What is 16-bit music called?

So I am a big Nerdcore junkie. Loving video game music and Nerdcore music. As of such, I have a LOT of 8-bit Chiptune music in my iTunes library. But I also have music that would be considered 16-bit, like SNES Game OTS and what not.

I know that 8-bit music is referred to as 'Chiptune', or sometimes, 'Chipmusic' as the title of the genre. But I'm trying to figure out what I should put as the genre for my 16-bit music songs. Google isn't of much help with the search, and then I stumbled across this site. Figured I'd ask here! What genre is 16-bit music called? Like how 8-bit is 'Chiptune'.

Is it MIDI? Or is a MIDI something different? What do I call it?

Solution 1:

There's no term for music from the 16-bit console war era. The reason is that the music sounded very different due to the hardware capabilities and limits of each system.

There are many comparison videos between snes and genesis which can be used to compare audio.

From Castlevania, Simon's theme.

From Street Fighter 2, Blanka's theme.

If there is one common technique that separates this music from the 8-bit era, it's "sampling".

Solution 2:

Some people call older game music Chiptunes. It doesn't necessarily fit all game music, but there is quite a lot of overlap if you do some research.

Searching YouTube for "chiptunes" will provide quite a few links that sounds like game music, even if they are not directly from games.