When Nintendo announced its new music app last week, I excitedly downloaded it onto my phone. I thought I would finally be able to listen to the superlative score for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom without resorting to rips on YouTube.

I was wrong. It wasn’t there. Nor were the soundtracks to Tears of the Kingdom, or The Wind Waker, or A Link to the Past. No Super Mario World or Super Metroid. No F-Zero or Super Smash Bros., not to mention Xenoblade Chronicles, Rhythm Heaven, or WarioWare.

In fact, Nintendo Music, which is available as part of the Nintendo Switch Online subscription, launched with only 23 soundtrack albums: eight Switch games and one or two from each of the company’s earlier systems, excluding Wii U and 3DS. There are some all-time classic scores here, like Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but as launch catalogs go, it’s extremely limited. For an app so clearly modeled on the services that Nintendo has so far declined to publish its soundtracks to, like Spotify and Apple Music, it’s a strange choice.

Those apps are structured to help users browse vast libraries of music and organize their listening within them, and Nintendo Music........

© Polygon