Lurker > banshiryuu

Aurora (Schizm: Mysterious Journey)
Zero Gravity Area (Mega Man Network Transmission)
Voile, the Magic Library (Touhou Luna Nights)

aurora is drinking 15 syrup mechanisms huh. what a great coping mechanism. well I'm definitely not the person i was when i was younger, but also i put this against aurora so

this is the most nostalgic track from this game possibly? I come back to others on the ost a lot more, but this one I instantly picture playing this for the first time in ~2004 again. little did i know i would be calling it a top 3 fav video game in 2024 (and according to my spreadsheet of every song listened to: roughly in my top 3 listened to albums as well), but very few games out there do everything right for me in the way this does (riven, alida & uru are the only confidently at its level to me). it's not just nostalgia though, these evolving organic bass sounds, beautiful airy pads, they really do sound like they represent an entire islands-structure that is in itself a living organism, at night. the worlds in this game are so cool, but i cant imagine them being sold nearly as solidly to me if the music wasnt just as cool. over time ive realized how much an art there is to keeping something this atmospheric/ethereal---non distracting myst clone music that doesn't draw attention to itself while still being interesting in isolation. imo Daniel Kleczynski does it among the best of anyone. and honestly its some of the vgm i listen to /out of context/ the most, excitedly. i may not have the same things i seek as many others, but what this game does to sell these empty alien worlds is perfect for what that is. I can't stop coming back to it.

WARNING : LOUNGE epiano=PERSONA

This game's approach might be the closest i wouldve expected an inside the computer mega man game OST to soujd like if i didnt know already, but its actually basically just what super sweep sounds like normally anyway.

the piano chords that stab u when this kicks in are great

PEPOSOFT arrangement/production style is always top tier to me. it was even kinda hard for me to resist supporting the drainus/deedlit noms. it is a shame this isn't actually composed by peposoft because thats half of the appeal to me, but ZUN is a quite natural fit for these sounds

OK yeah official re vote of
Kirby and the Forgotten Land - Burning, Churning Power Plant
hurry!!!

Burning, Churning Power Plant (Kirby atFL)
Love Psalm (Silent Hill 2)
LIGHTNING BUG/MOO [ALL-PHASE MIX] (Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil)

If I was a Pokemon, I would be a Lycanroc (midnight forme)!

I think I am cynical enough where I identify with this more, even if I like the bittersweet emotional approach of the pmd track and am fond of that ost.

LIGHTNING BUG/MOO had been my fav track to not ever be in a vgmc before. I never had faith in even the faintest vgmc strength the way I did with my other favs around the same level to be in (gahreesen/rock castle/axis pillar/yggsrasil/superior probe underworks scenery) but since when was I ever the type to care about that anyway? I could go on about everything I like about this but I dunno what even to say. someone else dig out whatever I said during my top 50 songs vgmgg I'm too lazy. it's one of the most representative pieces of music of my current tastes. I find it interesting a note that an older version of me who was very different said the same about Mirage---the OTHER Go Shiina track from this game, but that was when my fixations were more about frantic numeric composition, rather than ethereal spacious synthetic-nature-merged atmosphere. I wonder what's even next up on my favorite track to not have been in VGMC before? oh.Ancient Cistern. well, that's definitely in the vein of this one haha

the tonal language in the intro string arp is so good. almost yoshimi kudo feeling

b10
Somnia Memorias (Parasite Eve)
Tower of Memories (Heaven Burns Red)

although i love the fez-adjacent style i never actually listened to this soundtrack in full or found time to play the game yet, but its clearly my sort of thing. very cool organic pads.

angklung time

I don't know how it took me so long to realize how profoundly entangled with my taste these slow pitch bends permeating the space are one of the most keystone elements of my taste, but they are. and this track integrates that beautifully. one of my very favorite discoveries of this year.

dv-i really is always on par with yack, though usually even more shiny and crystalline. that shines through hard here. great job. I wish i could vote for both of these.

