Nintendo is in a strange year-end streak. Its major hardware release of 2024 turned out to be a big and loud alarm clock. Starting today, anyone who has paid for Nintendo Switch Online can download Nintendo Music to listen to music from the Japanese game maker’s most beloved titles. What’s even more surprising than the fact that it exists is how robust the app is, even at this early stage.
The company launched Nintendo Music, available on iOS and Android, late Wednesday night. The application contains tracks from several games, such as recent and past Super Mario games, as well as the Metroid, Pokémon, Legend of Zelda, and Starfox series. There are also tracks from lesser-known franchises such as Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade for Game Boy Advance or Nintendogs for Nintendo DS.
Nintendo Music includes more curated playlists for specific characters, such as Bowser or Yoshi; other playlists are meant to match your mood with titles like Goodnight or Power Up. You can also create your own playlist. There’s even a feature that allows you to hide songs from certain games if you don’t want to ruin the game’s tunes. The best addition, however, is probably the ability to extend tracks up to 60 minutes if you want to hear the intro song to Animal Crossing: New Horizons ad nauseam.
A Nintendo Switch Online subscription usually costs $4 or $20 per year. It unlocks features such as cloud saves and online play on Nintendo Switch. It also gives you access to Nintendo’s old catalog with selected past games for the NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Nintendo 64. Whether you think it’s a good deal is up to you, but Nintendo Music doesn’t cost subscribers anything extra, so you might want to give it a try if you’re already paying for it.
The app leaves a lot of room for Nintendo to add even more music from its long, long library. Sure, you can search for the same selection of songs on YouTube, but Nintendo Music adds enough extra, exclusive features that it’s worth a try. However, if I want great remixes like Radiohead’s “In Rainbows,” which is made entirely of Super Mario 64 tomes, I’ll still have to look elsewhere.