Is it just me, or did video game music tend to be more interesting in older games?

[Peter1986]

Does anyone else feel that music in video games tended to make a greater impression and have more powerful melodies in older games, like NES, SNES and Sega Genesis, for example?
When I play newer games nowadays I often find myself almost trying to find an actual melody in some compositions, but I often only hear some kind of elevator music or random orchestras - and sometimes they hardly even have any music, which can sometimes work in some games, but usually it just feels "empty".
Then I try out some old game, usually from the NES or SNES, and the music in those games just has a lot more "spark" to it.
I mean, listen to these tunes, for example.

1. Gradius 2 - "Burning Heat" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXhHwtJxHno)"
2. Gradius 3 - "Sand Storm" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX2olP6pYOU)
3. Star Fox - "Corneria" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsOEGPLa1Z4)
4. Bucky O'Hare - "Red Planet" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTZ8Oq2dafE)
5. Wild Guns - "Boss" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4uCPfrtxXY)

See what I mean?
All of these tunes have that "wow!" factor, like the game is telling you "welcome to this awesome game, let's have fun!", and there is a lot of passion in all of them;
they are the kinds of melodies that you can play with almost any instrument, and they will still sound awesome, just because the core melodies as so well written.
I don't often feel this kind of passion in newer games, and it seems like music has become more and more secondary.
Some newer (read: "released after year 2000") games have had great soundtracks, like for example "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater" and "The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess", although the music in those kinds of games seem to become more and more rare.

[Pheesh]

Music is subjective. What is interesting to one person is boring to another, and what you or I think is good could be panned by millions of others. As a musician I learned long ago that lamenting musical trends that don't appeal to you is pointless. I guarantee there are other people who think the same as you, even if they're not a majority, and some of them have probably developed soundtracks for recent games. Probably best to try tacking those games down because on an individual level there's not much you can do to change the trends of what is mainstream and popular.

[Peter1986]

I'm a musician as well, and one main reason why I feel like newer soundtracks seem to have less passion to them is simply because it's much harder for me to actually play those compositions on an instrument, because it's harder to find a specific melody.
I often play things like "Dr. Wily Stage 1" from Mega Man 2 and "Terra's Theme" from Final Fantasy 6 etc on the guitar or the piano, but it's a lot harder to find something specific to play and sing along to in newer games, and that cannot be a very good sign.

Yes, music is subjective, but I have a feeling that older games tend to have a certain power to them that would probably impress a lot more people.
It often sounds incredible when a real-life band plays some classic melody from an old game, like that theme from the "Jungle" stage in Contra for the NES, for example.

But this is just how I personally feel.

[Fynn]

Old games had to use limited sound chips, so the only way to make a piece stand out was to make the melody very distinct. Nowadays, you can use live bands and orchestras, not to mention any advancements in electronic music, to basically create anything you want. So you don't have to rely on melody so much anymore.

Honestly, no one approach is better or worse. It has nothing to do with passion, IMO. You remember pieces with distinct melodies more, but that doesn't mean pieces with less of a distinct melody are inherently made with less passion or something - they just serve a different function.

So, like Pheesh said, it's all subjective. As yet another musician in this thread, over my years in music school I learned that music is much more than just a catchy melody and it's not always that which makes a piece worthwhile. Sure, it makes them more memorable, but memorability is not always the most important thing in the world.

And even individual composers change to accommodate the new techniques they have available. Compare Nobuo Uematsu's work on Final Fantasy I to The Last Story. Sure, TLS has some pieces where the melody is front and center, but there are a lot of tracks that focus much more on building mood instead of being a memorable piece. There's a place for everything, as I like to say.

[Sephex]

I was more or less going to write what Fynn put, mainly the part about limitations forcing composers to make something more memorable since they had to construct songs using a simple melody. So yeah, I subscribe to that theory.