Lurker > Paratroopa1

I intended to finish this list before I went on vacation but I ran out of time and I'm going to have to postpone it until I return on July 12th. Thank you to everyone who's sticking with me through this project that was supposed to take 4 days and actually took me 4 months. I will return and finish this in two weeks!

too often

I'm quite surprised it's this close - people voted a bit more ideologically than I anticipated

I'm sort of astounding walking simulator wasn't an option here

duckbear is basically the indian facebook meme of b8 so this checks out

Answer could be 8. I "had" four eggs (but I don't anymore), then the thief gave me three eggs and the rooster laid five.

5 - Zagreus (Hades)
0 - Kim Kitsuragi (Disco Elysium)

5 - Edith Finch (What Remains of Edith Finch)
0 - Commander Shepard (Mass Effect)

0 - Jessie (Final Fantasy VII: Remake)
5 - Palutena (Kid Icarus)

0 - Monika (Doki Doki Literature Club)
5 - Mae Borowski (Night in the Woods)

5 - Pablo Sanchez (Backyard Sports)
0 - Jill Valentine (Resident Evil)

0 - Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
5 - Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda)

looks like this TRICKY RIDDLE did, in fact, divide us

wow, can't believe duckbear would post some clickbait garbage

Roosters may not be able to lay eggs, but it's stated as a hypothetical, so if your rooster laid five eggs, I mean, I guess it laid five eggs

This topic will make absolutely no sense to everyone who has duckbear ignored

Lots of people think these two animals are the same, but they're actually very different! Can you tell them apart???

#1

https://www.konnecthq.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Hare-1-10-1-758x635.jpg

#2

https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2016/02/14/12/duck-rabbit.png?width=982&height=726&auto=webp&quality=75

By the way, are you including The Courtroom's Magician at another time? I might have voted for that one.

5 - Ike (Fire Emblem)
0 - Heihachi Mishima (Tekken)

0 - Mewtwo (Pokemon)
5 - Mario (Super Mario Bros.)

0 - James Sunderland (Silent Hill 2)
5 - The Goose (Untitled Goose Game)

5 - Isabelle (Animal Crossing)
0 - Blue (Pokemon)

5 - SHODAN (System Shock)
0 - Velvet Crowe (Tales of Berseria)

0 - Squall Leonhart (Final Fantasy VIII)
5 - Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza)

I really, really like AA1's so I'm just sticking with that lol

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc 5
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair 7
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All 9

while I'm here. PRETTY sure I didn't rate these? if I did, my bad

9

it was almost perfect, just a couple of tweaks and it would have been there

I am just 100% head over heels for Sylvie and I really hope they use her well in this (and in future things I hope???? please don't die)

21. Toad Man (Mega Man 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcveCmdLaNI

Oops, the game that got eliminated was Mega Man 4.

Oh, and it was hard to eliminate Mega Man 4, because we have definitely crossed into 'all-time fave' territory here. How can I not love Toad Man! It has all of my favorite things - an extremely funky bassline, and that's it! This theme really suits the level - I could swear for all the world that I can hear the rain in the background of this, even though you can't hear it. There's a couple of little things here that I really love. First, the 'voices' chosen for the instruments here are superb. I have no idea how that 'rippling' lead at :22 was created but it's marvelous, and it fits the character of the theme perfectly, and same for that more aggressive 'organ' sound that comes in at :33 - again, no idea how it was done. That's just some really spectacular use of waveforms for the NES. The other thing I like is really teeny tiny. In the A section, it repeats the same bit of music twice, but the chord at the very end resolves just slightly differently - a major 6th the first time, but then the harmony comes up a half step and provides a surprising resolution with a minor 6th instead. It's a small little bit of attention to detail that not every theme has. Mega Man 4 has a lot of that, but alas, it is out of the running now.

