LogFAQs > #963388747

51th
Game: Game & Wario
Title: Masterpath
Composer: Yasuhisa Baba, Masanobu Matsunaga, Takeru Kanazaki, Hiroki Morishita, Sho Murakami, Yoshito Sekigawa
Nominator: @DireKrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv82USNE6Ik

i originally ranked this song way higher but it somehow got down here by the end of the 2018 ranking. i think a 2022 version would have this particular pick at least a bit higher again (i mean "51" is pretty high ranked by the standard of quality of noms for this topic). at the very least this nom is one of the ones i've found the most lastingly impactful on me, as in this song comes to mind very instant when i think of "cool new things i was introduced to" from this topic

i have no idea how to guess which of those composers listed above could've been the one to create this monstrosity. I know of cases of ALL of Baba/Morishita/Sekigawa doing some pretty ridiculous stuff (and probably the others too), this feels enough like the 2000s paper mario games that i'm leaning sekigawa/baba

i don't even know where to BEGIN this song is so insane hahaha. I think it "sounds weirder than it "actually is" '" which reminds me a lot of favorites like evergrace-buying goods at palmira and that sorta thing. part of what makes it feel so weird is: even though i much prefer darker over happy, i think i like this song largely because it has the anomaly of somehow being super happy exterior while being this much of a mindfuck. usually this sorta distortion /is/ unsettling, so it's natural for it to represent darkness. the fact that this is so happy makes all the off-kilter stuff about it actually be waaay more strange, because it's not being used to represent the inherent unsettling feelings you'd expect from elements this unusual

I think if you only had a couple layers of this song playing at once, it'd actually be fairly normal. Its the overstimulation of so much at the same time that obfuscate the simplicity of things that might not be all that weird as individual layers. But "too much at once to take in" is something I always love, so I certainly appreciate that here! I suppose there are some ways certain individual layers are undeniably strange even in isolation, no matter how you look at them, but they'd at least be a lot more comprehensible alone. but one other factor i love here is how much the off layers only feel 'slightly off', they're doing something that'd feel conventional but they distort and warp juuust enough to put this in a trippy cartoon dreamworld zone.

Lots of my favorite sorts of sounds here. Cool filters on that bouncy synth bass. I love the woodwind doing the crazy bends and notes. ac1ually one of my favorite things about this song is the fact that the acoustic-electronic barrier has been broken. I think this is most observable in the woodwind, which feels very "ancient" [blending well with all the very traditional plucked strings elements], but then it'll have weird filters that morph it into a totally strange synth that [now blending with that bouncy bass]

i dunno if anyone would relate to this comparison other than lasa and maybe a few others but. while normally I compare paper mario ttyd/spm-esque stuff to Jordan Rudess (which this does still kinda sound like), honestly the more immediate comparison to me is Marco Minneman (who rudess has often played with). here's an example(s) of what i mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTnyFKVgUw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lPq54hPBBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD15NKavKeo

though i shared this game&wario song with my brother to ask if he agreed that it sounded like Minneman, but then he said "it sounds like it but also has enough rudess-ness that its more like spcefically LMR"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0twa TBp0JJA (broken by censor filter, remove the space)

the comparison with that specific track he linked there is less obvious because it's more heavy and dark a track, but i guess i can see the comparison. especially that particular synth bass sound! some other tracks by levin minneman rudess (or solo marco minnemann or solo jordan rudess) might make more sense than these examples i gave. just a similar very desne heavily layerd composition using similar sounds.

but HONESTLY; this game&wario track is a unique sound. i'm compelled to /try/ to make comparisons, but it's difficult because this track is legitimately strange in some uncommon ways to be strange at that! honestly the other comparison i was about to make was norio hanzawa: norio hanzawa literally composed to a wario game lol so, i suppose that just shows his distinct wario's off-kilter (but still playful and lively and cartoony) version of reality is