

 

[water_kooler]

everyone step aside.
Make room for Lollipop level 3 from Action 52.

Post automatically merged: Sep 23, 2025

CrazyBus for the Sega Genesis was not good either

Post automatically merged: Sep 23, 2025

All Dogs Go To Heaven for MS-DOS

 

[Deleted member 560402]

the battle theme in the original Dragon Warrior for the NES. not only is it pretty annoying, but at least you have to hear it every 5 seconds too

i'm hooked on it. But the battle theme in 3 is better.

Post automatically merged: Sep 23, 2025

 

[Soupmancer]

This thread is missing being in the house like carpet.

 

[ColonelKurtz]

Ancient Roman (PS1) is a japanese-only JRPG with legendarily bad music. Every song is just a cacophony of noises its truly bizarre.

There's a fan translation of the game but it's truly bad with no redeeming qualities.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

Almost everything on the Genesis. I love that little black box, but thanks to Sega's GEMS Software everything sounded like farts and blown out speakers.

 

[Turbo Kid]

They're not shitty necessarily, but the Streets of Rage games stopped having legendary soundtracks after the second game.

 

[MajesticSiN]

 

[sosumi]

This is kind of a Doki Doki Panic ass fact but the fact that the composer for the infamously shitty RE1 Director's Cut basement theme claimed to be deaf but was actually just faking it the whole time will never not be hilarious to me.

Like imagine him faking a disability and raking in wads of cash when partway through this major project one of the interns fucks up the import to the game and the instruments get jumbled, mangling the track but you can't fucking SAY ANYTHING because you're supposed to be deaf and everyone else is just like "Wow this sounds like straight ass but I'm not gonna tell the deaf guy his music sucks, go ahead and ship it the way it is lol"

Incidentally, if I had a nickel for every time a game's infamously bad music was caused by instruments accidentally getting switched partway through production...

 

[Adrastia]

everyone step aside.
Make room for Lollipop level 3 from Action 52.

Makes me glad I can't get past level 1.

 

[Nickakyoin]

The music is just a scrambled mess of 8-bit chaos.

 

[DreamCPS]

Terminator for the Famicom comes to mind. That one is beyond bad... So much so that if it didn't have any audio, it would be a little less bad (but only a little).

Kiwi Kraze and Double Dragon (both for the Mega Drive) also have very bad soundtracks. But in this case, not because of the songs themselves, but because of the excessive shrillness and distortion used in the tones.