Final Mega Man 4 rankings:

1. Toad Man (21)
2. Drill Man (22)
3. Bright Man (23)
4. Dive Man (46)
5. Pharaoh Man (50)
6. Dr. Cossack 1 (61)
7. Dr. Wily 2 (75)
8. Dust Man (76)
9. Ring Man (81)
10. Dr. Cossack 2 (92)
11. Dr. Wily 1 (121)
12. Skull Man (132)

Thoughts: A really great soundtrack, at least as far as stage themes that doesn't contain any of my top 20 hits mostly by a weird fluke. I really admire how ambitious every stage theme was, for better (Drill Man) or worse (Ring Man) - it's certainly one of the most experimental and creative, compositionally, and that always makes it interesting to listen to. Barely manages to hold its own against the musical titans that it's surrounded by, but I think it's got a leg up over any of the non-NES soundtracks. It's a shame you can't really hear any of it because you'll have your mega buster charged the entire time.

Regrets?: Nope! I'm finding I composed this list pretty well all things considered. Putting some of these as low as they did hurt, but the competition was tough. Still don't care for Skull Man's theme much months after getting through that part of the list, but I might have been a LITTLE harsh on it, thinking back. Just a bit. Dr. Cossack 2 is in the right place for me though, despite being a popular theme.

One game - and only one game - is going to be eliminated in this set of writeups! Is it MM7? MMV? MM&B? Or could it be... Soccer? Read on to find out!

25. Sheep Man (Mega Man 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZGZeUpSM1I

As SOON as I heard this track, I knew it was from my fave, Mari Yamaguchi. I'm not sure what made me so certain, but I can definitely tease apart some elements of this that are highly reminiscent of her work on Mega Man 5 - I think what stood out to me most was Yamaguchi's 'sleight of hand', as I like to call it, where she's really effective at making it seem like there's more instruments than there really are by quietly having the second square wave drop in and out of doing different jobs - in particular, she drops it in and out of harmonizing with the main lead, since both square waves are needed to produce a chord, as they're monophonic. This is all over the place in MM5 and it's here too (MM9 and MM10 both obey NES rules; two square waves [leads], one triangle wave [bass], one noise channel [percussion]). Listen for it at the start of the A section; there's that high pitched run playing at the start, establishing the idea of activity there, then like a magician's sleight of hand, what do you know, it's suddenly in the other palm, harmonizing the main lead. That run is no longer there but it sort of doesn't matter - you're tricked into thinking that there's more going on than there really is. It's accomplished again at :15 as the harmony drifts away from the lead to start its own idea before snapping back. It's a masterful little use of the limited available musical space that the NES's soundchip has to offer, and while it might seem like an overly pedantic and esoteric thing to get hung up on, tiny little tricks like these are always something that keeps me coming back - it's like Yamaguchi's playing peek-a-boo with my ears. I've always tried to use this little composing tactic in my own works in Famitracker and it's why I've always considered Yamaguchi an inspiration, and this theme demonstrates her craft really well.

24. Magnet Man (Mega Man 3)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOy9xQ7gOQs

(I literally could not use my first youtube link for this because it contained 'an obfuscated instance of the word fuck. please just use the word fuck.' thanks gamefaqs, you dipshits, for having some of the stupidest censorship possible)

Magnet Man's theme is an understated little work of genius, and why exactly that is wasn't pointed out to me until just recently, but it's worth looking at for yourself. This theme performs a rather impressive feat - aside from one bar at the very beginning (:03) and one bar at the very end (:36), this song never repeats a single line of music. It's true! There are motifs here that are repeated, but never exactly the same way twice - each bar is unique. It's really difficult to overstate how hard this is to do while still creating a theme that is perfectly coherent, with each successive idea built properly on the previous one. Repetition is a pretty core idea in music, or at least certainly in western music (gamelan ensembles in Indonesia have their own thing going on), and if you're ever written a song you'll find that it's pretty hard to get by without hitting ctrl + C and ctrl + V a few times. There are a couple other tracks in the series that pull this off. I know Dust Man is one of them - not a single repeated bar until :34! Check it out! But Magnet Man really excels at doing it without the song seeming the least bit hectic or chaotic. A deeply underrated theme.

