Official English track names for VG music

So as I’m going through my game music collection, a thought keeps occurring to me: I really wish that there was a list somewhere for official track titles in English of all major first-party Nintendo titles. (Well, it would be cool for all games of course–it just so happens that Nintendo is my personal preference.)

Among the games that I play, probably about half have official soundtrack releases. Of those, the vast majority are Japanese-only soundtrack albums, with maybe the occasional Engrish track title thrown in. Sure, fans have translated song titles for just about all Japanese soundtracks, and that’s a good thing. But a translation is not the same thing as a localization, and ultimately those translated titles are fanon. (Don’t get me wrong, though–I definitely appreciate all their efforts!)

What I would love to do–though I doubt it’s possible at this point–is to compile a catalog of official English song titles to every track from every major Mario and Zelda (and maybe Metroid?) game. I know there are a handful of these games that have soundtracks released in the West (e.g. Paper Mario, Majora’s Mask, Super Mario Galaxy, etc.). The Super Smash Bros. series, starting with Brawl, has been a huge help with showing official English song titles thanks to those games’ extensive sound test features–but even still, it’s selected tracks from various games, nothing comprehensive.

But imagine if Nintendo decided to release a Mario or Zelda Jukebox, with all the music and proper titles and everything?

I’m very curious about how the process works, though. Did the folks on the SSB localization team determine track titles for old games then and there? Or are those titles in a vault somewhere? Are there any other sources for finding official English titles other than the occasional American or European OST or sound test? Would somebody who works at the Nintendo Treehouse know?

If I had to guess, I would say a lot of track titles are localized on the spot and might not be consistent across releases. The first album that came to my mind to confirm this was Play It Loud! (http://vgmdb.net/album/2425), an English compilation of songs from Nintendo releases for the SNES published by NOA in 1996. It includes tracks from A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and Star Fox among others. If any of these games have official English OSTs, it might be interesting to compare and see if the names match precisely.

If I had to guess, I would say a lot of track titles are localized on the spot and might not be consistent across releases. The first album that came to my mind to confirm this was Play It Loud! (http://vgmdb.net/album/2425), an English compilation of songs from Nintendo releases for the SNES published by NOA in 1996. It includes tracks from A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, and Star Fox among others. If any of these games have official English OSTs, it might be interesting to compare and see if the names match precisely.

It’s funny you mention that CD. It appears the tracklist on VGMdb is fanmade, since the actual tracklist (on the album’s back cover) just says, "Yoshi’s Island Tracks," "F-Zero Tracks," etc. To my knowledge, none of these games received American OSTs (although there was a recently released Super Metroid orchestral album).

Another oddity I found: On the American version of the Super Mario 64 OST (http://vgmdb.net/album/4869), we have a different set of track titles from the ones used on this relatively obscure Super Mario 64/Wave Race 64 mash-up (http://vgmdb.net/album/2301) that was released around the same time. From a localization standpoint, the titles on the SM64/WR64 album make much more sense (e.g. "Bowser" instead of "Koopa" and Mario’s power-ups more specifically named) than the more commonly well-known titles on the SM64 OST.

Nintendo Treehouse really needs to hire someone to standardize the music titles in all their first party titles. (I personally would love to do something like this myself!)

I just noticed that "A Place to Return to Someday" from Final Fantasy IX is called "A Place to Call Home" on the Uematsu’s Best Selection compilation. Made me think of this thread.