You’ve stumbled onto a classic. The 8‑bit synths on that SNES disk were designed to compensate for limited audio hardware: short loops, low frequency resolution, and a handful of wave tables. Players didn’t hear “music” as we do; they heard cues. A looping bass line told you a boss was imminent, a high‑pitched arpeggio indicated a power‑up, and the simple melodies kept the game’s pace tight. In effect, the soundtrack was a real‑time status‑update system. When you matched that rhythm to your input, the game felt fluid. If it lagged, you knew the engine was struggling. So the chiptune wasn’t just entertainment—it was part of the interface, guiding perception and decision‑making. The result: a consistent, predictable feedback loop that reduced cognitive load and made the gameplay feel smoother. That’s why those old tracks still feel… “sharp.”

You’re right, the loops are essentially a constant state vector sent to the player. The SNES’s SPC700 could only play 64 samples, so every track had to encode status in a compact, repetitive waveform. The system’s audio channel flags were essentially a heartbeat that the CPU could poll: a rising wavefront meant “action” and a falling edge meant “idle.” That made the music a low‑latency event dispatcher, which is why the same loops still feel immediate when you press them back up today.