23. Bright Man (Mega Man 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf4zUAKB08g

Bright Man's theme is excellent with tons of good craft and interesting melodies, but I have to give it one very big demerit that frustrates me. It never returns home! Oh god, it's infuriating! It starts in one key, which is fine, and then on the reprise of the A section, it raises in key, which is actually pretty cool - normally just raising the chorus a key or two is the last bastion of an uncreative writer who just wants to make the song sound bigger and more exciting (I'm staring directly at you, Bon Jovi, you fucking HACK) but no actually it works really well here. But then it stays in that raised key forever! It never comes home - every reiteration of the A section from then on remains in this raised key. It just feels like it's sort of stuck and permanently frustrated - it constantly feels like it's trying to raise the tension, but it can't, becasue it's just on a loop. That said, as much as that bit annoys me, there's a lot of things I could point out in this theme that I love. Like some MM4 themes it's a bit overwhelming to the senses, but if you listen to it long enough you can start to pick out some of the really nice instrumentation; I love what the bass does at :16 switching between playing the bassline but going up an octave to provide these little electric bleeps, and I really like how the lead instruments are shaped here. And there's just kinda always something going on; MM4 tends to be the most complicatedly written of the soundtracks so there's a lot of meat to chew on here on repeated listens.

22. Drill Man (Mega Man 4)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tud96HogGbo

As complicated a theme as Bright Man's is, I think Drill Man has it outdone. This theme's a fucking ride; I have absolutely no idea how Minae Fujii managed to cram this many ideas into one theme, and I can't even absolutely guarantee that it was advisable, but if it's a mess then I think it's an absolutely gorgeous mess. Everything I praised Mari Yamaguchi for in Sheep Man's writeup is also present here in spades; pretty much no instrument in this track is content staying in one place or performing the same role the entire time and there's so much happening here that I can't even begin to concentrate on the fact that there's only four sound channels. This is something that's pretty hard to pull off - I find that it's all too easy, when writing for the 2A03 chip, to create something where the gaps are audible enough that you realize that the NES chip's ability to fill in the space is fragile and it sort of breaks the 'illusion' that you're listening to fully-realized music, so to speak. That's not to say that there is only nobility in having no space in your music - in school, we called using too many notes "MIDI disease" - but I think there's something pretty special in writing something coherent that never allows me to perceive those gaps. This writeup is becoming an enormous clusterfuck, which means it is a microcosm of Drill Man's theme.

Khura'in's for me, I think

pyresword posted...

Please just ignore Maria everyone. She's said what she wanted to say and the initial post probably is a relevant perspective, but continuing to engage in this argument isn't helping anyone.

Congrats Bolo. I don't think we've interacted much but I wish you the best.

I'm not going to talk to her anymore, but it isn't about her, anyway. I just really don't like people trying to force-feed this blackpill stuff to others during moments like this where they're opening up to others - that kind of shit has been a big obstacle to me coming out and understanding myself for years and I really don't like to see it in a moment that should be positive and happy. Which it is! Fuck that! I love all you guys and gals.

MariaTaylor posted...

I know it. Para knows it.

You don't know anything about me.

Don't really care if he gets 10 or 20. it's enough.

MariaTaylor posted...

some shit

Lopen posted...

some other shit

reconsider

"Treat others how you want to be treated" does not, in fact, mean "project all of your baggage onto other people." Maybe 'congratulations' doesn't mean anything to you, but maybe it does to other people.

I'm not going to continue to engage in this a whole lot more, because I think you're beyond the point where I can help you, and I don't think turning this into a big argument is going to help Bolo, and dwelling on any of it certainly isn't going to help me. But I'm going to have to repudiate your attempts to define everyone's trans experience in the language of misery at least this one time. It doesn't have to be that way for everyone; please don't spend your efforts making it that way.

Maria, I'm sorry that was your experience, it's super shitty and I can relate in more ways than one. Please allow a newly minted trans person to just share her joy with the world for a moment, ok?

wow duckbear giving us his info instead of the other way around for a change

+3 Chloe Price (Life is Strange)
+2 Carmen Sandiego (Carmen Sandiego)
+1 Dr. Eggman (Sonic the Hedgehog)
-1 Agent 47 (Hitman)
-2 Kratos (God of War)
-3 Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy VII)

Heh, AJ and AA6 are my two least favorites but they're the ones with votes here. Different tastes.

