[actsasbuffoon]

The soundtrack for Shovel Knight is also excellent. Even though the game is recent, the music is completely authentic to capabilities of the sound chip in the NES.

That said, I find the sound of the NES to be a bit too bright and crisp for background listening. I agree that SNES era music is easier for programming. Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Final Fantasy 2 (FFIV in Japan), Final Fantasy 3 (FFVI in Japan), Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound immediately come to mind as great soundtracks.

If you want to listen to soundtracks for SNES games, you can use Audio Overload (free and multi-platform): http://www.bannister.org/software/ao.htm

The music from SNES games is stored in SPC files (individual songs) and RSN files (collection all SPC files for a game). The files are extremely small. You could probably fit the soundtracks for every official SNES game into a few dozen megabytes. You can learn more about the format at the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation wiki: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/SPC

The London Philharmonic has some great video game cover albums as well.

[NinoScript]

That’s exactly what I do. I’ve been using Bannister’s emulators and Audio Overload since my childhood!

Though nowadays I prefer playing the SPC files in a player called Vox: https://vox.rocks

And in my phone I have a collection of maybe weeks worth of music in a few MBs