From the moment you push the power button on your Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Metroid takes you on a fantastic journey, accompanied by the most eerie, atmospheric music the console has to offer. Super Metroid's soundtrack is heralded as one of the best game scores of all time, and it certainly deserves it: Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano have packed every second of music with some of the most solid compositions on the system, and their legendary collaboration has defined expectations for all Metroid scores to follow. And arguably, the standards set by Super Metroid have not yet been equalled.

The game opens with a powerful, foreboding arrangement of the main theme to the original NES game, serving as a dark premonition. From there, players are plunged into the pounding drums and intergalactic gladiatorial fanfare of "Theme of Super Metroid", a fitting theme for the greatest warrior in the galaxy. Pay special attention to the melody, which references the classic "Samus Aran Appearance Jingle". From there, Yamamoto-san and Hamano-san take players on an aural safari of Planet Zebes, from the electronic jungles of Brinstar, to the malevolent drumming and Carmina Burana-esque choir of the burning ancient ruins of Norfair, to the melancholy liltings of Maridia's forgotten depths. Surely, Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano had no idea these tunes would be received so well by game fans, but the quality and passion portrayed through these tunes, albeit on extremely limited technology, allowed players to become more intimate with their experience than ever before.

Super Metroid's score is deeply beloved, as testified by the large amount of remixes and fan-tribute albums (scroll down). Kenji Yamamoto even brought back a few of these themes into the Prime series, with arrangements of Norfair, Brinstar, and Ridley's theme, the latter of which is now a staple for the series. It's a testament to the game's legacy, and Super Metroid's excellence is not only enhanced by its music, but, like the game itself, it set the bar for every atmospheric soundtrack to come after.

Super Metroid "Sound in Action" is both one of the most famous, but also poorly produced Metroid soundtracks available. Sure, it has five totally awesome arrangements, but the rest of the soundtrack is badly arranged and recorded, and nowhere is this more evident than the Metroid soundtrack section, which was horribly butchered. The game was recorded using a Famicom's audio out jack at poor quality, and a good half of the tracks contain sound effects. I can't fathom why they decided to record it this way, but it gave the original score a bad name for over a decade. The Super Metroid section was better, but half the songs are either missing the first few notes or are cut off early or abruptly. This is an example of how not to do a game soundtrack. Sound in Action's only saving grace is the selection of brilliant arrangements by Yoshiyuki and Masumi Ito that continue to stand over eighteen years later as some of the best Metroid arrangements of all time. The soundtrack is available here in both MP3 (lossy) and FLAC (lossless) format for your convenience.

In the early 90s, Nintendo of America began experimenting with releasing game music albums in North America through Nintendo Power magazine. The first of these was Play it Loud!, which, despite being labeled "Volume 1", is the only album in the series. The soundtrack included selections from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Star Fox, F-Zero, and Super Metroid. The Super Metroid tracks were taken from the Sound in ActionCD, so although it is an excellent selection, it has all the problems the source album had. The only difference between this album and the source is the volume of the music has been boosted - they weren't kidding when they said, "Play it loud!"

Relics of the Chozo was the first album ever produced by Overclocked ReMix, marking the beginning of a long tradition of collaborative remix projects on the site. Released in 2003, RotC was conceived by Protricity, who also composed over half the music on the album, meaning most of it is in his style. An incredible feat, considering nobody had done anything of this scale before. RotC had a lot to live up to, but it maintains a consistent style similar to that found on the rest of OCR, with heavy doses of industrial and electronica. As Metroid Prime had recently been released, many of the tracks have significant references to the electronica style found in that game, particularly some of the opening tracks, such as "Premonition of Fell Purpose", "So It Begins...", and "Putting Down on Zebes". Check out the reference to "Kraid's Lair" in "Perceived by Cold Intelligence". A couple of my favorites are "Full of Life" and "Noumenon", but the whole soundtrack is pretty high quality and well worth the listen. VGM afficianados may also notice two the two tracks by Daniel Baranowsky, now famous for the Super Meat Boy soundtrack. Note the album was originally released in OGG and WAV, but since the former won't play on your iPod, and the second isn't practical, we've taken the WAVs and converted them to FLAC and MP3 for your greater enjoyment.

Reserve Tank: VARIAtions was a tribute album for bLiNd (Jordan Aguirre), a well-loved arranger on OverClocked ReMix who came down with colitis, an incredibly painful disease. DarkeSword and several other arrangers came together out of friendship for bLiNd and created a remix album for him based on his favorite game, Super Metroid. The album quality varies from poor to excellent, but the album was ultimately a tribute, an outpouring of love and support (along with dozens of Brinstar mixes), so there wasn't much in the way of quality control: you don't return a "get well soon" card because the handwriting sucks. Still, because there's close to two hours' worth of music here, I'll list a few of my favorite tracks: Heat Vision, Edenal, Lonely Petals, bLiNd Metallic Hope, bLiNd's Snowy Brinstar, The Galaxy Awaits, Kindred, and The Man Who Could Suddenly See. There are plenty of liner notes as well as some original art on the album's homepage. And bLiNd (who did not die) went on to arrange dozens more songs at OCR and added his own excellent "thank you" remix.

Game Music Concert was a series of orchestral arrangements of Nintendo game music by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra. For their fourth album, they produced a glorious orchestral arrange of Super Metroid. This magnificent epic contains masterful arrangements of "Theme of Super Metroid", "Crateria - The Space Pirates Appear", Green and Red Brinstar, and the ending theme. This piece is still used today in part by Video Games Live. The second piece is an arrangement from the 2010 concert Symphonic Legends, held 23 September 2010 in Cologne. The concert was conducted by Niklas Willen and arranged by Jonne Valtonen. This piece is darker, and almost entirely amelodic, similar in style to Strakovsky's "Rite of Spring", though this distorts many of the tracks, which include "Space Pirates Appear", "Theme of Samus", and an incredibly eerie "Tourian"). The rip was provided by PrimeBlue and was taken from the live audio streaming, which was broadcast at 128kbps, hence the bitrate. As of this moment, it is the highest-quality recording publicly available. Also included are the MC's comments (in German).

[HEY GAIYZ WE MISSING TRACKZ HERE]