AA1 investigation core is like one of my top five themes in the whole franchise, I don't always prefer the AA1 themes but here is one where I can't help it.

I really like AA5's too though and that would have been my vote outside of AA1/AA2. It's been bothering me for a while though so I'll ask here - does anyone else have the sense that the motif in AA5's core is used somewhere else in the game and/or franchise? Am I crazy? Whenever I hear that melody it sounds really familiar but I can't place it to another track.

I just want you to know that in spite of your initial doubt about your choice of announcement, I enjoyed it and got the message right away. Anyway congrats on joining the cool people club and hopefully unlike Pokemon you won't have to get into fights with everyone who makes eye contact with you

WandaVision > Loki >>>>> The Falcon & The Winter Soldier

I mean, I guess it's too early to do this ranking, but that is probably how it'll end up unless Loki ends REALLY well or VERY badly

WandaVision is like my favorite MCU thing behind IW/EG and TFATWS is like my third least favorite thing so there's a pretty big gap in between the two lol

They barely even touched on Loki being bi at all, which is hilarious. Like, Sylvie just kind offhandedly mentioned it and Loki was like 'yeah maybe' and that was pretty much the extent of that.

Hey I'm actually doing regular updates

BONUS RANKING: FINAL BOSS THEMES

This list is a lot more solid than the previous, although it doesn't include every theme used as a final boss theme since some of them aren't unique to the final boss. Of course, exceptions had to be annoying, because one of these isn't a final boss, but I couldn't say Wily fights because one of them isn't Wily, but I assume the boundaries of this list will make sense.

Once again, I really hope I'm not forgetting anything. I feel like I'm almost assured of having forgotten a boss theme between these three lists.

13. Mega Man 8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JkNqVNXX24

Haha, this SUCKS. I hate it.

12. Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Capsule)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJZhYovm9OM

I included this one literally only for completion purposes, since it is an original theme that does play when you're fighting the Wily Capsule in Power Fighters 2, which is less of a boss fight and more of a minigame where you try to prevent Wily from escaping to get the good ending. Even though it is barely anything, it still did not get last place on this list.

11. Mega Man 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTkuU3HH_k

And now we're IMMEDIATELY into good tracks! I like this one, it's just really short and kind of the least of all of them. Another appearance from that extremely loud and distant MM4 percussion. It does get points for being the first Mega Man game to have a final boss theme I guess. It works for what it is.

10. Mega Man 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYTOFe6ADHQ

I get the sense that this theme is popular so people will probably hate that I have it this low. I just think this one is kind of short and the other themes on this list are better. Sorry! It's like, pretty good, but I just find it kind of repetitive.

9. Mega Man 11 (Machine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGBo5czrpqI

I struggle remembering this one a little bit but I like it when I hear it. That's right, a MM11 song that I don't hate! I think it manages to avoid the worst impulses that this soundtrack has with switching tones too much halfway through and becoming an anime intro.

8. Mega Man 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_BfoHsJxyU

I remember being surprised by this final boss fight because I expected there to be more after the capsule room. It's pretty good! Usual quibbles with MM9's nasally leads apply, but otherwise it's fun and it's the right length to not get too repetitive. I like the 'telephone' sound effect.

7. Mega Man 10 (Machine)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7KjfeuA7xk

Pretty much falls in the same boat as MM9 for me, except with better instruments. It's good and exciting, but since it's only the first part of the final boss I have a tendency to forget about it a little bit, even though it would play the part of actual-final boss theme just fine.

6. Mega Man IV (GB)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7FhLGazBc0

This one's very different, and I like different, especially in a list where the songs are good but a little on the samey side - they mostly kind of follow the same script. This one's funky and weird and actually reminds me a little bit more of western game music of this era, like it sounds like the fillery part of a Tim Follin track. Yes I do know this one plays for a miniboss earlier in the game by the way, I decided to ignore that and arbitrarily place this in the 'final boss' category because that's how I associate it.

