Board 8 > VGMC11 day 2: YO-KAI Disco vs Akrillic, Dr Fetus' Castle vs Battle! Zinnia

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to today's topic for Video Game Music Contest 11, a tournament of the best tracks from games, as decided upon by you, the voters.


Links:
Bracket - http://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=466312
Contest info - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1d-N92Sis_Ghh-QYE2cQqClPP5H3T-idwlk0CUHOv2ew
Discussion and results thread - https://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/75120003

Rules:

- Listen to both of the songs. Links have conveniently been provided for both songs. Even if Song A is your favorite of all-time and Song B is from a series you hate... Listen. To. Both. (If I have suspicions you are not doing this, your vote may be disqualified.)
- Obvious contest rules apply (no alts, one vote per person, no rallying, etc.).
- Please make your voting options clear, rather than burying them in text.
- Each set of matches lasts 24 hours, even if the new one isn’t up by then.
- Always vote on the versions of the song provided, not versions from different sources.
- If you know ahead of time that you're not going to be around and you want to vote in advance, post your choices in the discussion/bracket topic.
- Please do NOT post tallies/score updates in the middle of the match, as this has a tendency to directly influence matches.
- You don't have to vote in all the matches, but it'd be cool if you did!

Match 1:

Mamorukun Curse! - YO-KAI Disco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2ZoG_rBjBs

Plok - Akrillic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jbJSftFr20


Match 2:

Super Meat Boy - Dr Fetus' Castle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LE_Lrs8LomE

Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIn8_Q27WFY


VGMC Masters side bracket:

Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJihMHO28A

Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambiance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDvKwSVuUGA


Easy vote form:
YO-KAI Disco / Akrillic
Dr Fetus' Castle / Battle! Zinnia
Zain, the Floating Continent / Aquatic Ambiance

Easy vote form:
Sigma Stage 1 / Mystic Core
Besaid Island / goldenslaughterer
Awakening ~Nurburgring Suite~ / Mikazuchi

*Cough*
---

KanzarisKelshen posted...

*Cough*

Thank you. I changed my form last night after posting so I could keep track of two days' songs easily. It updates everything dynamically, but I forgot to change the easy vote. Fixed now.

Y'know, I just realized what else is missing in the OP...the playlist links.
Main bracket - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RFteVUCpIsmLHRwqLStaQJD
Side bracket - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLW9O9mntH1RE35F2S4u6Ie8w1o0jHPKXB

Ed votes:
YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Zain, the Floating Continent

Tag
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Zain, the Floating Continent

Dr. Fetus' Castle is the only song today I really like - the first minute or so of Akrillic is great but it falls off hard after that.
---

Mamorukun Curse! - YO-KAI Disco
Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia
Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle


Yesterday was way better than today.

Both songs in the first match are way too "bouncy" for lack of a better word. I don't especially like the background parts in Akrillic either. Yo-kai Disco has enough solid bits that it manages to be around average or so, but I wouldn't take it over any real competition. (To be fair though that does mean "average for VGMC" which is a lot better than average in general)

Second match is...okay I guess? No terrible problems with either but I don't really like anything about them either. The 3-3-3-3-2-2 rhythm which the Pokemon song utilizes needs to die forever though.

Bonus match is also eh. Don't really like Aquatic Ambiance, but the other one is relatively good I suppose.

YO-KAI > Zain > Dr. Fetus Castle > Akrillic > Battle Zinnia > Aquatic Ambiance
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
undecided

Woops sorry forgot to actually paste in my vote for the bonus match

Zain, the Floating Continent
---

YO-KAI Disco
Battle! Zinnia
Zain, the Floating Continent
---

Akrillic
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance

I liked today's songs better than yesterday. All of them are ok at least.
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Zain, the Floating Continent

First match is probably one of the worst in the contest. YKD keeps getting in and failing cuz it sucks, and the other song is literally plok why. I really like all of the other songs though. Can't complain about four good songs in one day.

Dr Fetus' Castle > Battle! Zinnia > Zain, the Floating Continent > Aquatic Ambiance > YO-KAI Disco > Akrillic
---

Akrillic
Battle! Zinnia
Aquatic Ambience

First match meh as I don't think either is great, second match very easy, third match also pretty easy.
---

Akrillic
Dr. Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance

bonus match is the only decent stuff
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance

Disco > Fetus > Akrillic > Ambiance > Zain > Zinnia
---

YO-KAI Disco
Battle! Zinnia
Zain, the Floating Continent
---

YO-KAI Disco
Battle! Zinnia
Aquatic Ambiance

I like both songs in the first match. YO-KAI Disco... is a song where I don't understand entirely why I like it as much as I do. Probably mostly because I'm just super nostalgic for those sweet SuperSweep synths to be perfectly honest, and it's a pretty catchy song as far as ones with them go. As for Akrillic... Plok is a soundtrack I entirely overlooked prior to this contest. It's one of the only soundtracks from Tim Follin that I have never bothered to listen to in any capacity. I was... I suppose marginally aware that he did it, but I somehow never thought that it'd be any good compared to his other more celebrated stuff to make it worth checking out. Guess that wasn't a particularly smart move since Akrillic is not only pretty good, but one of the proggiest tracks he's ever done.

Second match I don't particularly care for either song. I actively didn't care for DF'sC though

Third match was pretty tough to decide. Zain is a much nicer song than I first realised. Kinda makes me nostalgic for stuff from some FF titles (not Chrono ones), except with a hint of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon, so good job there Mitsuda. If not for the one very, very slight flaw at around 1:10, I probably would've taken it over Aquatic Ambiance, and it takes a lot to manage that.