FM04: Twin Moon (Ano, Subrashii o Mou Ichido)
Burning, Churning Power Plant (Kirby atFL)
Astral - Prison (Ghosthunters)

official theme song of frequency modulation of yu-no for the unified cult formed between weebs & boomers alike: ze,Pat metheny group fandom

I like how he is saying random numbers.

something about the fretless bass part and other things always makes this remindme of edutainment game music

kirby is acting spicy . honestly u can tell this guy wishes he was in weather report or return to forever more than usual on this one despite the ironic abrasive modern edm adjacency. some of the monosynth leads atop these chords just really feelthat

I'm glad this got in without my support, I never shared my potential-support list but this was quite high on that. Maybe it shouldn't be too surprising as I've only leaned more and more into Riven is my favorite video game element of my existence, but this is that atmosphere ON TOP of this subtle ambiguity of tempo/timesig that has a cool potential reframing of prior interpreted structure as new elements are introduceD. I LOVE THESE PADS.

asano rhythmic style is always pretty interesting to me even in very straightforward tracks, he has all these bouncy groups of 3 that take u juuust a bit outside the grid.

FM04: Twin Moon
Burger King Futo Lettuce (Futo's Theme)
Spring Wind Skylark

Rage (MementoMori)
Moiety Theme (Riven)
Round (FAR: Changing Tides)

heh, the lizardmen from Caravan Stories seem to have gotten pretty vibrant.

what an fl81 track, in hindsight

it used to bother me that the music has almost no reference to the number 5 considering how everything else about the game does (some people suspected almost the whole game being in G minor was a ref to it being 5 up from C but Robyn Miller later confirmed the whole thing being in one key was basically unintentional lol). whether intentional or not this does have some great 5th (and 4th) jumping sequences that are precisely my tonal preference. the instrumentation feels so ahead of its time, like on an entire different plane of reality from anything past or present. My favorite video game still holding strong at that position for me going 24 years, I wouldn't change a thing about it. This track is a wonderful reward for solving what many consider one of the most obtuse puzzles in the series, with some pretty striking visuals. but even without the context of seeing Please Insert Riven Disk 5 for the first time after being endlessly stuck on disk1-4---this track just weridly tightly does exactly what i want to hear both in timbre & tonality, and has somehow never gotten old.

well what a coincidence. a song in 5, going against teh game about ze number 5

um, hello? it's 2024, the current year. really? *does something people in 2024 think people did in 1984*, literally 1984.

if this song were played on teh E-mu Proteus MPS Plus Orchestral itcwould sound like Milo but instead it sounds like some random wine glass kaonashi ONE and player ZERO would drink at teh elite private winery

Rage
Wild Woods
Round

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years (Outer Wilds)
b10
T11

I've come to appreciate folky guitar melodies, something incredibly distant from anything I ever said I liked when I was younger. I think moving to a desolate desert and enjoying it here, it a major part of my identity certainly has something to do with that affinity. this hits that spot while being an interesting journey. I like numbers

tuned percussion is one of the greatest sounds for my ears. thank you for that, person who is named after number I love those(by which I mean I love numbers)

I love the chord spasms of Takayuki Negishi (well I assume his influence is why this is like what people think modern xenoblade fusion adjacent music is except living even further inside of a dart board)

b10 is like everything I like in music these days at once tbh. RINNE has become one of my favorite soundtracks. I used to find functional harmony with motion I perceived as too predictable very frustrating, but a recent shift in me is coming to actively seek composition in that vein out---i just definitely prefer it done in a subtler, new age-y scenario like this. It winds up giving a climactic fantastical mysterious feel. There's a lot of complexity here seamlessly woven atop too, the 7 (that I somehow didn't even notice in first many listens, which is rare for me to say about odd time), and some trick parallel motion ambiguating a lot of stuff. and yea the production is absurdly perfect for my inclinations, and with dense ethereal 90s (00s) new age dungeon themes at peak of my interests right now, while of all my noms this was one of the ones i was most attached to. This game actually seems weirdly tightly to my tastes and it's high on my list of things I plan to play when I can find the room. Anything featuring lots of collection, and transforming into creatueres, and prerendered isometric presentation? with THIS music? count me in