5. Mega Man 10 (Capsule)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16ediTlxTtk

Once again, I would call this final boss theme a fitting swan song for the Mega Man franchise if MM11 didn't exist. All of these songs have a pretty similar script, like I said, but I think this one captures the drama of a final boss theme particularly well by comparison. Even if said final boss is disappointingly easy, which is a shame because it's a really cool setup.

4. Mega Man 11 (Capsule)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUfP_pl48mA

Whoa, it's a Mega Man 11 theme I LIKE? Yeah I'm surprised too. I didn't even remember this one very well but upon relistening I'm really digging it. Once again, this one avoids the bad impulse MM11 has to have a massive tonal shift towards happy-generic-techno midway through and it sticks to the established tone; it's appropriately sinister and just a little silly and uses MM11's established library of sounds a lot better than usual. That crunchy synth at :51 is a really nice and unexpected treat.

3. Mega Man 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L0DVsWC2u4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nii-VDrPIJU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQg00KADSOc

Mega Man 7's redemption tour on my list continues. To ME, anyway, this is the iconic final boss theme in the series, and clearly they agreed with me because they reused it twice for the two arcade games, although the original SNES one is superior by far (mainly thanks to the percussion). I've always felt that this is the hardest boss fight in the entire series and I think the aggressively frantic theme that accompanies it suits it perfectly.

2. Mega Man V (GB)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeaxTwhY1W0

MMV is a wildcard - every song is some crazy ass shit that may or may not be good. This one's good! So many final boss themes in this series, and Wily couldn't even secure one of the best ones for himself. Sunstar got an insane banger of a theme for the final fight of MMV. It's short but it leaves a mark - I can tell the composer wanted to write just like, "the fucking most awesome shit ever" and they succeeded so good job, MMV composer whose name I don't remember but probably should by now.

1. Mega Man 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BImMZekqGNc

Mega Man 5 wins the battle of the fives. In the fashion of Mega Man 5's typical excess, this theme isn't content to just have one 15 second loop - it always has just a little bit more that it wants to do, and that little surprise coda section almost a minute in really breaks up this theme into something pleasingly non-repetitive, which it would have otherwise threatened to become. For me, this is the definitive final boss theme in the series.

1. Mega Man 5
2. Mega Man V
3. Mega Man 7
4. Mega Man 11 (Capsule)
5. Mega Man 10 (Capsule)
6. Mega Man IV
7. Mega Man 10 (Machine)
8. Mega Man 9
9. Mega Man 11 (Machine)
10. Mega Man 6
11. Mega Man 4
12. Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Capsule)
13. Mega Man 8

Back to your regularly scheduled listing

I didn't mind this episode by the way, though it'll seem like kind of a waste of time if they spent all this time establishing this world for it to not come back in the end, and I feel like Loki and Sylvie kinda didn't really get anywhere on each other which is a little annoying. But I mostly liked their interactions and I'm in love with Sylvie and I thought Lamentis-1 was cool, if a bit sci-fi dystopia kitschy.

profDEADPOOL posted...

Comics Loki has been genderfluid for a while tbf

yeah but the fact that they actually just went ahead and did something with it

Ron DeSantis is the next Scott Walker

+3 Missile (Ghost Trick)
+2 Proto Man (Mega Man)
+1 Crono (Chrono Trigger)
-1 Gordon Freeman (Half-Life)
-2 Master Chief (Halo)
-3 Sephiroth (Final Fantasy VII)

everyone else: stuff about what they liked or didn't like about the episode

me: trans loki trans loki trans loki

3. Mega Man 1/Mega Man: Powered Up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=220Gu7872fM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSf2GR8nuTQ

Hey, at this point, I'm just happy for a classic that I can get behind. It's repetitive, but it does the job. It's better than the Robot Master theme from the same game and it's a suitable theme for the Yellow Devil until Power Battle decided he needed a new theme. Even though there isn't really a lot to it, I find that it really achieves the dire mood it's looking for. The Powered Up version's better, too, and I included it here even though I decided it wasn't worth separating. (I probably should have been including these arrangements as alternates in the main list but whatever.) Weirdly this is the only Powered Up theme that isn't a happy, major-key version of the original theme which I think is appropriate.