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance
---

YO-KAI Disco
Battle! Zinnia
Aquatic Ambiance

YO-KAI Disco > Aquatic Ambiance > Zinnia > Akrillic > Fetus > Zain

Akrillic is a lot better than I remember it being, tough draw though. Zain manages to secure the position of being the least interesting song today, which is really saying a lot since its opponent is literally just ambient background sounds (done in a cool way though!)
---

ou didn't even credit Important Ruby/Sapphire Composer Morikazu Aoki! How Shameful! (I like Pokemon music A LOT and know way too much about it, oops). As much as I like Pokemon music though I'm definitely pretty disappointed with the selection that actually got into this contest...well not as badly disappointed as I could be, basically I just can't believe that something as short and uninteresting as Wally's Theme (looped for 5 minutes for no reason) actually got in. Was really hoping I could get Ten Carat Hill in ;-;.

Easy choice, Zinnia easily. I do not like Dr Fetus' castle very much and dislike a lot of things about it, while Battle! Zinnia!!!! Is! Good! There are some things I don't really like much about Zinnia but there are even MORE things I don't like about Dr. Fetus Castle. There are some things I like about Dr. Fetus Castle but there are even MORE things I like About Battle! Zinnia!!

===

Zan Zain Z Z Z Z veia the floating continental "some bringer." This sounds like Yasunori Mitsuda (oh it is okay). Proof. Proof. Truth that we all must learn: the government is tearing apart all of our monuments that were created with president of course. Hemiola 6/8 vs. 3/4, who will win!? I like the frantic breakbeat electronic drums because they are frantic against really pretty music. That is a feel that I like. It's something I like to go for a lot myself. I like fake drums.

Wise choice of David Wise's Wise Choice. Donkey Kong Country's soundtrack was explicitly stated to have been inspired by Plok, so that's pretty fitting that this match happens on the same day as the Plok track. David Wise the Wise Man was just a very big fan of how detailed Plok WAS and how FULL it sounded and how Plok just pushed the boundaries of SNES music. So David Wise decided he wanted to try to do the same thing! Unlike Plok though DKC didn't even limit itself to 5 channels, it uses all 8. It's actually really funny that the beautiful intro only uses a single sample for the first 45 seconds, because one of the things this soundtrack does to sound as cool as it does is have A LOT of samples that are only slightly different from each other to produce fake filter effects and stuff (DKC2 does even more of that with Stickerbush Symphony, the famous song). I didn't even know that the first 45 seconds only used a single sample until just now, looking at it in a SPC viewer and just like WOW that's crazy. You have that ascending dissonant pitch bend effect things, you have the superfast delay echo that's taking up two channels, you have the low string that fades in/out, and you have the more traditional actual string chord backing it all. It's amazing how much he did utilizing literally only a single patch, talking about making the most of EVERYTHINg at once WOW. SO COOL. Then at :45 it instantly goes to the "yeah we're going to have this one channel change what sample it is playing literally every single note so that way it sounds really cool" thing that is part of what gives the DKC games such a cool sound. I really love "beautiful chiptunes" basically, because it's so cool to see stuff that takes the limitations of various soundchips and then uses them for "effects." It's the same kind of cool feeling as seeing a real ensemble do effects, you KNOW the limitations of the "instrument"/ensemble, so seeing it used in a way it's "not supposed to be used" but still sounds beautiful is like just amazing.

At first I was going to say this was a hard choice but with as much as I wrote about AA and as little as I wrote about Zain, it's pretty clear which one interests me more haha. I really like both though.
---

-
Battle Zinnia
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Zain, the Floating Continent
---

Mamorukun Curse! - YO-KAI Disco
Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia
Aquatic Ambiance
---

Plok - Akrillic
Super Meat Boy - Dr Fetus' Castle
Donkey Kong Country - Aquatic Ambiance
---

Plok - Akrillic
Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia
Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent
---

Plok - Akrillic
Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia

Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance
---

YO-KAI Disco
Battle! Zinnia
Aquatic Ambiance
---

Floating zinnias:
Disco in the castle with
Acrylic ambiance
---

Akrillic
Fetus
Ambiance

I always seem to misspell the last one.
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Zain, the Floating Continent
---

Mamorukun Curse! - YO-KAI Disco
Super Meat Boy - Dr Fetus' Castle

other match once I've listened
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance
---

Reminder for those who haven't read the discussion thread, I will not be home at 10:00, though that is when I will get off work.

oh, and Aquatic Ambiance.

Akrillic
Dr Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance
---

Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent

I would offer to post the topic at 10 but I might not be around then
---

YO-KAI Disco
Dr Fetus' Castle
---

Akrillic
Dr. Fetus' Castle
Aquatic Ambiance

Battle Zinnia sucks. You guys better have gotten 10 Carat Hill so something pokemon is worth listening to for once! Yo-Kai Disco isn't bad but it feels like it's longer than it needs to be, and Akrillic feels more pleasant to the ear. First match is solid, second match is a godstomp IMO. Third match is zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Both tracks felt like copies of each other. Went with Aquatic Ambiance due to its instrumentation being the kind I like more, but it was basically a coinflip.
---

Mamorukun Curse! - YO-KAI Disco
Pokemon OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire - Battle! Zinnia
Soma Bringer - Zain, the Floating Continent
---