Retro Style game question

I figured I would reach out to others for different opinions.

So here is my dilemma...
I am making a tech demo for a potential game, and am going for a straight up snes/nes look and feel with some modern systems in place.
When I get to the music part, I ask myself... match the music with the look/feel and general idea of the game or go for current music with no limitations for that extra atmosphere/drama.

What do you all think?

I'm doing something similar and I say retro with retro ;)

Go play MIDI using General MIDI Synthesizer, which in my opinion it isn't really 'bad' yet still retain the retro feels. For example

Matching the your game's theme, feel, graphics, and audio all together is a great thing to do because each one will strengthen the 'messaging' of the others, and it also increases immersion and raises the bar of willing suspension of disbelief.

So from a general perspective - YES! If you decided on a retro feel and a retro look, then add a retro sound in, as well.

With that being said, don't let the limitations of yesterday's technology limit you. Just because a certain sound couldn't be done using retro SNES-level technology doesn't mean you can't have it in your SNES-inspired game. Your music doesn't need to actually SOUND like it came from that era; it only needs to FEEL like it sounds like it came from that era.

As a visual example, here's an in-progress version of Equip screen in a game that's inspired by old-school retro games (the character portrait and the item icons are placeholders; the final portraits will have a pixelated look in the same style as the background):


As you can see we've tried hard to replicate the feel of an old Tube TV with the framing, the "low-res" staticky background, and the very blocky text. But the background is actually a high-res PNG, the text has anti-aliasing to make it a little easier to read, and some of the UI elements were made with a clean look so as to keep the screen visually pleasing and impressive, despite its very low-tech theming. Old-school menus were ugly and difficult due to technological necessity (e.g. 240x240 pixel resolutions); a new game's menu inspired by the old-school ones should capture the same feel but it shouldn't be ugly nor difficult because it doesn't have to be.

Taking the same concept to sound and music - don't rely on MIDI instrumentation, but instead use sounds that feel like they'd be at home in a MIDI environment, and even layer a few other sounds and instruments (electric guitars tend to work well) on top of those sounds if it helps sell the mood of a scene or level! Chiptunes are fine, but so are full, modern-tech compositions that use a lot of boops, bleeps, synths and sinewaves.

If you're looking for such music already made, I highly recommend Incompetech, which is an impressive collection of commercially royalty-free music (credit required). He has dozens of loops that, despite being fully modern in their quality, have a feel that fully reminds you of old-school video games. From the page that I linked, choose the genre "Electronica" in the search fields, and most of those songs will be in the style that I'm describing.

Moving this to general discussion :)

In an ideal world, you'll be able to compose with whichever sound banks you have and achieve the aural aesthetic you want. Realistically speaking though, especially if you're not a musician, it's far easier to find a cohesive soundtrack that strikes the chord you want if you forego that limitation, or rather, it's hard to find all the sounds you need if you add that extra layer of requirements.

If you can find a full soundtrack for your game within that style, or compose / hire someone to compose within those limitations, then great! If not, don't stress over it, go with what's thematically fitting for the scenes instead.

By the way, from a music composing point of view, foregoing retro soundfonts for modern instruments bears no extra drama/atmosphere whatsoever most of the time. Most of the "drama" is achieved solely by good composition, while the atmosphere is achieved by texture and effects that can be added atop SNES-y low bitrate sound samples much the same way they can be applied to modern ones, aka. The issue at hand is not sacrificing drama / atmosphere for fidelity, but rather just being able to find the music that fits your vision within this constraint :p