2. Mega Man 7 (Bass)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKofgjK0ous

You know him, you love him, it's Bass and his iconic theme. And hey, I have to admit, it's kind of a guilty pleasure. It fits a dark, brooding Shadow-the-Hedgehog-before-his-time kind of character. Strangely enough, it's the bass riff of his theme that's really the focal point, and I say it's strange since he was named Forte in Japan, so I guess they gave him a more fitting name in English (Bass > Forte, don't at me). It's instantly memorable and doesn't get annoying to listen to and that puts it at #2 on this list basically by default.

1. Mega Man 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xaj12pQVdl8

Mega Man 3 pads its stat total and it's kind of embarrassing how not-close this was. Most of the good Mega Man soundtracks were taking this list off, so it was basically like watching Roger Federer clean house at a small tournament getting ready for Wimbledon or something. It wasn't even a fair competition.

This list was very ill-advised. I could have skipped it.

1. Mega Man 3
2. Mega Man 7 (Bass)
3. Mega Man 1
4. Mega Man 11
5. Mega Man 7
6. Mega Man IV (Ballade)
7. Mega Man 10
8. Mega Man: The Power Battle (Yellow Devil)
9. Mega Man V (Terra)
10. Mega Man 8 (Midboss)
11. Mega Man 8 (Bass)
12. Mega Man & Bass
13. Mega Man 8 (Duo)

BONUS RANKING: WILY STAGE/SPECIAL BOSS THEMES

This is sort of an awkward ranking, but I looked at the final battle themes and decided I wanted to keep those to their own list. But there aren't really as many "Wily boss" themes as I thought there would be, and it's sort of an awkward and unsorted list when combined with the other miscellaneous boss themes, but ah well. Not to mention that a few of these are used as final boss themes as well.

There's a strong likelihood that I forgot something to include on this list, forgive me if I did so. And of course, as usual, whether or not I include entries and whether or not I separate or combine them is basically arbitrary.

13. Mega Man 8 (Duo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CINLGtoFi_g

Those horn samples that I really don't like return, although I think this may be the last time I have to talk about them, actually. They sure to make an ignoble appearance though, producing a bland, uncertain melody with one really random, out of place note. This is a really terrible character theme, if that's what it's meant to be - it doesn't really seem to know what it wants to do and completely fails as a leitmotif of any sort. It's just bad!

12. Mega Man & Bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhCn02rTHbM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdBlYY1li_M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn1fjtnVnXY

MM&B seems to have a habit of producing a few real stinkers in its soundtrack, and this is one of them - an unpleasant and annoying track for some boss fights that go on way too long and cause this theme to badly overstay its welcome. This is a rare case where I prefer the SFC version - I think the instrumentation is better and less grating, for what it's worth. This gets used for the final battle as well, so you get to hear way too much of this one.

11. Mega Man 8 (Bass)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7nhtb04J0

It's Bass's theme, which is cool, but with all of its teeth removed. Gone is the really punchy bass and now it just kind of has a bland techno vibe with some really ill-considered chord progressions added to it. The synths in the background aren't really adding anything either. Nothing here works for me.

10. Mega Man 8 (Midboss)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IoNKYtMNlI

I'm pretty sure this is the only mid-boss theme in the entire series, which is weird! Mega Man 8 might also be the only game with five different boss themes in it, and this is somehow the best of the ones on this list, although that is saying incredibly little. It's perfectly bland and not outright bad like the previous ones and that's all I can really think to say about it - it does its job.

9. Mega Man V (Terra)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOs_JvBuGks

I'm sure what they WANTED was 'intimidating' - what they got instead was 'silly,' which seems roughly part for the course for MMV. It's certainly a... memorable motif I guess, since it's just those same five notes in a chromatic scale, gradually ascending, but it really comes off as sort of comical and it's not very interesting to listen to.