Boing Boing & Roger is a game I got as a kid at a local bookstore when I asked if they had any computer games and then someone came out saying a thing along the lines of oh, we know someone who makes computer games, we'll have her bring out some stuff she worked on. and then I got this, and a couple seemingly off-brand re-issuings of other educational (or even just like weird video editing) software. i lived in the middle of nowhere mid michigan so I have no idea if these people even knew what they were talking about, but the game is insanely obscure so maybe she did have some loose connection or something. the intensity of that obscurity is something I didn't even conceptualize until recently, there's very few hits for this game even existing online, though i know for sure there were a couple now-gone soundtrack uploads in the past. anyway, growing up I almost didn't even realize how strange a lot about the music is. Most of it is waaay too long for you to hear all of it in the context it plays---the game is largely silent and the couple dozen songs either are bgm to random mysterious stock nature FMVs the game has in it for no reason, or just play to titles/various win game conditions that you'd likely skip early into the track. It's also all very low quality with the raw audio files legit clipping, and instrumentation includes synths that came out over a decade before the game did (like DX7/hardware synth FM patches are actually very rare to hear in VGM even in 1994). This particular track is actually the select who plays first bgm though, and it is definitely weirdly serious & mysterious for the scenario. It also just happens to be quite to both my compositional and timbral tastes! lots of ambiguity in possible places you can be driven to instinctively feel beat 1 which tests your perception of the surrounding composition. Very minimalism-y in that way, though probably more Adams/Glass than reich?? Tho maybe most comparable to real 80s new age like Ray Lynch. Chord changes get pretty interesting with these powerful unexpected emotional motions at these well chosen sparing times. and of course, I'm really enamored genuinely deep with the exact way these distorted clipping loud recordings of whats supposed to be beautiful FM harps justfeels. I love the instrumentation of this soundtrack overall, but this is the most idiosyncratic case imo, like a grainy TV static-y sliiightly corrupted portal viewing into relics of a once beautiful lost temple in ze forest. How symbolic.

ichiro shimakura is someone I associate heavily with music that is very dense and full, like star soldier vanishing earth & frogger's adventures the rescue. it's difficult to express that spacious full production tendency in a chiptune. except he actually does somehow, implied harmonies and just careful choices make me forget how little space the chip this is playing on even has

hi. I absolutely am not going to be able to be consistently present this year, I hope to come back eventually, because I really love this community, but things about my life circumstances make it unlikely any time soon. but i value this community too much to abandon it now, so here are some votes!

FightFirstDeusExMachina_Dearest (CRYMACHINA)
Awakening ~ Nrburgring Suite
New Bodhum (Final Fantasy XIII-2)

ah yea, the border line between all the dance types we've got DiscoEpic and HiromiAnime but most of all WeebBlues. I avoided saying weebfunk because this track isn't cool man enough. I always feel Hiramatsu has this density thru compositional-information in him that coalesces into something that almost surprises me can be interpreted as a battle theme because it is too fun, I suppose they are focusing on the game part of role playing game battle theme XD why the heck did they let Lt. Surge be in this game.

This is one of those where i feel an ambiguity between timbre & tonal/rhythmic information. if you just had the notes this track would be entirely different, it feels like there's very slight detuning on a lot of indiv elements that makes this feel so much more immersing.

extended chords in these unstable loop point chord pad samples is one of my fav tendencies of european computer music people, glad you can still hear that seep through even in something so full production (honestly I would have guessed this track was written many years later than it actually was)

my focus has returned to being far more timbre-centric in recent years, and as I hadn't really listened to this seriously since that shift, I'm coming to appreciate how cool all these evolving pads are. The thin artificial choir seamlessly morphing into serene string-like sweeps. It's something I seek, when almost no element really feels static in timbre, everything is evolving as it sustains or orchestrated with enough destiny or variety so that if this song was Nrburgring but every note is C id still have something new to pay attention to across this full lengthy runtime

I can't listen to live and learn without thinking of that video where the siivagunner people show Jun Senoue irl the rip where teh vocalist goes upward for too long and I smile when I think about how he laughed so hard at that moment.

There was a while when I'd make a big deal out of how much I liked XIII-2 music, this does include a bit of what I'd fixate on with it, nice chords and nice sounds. The friendly border between ethereal jazz fusion and dream trance. As instinctively futuristic as can be.