There is good news from the niche world of SNES music, as data miners have made a breakthrough in restoring the soundtrack of a popular game for the system.

While SNES games like Super Mario World managed to have some of the best soundtracks in gaming, to the point that people are still listening to them decades later, they were often terribly compressed to fit on the SNES' limited cartridge space.

RELATED: Twitch Streamer Plays Super Mario World With Voice Commands

The soundtracks weren't created that way, though. Super Mario World's soundtrack was made with samples that were later compressed to fit on the SNES cartridge. A game music researcher named The Brickster was able to find those samples, and use them to restore the Super Mario World soundtrack to what it likely sounded like as Koji Kondo was composing it.

During last July's gigaleak of old Nintendo files, The Brickster was able to find the names of the original sound sample files. By using the file names, as well as researching what instruments were owned by Koji Kondo at the time, they were able to find the exact samples used to create the original soundtrack. Using these sample sounds, they were able to recreate the soundtrack as it originally would have sounded.

The results are nothing less than amazing. The new instruments are clearly the same as on the compressed soundtrack, but uncompressed, the sound is so much richer and clearer. This is absolutely a must-listen for fans of the original SNES soundtrack.

Super Mario World is out now for SNES, Wii Virtual Console, Wii U Virtual Console, Super NES Classic Edition, and Switch.

MORE: After 20 Years, Player Hits Every Credit in Super Smash Bros. Melee

Source: Polygon