8. Mega Man: The Power Battle/Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (Yellow Devil)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG5eGe3_kb0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv8q8gdROP8

This is almost certainly the most obscure song in the franchise to appear in two different games - I'd wager you forgot this one exists unless you weren't starting directly at the OST, like me. This is one of the weirdest songs because as far as I can tell, it's the ONLY unique theme in Power Battle, and one of just a couple in Power Fighters. Really beats the hell out of me! This is actually a pretty big jump in quality because this is a perfectly okay track, even if it is a D-lister. The Power Fighters version is better because obviously it is - everything in Power Battle sounds terrible, but Power Fighters actually uses some samples that aren't pure garbage. I probably could have been talking more about Power Fighters' soundtrack throughout all of this, but it was too much work. (There's also a neat arrangement of MM2 Wily 1 when you fight Mecha Dragon but I'm not including stage theme arrangements here.)

7. Mega Man 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGiid1FK3gg

It's okay, but not one of Mega Man 10's bigger hits. It's pretty memorable when you arrive in the first archival room, since that's just a very cool boss fight and it's notable since MM9 didn't have a unique Wily boss theme. I think it gets a little annoying after a while.

6. Mega Man IV (Ballade)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5ZaA_0MPKk

Much like Terra from MMV I think this one is teetering on the brink of being silly rather than intimidating, but it's got much better ideas, and ends up being kind of catchy. I think I like this theme more for the ways its motifs later get used in MM10, though.

5. Mega Man 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huDeUlKBsv0

Gets dangerously close to being annoying but never quite gets there for me - I think the melody's entertaining and the urgency suits the idea of a hard boss fight without getting too frantic. I have good memories of this one because the Guts tank was really hard for me as a kid, so I had to hear it a lot and I eventually associated it with being challenged. Low bar to clear - this list is a rough one.

4. Mega Man 11
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AnNFcCKl6E

Ugh, CHRIST, can Mega Man 11 ever just NOT? It does it again! It does the same thing that literally every Mega Man 11 song does! It starts out with what I think is actually a pretty sick idea - it really nails that 'scary monster discordance' vibe that all the Wily boss themes want but I think it really nails the character the best out of all of them, until it hits :33 and turns into another gag-worthy happy cheesefest. Then it kind of loses the plot again for a bit until it really abruptly lunges back into the good part, like it's desperate to go there because it's so badly out of ideas. This didn't need to be over a minute long, probably. This is not a good list of songs.

I think that Garcia will surpass Wiley after Yang is eliminated, and I think Garcia will make some gains after that, but it won't be enough.

LeonhartFour posted...

well it's like is it Confess the Truth, Tell the Truth, or Announce the Truth?

who knows! I've seen all three.

I'm pretty sure every AA theme has like three different translations. "Happy People" or "Congratulations Everybody"?

I really like a lot of these. Truth at the Crime Scene from AAI2 is my favorite, but AA2 and AA3 have great themes as well.

FL81 posted...

Andrew Yang is the only name there I recognize

that's literally entirely what he ran on

it didn't work

+3 Claire (A Short Hike)
+2 Tom Nook (Animal Crossing)
+1 Mordin Solus (Mass Effect)
-1 Heather Mason (Silent Hill 3)
-2 Nathan Drake (Uncharted)
-3 Yu Narukami (Persona 4)

Ben Shapiro is the fucking king of Debate Me Bros

Lightning Strikes posted...

I feel there are some big indie games that should be on here. Chicory should be on here as the best reviewed game of the year.

well, it's an axl rose 85 topic, so

10. Mega Man & Bass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMVRsnINsgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gWXSCavy0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NBMHB5VZpc

Three different versions of the same theme again - you can guess which one I like most and which one I like least. I think the extremely vibrato-laden synth of the GBA gives it some much needed vocality; I think the SFC version just sounds too muted, the lead mixed too quietly to really stand out. And then there's the Challenger From The Future version, which is pretty bad, but I actually genuinely like the lead synth in it more than the one in the SFC, which is horribly damning.

9. Mega Man: Powered Up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbz-JIsIhXw

Because of just HOW MUCH this cleans up the original and arranges it into something that makes sense, I decided to include this one separately. No completely bonkers rhythm issues here, just a pleasant boss theme that reminds me of the original enough to be nostalgic.

8. Mega Man 4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLjz19Vs6ig

This song is a - DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE DEE - aggressive pace suits it well so it's pretty good.

7. Mega Man 9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOo5IzBATgQ

Points for being different - it's a lot less melody-driven than most of the other boss themes, which works to this one's advantage, since it's got an especially frantic tempo that would probably make it kind of overwhelming if there was too much going on. Catchy theme, doesn't get too old while you're waiting 2 minutes for the Twin Devil to become vulnerable again.

6. Mega Man 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPVDroHSUic

It's the classic! And yet, this is somehow the easiest decision I've ever made in my life - I like the top 5 more than this but it beats everything else. Shrug! I like how, because the boss health bar fills up and covers part of the intro, you get a longer, more dramatic intro when you fight Wily, sort of by accident, since his health bar fills up later. It's a cool effect.

5. Mega Man 10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mWgrAibVEA

One of the cooler openings out of any of the boss themes. Really like the bass in this one. The slower, more melancholic pacing is an interesting choice. Like this one a lot. It's just cool. Yeah that's the best analysis you're getting from me here.

4. Mega Man 5
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9Hxd8Qx3iU

Oh man, I want to talk about this one so much, because it's got one of my favorite little composition tricks. You know how in Mega Man 1-4, the boss themes are interrupted by the sound of the boss's health bar filling up? Especially in MM4, where their completely insane solution, for some reason, was to pause the music entirely. Mari Yamaguchi was a genius, so she employed a clever sleight of hand here - the intro of the song is just the bassline, leaving space for the boss's health bar to fill up cleanly without getting in the way, since there's such limited space on the NES's soundchip. Brilliant solution to a problem they basically made for themselves, and also the theme itself is great.

3. Mega Man 6
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUESH4vWIos

Love this one. It's got another one of those classic chromatic, bluesy boss riffs, but this one is very *fancy.* It's too bad that this theme makes the bosses in this game seem much cooler than they are, since most of their attack patterns are mostly to just jump around and wait a couple of seconds before jumping again. And it also employs the same trick that MM5 did, which was to only have the bass play during the intro, which is really neat.

2. Mega Man 7
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yooYiGn6GRo

I've been giving Mega Man 7 its dues lately, I guess. I've always had a guilty pleasure for this theme. The bass and the percussion totally slap - the lead is a really weird sound but it works for me I guess. I like the slower pacing of this one that gradually builds to a climax, rather than the more frantic tempos of previous themes. I really fucking love that little drum fill at :33. It's so neat. It's good that MM7 has a rockin' boss theme since all of its bosses spend about 80% of their time in i-frames.

1. Mega Man 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3t6peqsorE

Mega Man 3 is pretty much unbeatable - I don't think there's a single track in the entire game that isn't top 3. Anyway yeah I just think this is obviously the best boss theme. It kicks ass. It also has that weird effect that MM2 does where the doc robots' health bar fills up later so they accidentally get a more dramatic intro. Always thought that was neat.

1. Mega Man 3
2. Mega Man 7
3. Mega Man 6
4. Mega Man 5
5. Mega Man 10
6. Mega Man 2
7. Mega Man 9
8. Mega Man 4
9. Mega Man: Powered Up
10. Mega Man & Bass
11. Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge
12. Mega Man IV
13. Mega Man V
14. Mega Man 1
15. Mega Man 11
16. Mega Man 8
17. Mega Man II
18. Mega Man: The Wily Wars

I'm sort of worried I might be missing boss themes for this one that I should have ranked, but I've like triple checked my work and I'm pretty sure these are all the themes that are proper Robot Master-fighting themes.

I was gonna do the others tonight but I'm sleepy so I'll do them tomorrow! Then the list shall continue.