Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 36! Passion v Broadway, Danger v Five, 444 v 'Merica

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Video Game Music Contest 15, an annual celebration of the best of the best video game music according to the voters!

Important Links:
Bracket: https://www.bracketmaker.com/tlist.cfm?tid=474630
Contest info sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
Contest discussion thread: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/79443554
Main bracket playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3m7iohpL0xt7lOF1eB-H4NpAaF1yAnU
Compatibility sheet (courtesy of Haste!!): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1iGYWo_ifr_p2uYpD_I6TwBQS2tm7zJtPCxYZfRJcG8I
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VNrPnFRI7nJ4PqFiURBW0NWqxvXiuasoq8Sn_O169ss
VGMC total stats sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1K1XdLWiUKB2kX99qYBgnRbLU_sCz4dvZSByKKJHCT6o
Discord: https://discord.gg/WDvMS4a

Rules:
- Listen to both songs in a given match, at least through the loop time provided (to make sure you don't skip before you've heard the whole thing!)
- Please consider the loop point listed when judging the song; if a video loops one minute 5 times, don't treat it as if it's a repetitive 5 minute song
- If it's a match between your favorite song ever and a song you despise, still LISTEN TO BOTH! Votes can and will be disqualified if there is suspicion songs are not being listened to, and you may be discounted for the rest of the contest for repeat offenses.
- No alt accounts, no rallying or begging, etc., etc.... You only get one vote! Swapping votes is alright, just make clear that you've already made a vote and are swapping.
- Make clear what your voting options are! Please keep votes separate from any comments, and use the titles given in the topic post.
- Voting in all matches is not mandatory, feel free to skip matches you do not wish to vote in.
- Vote based on the links provided, and not other sources of audio. Links are specifically chosen for best quality and the like.
- Don't discuss vote tallies in this thread, or in other threads, as they may influence votes. Likewise, please refrain from looking at the running tally before voting.

Voting Period:
- Today's matches will last 24 hours from the time of posting, or 24 hours from 10pm Eastern, whichever is the later time.
- Please note this may mean that two topics will be active at the same time!
- If you anticipate being unable to vote in a given day, please s

Blue Passion
Arm Danger
4 44

Flamenco good

"City bustle" music *usually* bad

Pretty crazy. Not quite sure whether or not it stresses me out in a way I don't like. It just barely misses, I think

This also barely misses, but it misses in a less interesting way

There's something about this that kind of confuses me, like I'm missing something. I definitely enjoy it, albeit with a nagging suspicion that I should be enjoying it a whole lot more if I just could figure out what I'm overlooking

weow wow wow wow wawa wawawow

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Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444

Today's an extremely good day. All six of these songs were on my support consideration list at one point. No joke. The second match is especially close.

pretend you see in that last option fuck

Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444

Passion in Blue
Five
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

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Blue Passion
Five
444

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai


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Mad Rat Dead - Passion in Blue
Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Five
Ace Combat 7 - 444
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Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

Strange second match. What feels like kinda unremarkable VN music vs 2 minutes of stuff I like with 2 minutes of angry beeping.

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Sim Broadway
Five
444
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Passion in Blue
Danger Arm
444

:viberat:

Match 2 is between two songs that I feel I should like way more than I do.

fourfourfour [9]
Passion In Blue [8.5]
Danger [7]
5 [7]
'Merica [6.5]
Sim Broadway [6]

Sim Broadway
Five
'Merican Yo-kai

Oof, that first match. I won't be sad either way--both songs are gorgeous.

Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444

Passion in Blue (4.2^ - 63rd place) / Sim Broadway (5.2 - 59th place)
Danger (ARM version) (8.3^ - 19th place) / Five (7.0 - 40th place)
444 (7.6^ - 30th place) / Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai (6.6 - 48th place)


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Passion in Blue
Five
444

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Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM Version)
444

Danger (ARM Version) is literally peak music? what the actual fuck its so fucking good? like Five is fucking great and i literally sup'd it but this is ????? maybe my favorite song i've heard so far in VGMC? including nekozamurai? idk maybe it's just really well attuned to my current state of ear-fuckery but im kind of freaking the fuck out right now.
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Sim Broadway
Five
444

Passion in Blue was my favorite Mad Rat Dead song in the nominations phase, and I came very close to supporting this! We almost didn't have this match by virtue of "no same nominators" rule lol. a_hisa has quickly become one of my favorite recently-discovered VGM composers (through something entirely unrelated), but their style is very versatile it seems. Passion in Blue reminds me of one of the stage themes from the Touhou fighting games.

Sim Broadway has always been one of my favorite VGM pieces, and the whole soundtrack for this game is great! (Jerry Martin in general is great!!) I'm super stoked to finally see this in VGMC, my efforts to get this composer's work in during my very early years here never came to fruition, but it's nice seeing this in now at least.

Excellent match, and I hate having to vote against my favorite MRD song.

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Danger certainly is an experience. It's this super ANGRY fake chiptune (originally chiptune??) song, but then the vocals come in and it's not ANGRY anymore. c'mon Haste I can count the number of pixels in the image used for this upload good song!!

Five is one of those VGMs I really love, but at the same time always forget that it's a thing that exists. It's like "oh yeah it's this song I really like this". I love the way the violins are played here.

the girl in the video image for Five has the most vibrant red hair, she looks like a radioactive tomato

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Four four four excellent songs and then the 3rd match is just kinda there. 444's guitar is kinda groovy I guess (oh hey, I'm voting against a faves pick here? I don't remember). 'Merican Yo-kai is in that awkward situation where it's "fun", but not really interesting.

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FL81 posted...

c'mon Haste I can count the number of pixels in the image used for this upload

Well, it's a cute pic anyhow!!!

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

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Sim Broadway
Five
444

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Passion in Blue
Five
444

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Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444

All matches are pretty close. Statement only became true until 20 listens of Yokai though haha.

Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444

F.O.E! F.O.E! Even in your Secret of Mana VGMC song, F.O.E! Props to Danger for doing ALL THE THINGS on a day of songs that I felt could do more with their runtime. 3:16 had me questioning my sanity before I just smiled in confusion - the song is clearly over why is there a new section AND WHY WITH LYRICS

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Passion in Blue (87th) vs Sim Broadway (222nd)
Danger (ARM version) (53rd) vs Five (40th)
444 (143rd) vs Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai (244th)

why match 2 why did i allow bracket d to have so many absolutely painful matches like this

numbers

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

PiB doesn't really do it for me like the other MRD songs. Sim Broadway pretty fun though. Close match.

When I first listened to Danger, I thought it was kind of blah other than that the vocal part which was really cool. Now I'm more into the rest of it, so that's nice. Solid song! Five is boring. I feel like it would work for big hype in context, but I don't care about it on its own.

I remember when AC had cool epic songs with a unique style. This just sucks. Merican Yokai ain't great either, but it doesn't grate as much.

Sim Broadway > Danger (ARM version) > Passion in Blue > Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai > Five > 444
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https://youtu.be/eaCPrO-_Gfo

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

i don't know whether i'd like 444 if it didn't have an identity crisis and accidentally become a paper mario song and then a fire emblem one

also holy shit danger arm

P
5
4

sorry kama
Five's really fucking good you guys
44

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

Sim
Five
4
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Sim Broadway
Five
444

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Passion in Blue
Danger
444

-(the accordion makes this for me. i feel like it's the kinda song composition-wise that has to have this exact instrumentation (edm on top of this exact set of "real" instruments) for me to like it, but it DOES so it is perfect...! the ranking is a bit low at the moment but i find this hard to place for a bunch of reasons, mainly that the "way" i enjoy this song is much different than most of the rest of the stuff in the contest. a lot more focused on some broad delicate concept of "takes me to a perfect recreation of fictional european country in mexico that i am making up" that i can't evaluate on the same plane of reality as everything else, so this feels like it'll move way up when i figure that out. anyways GOOD AND FUn music yes i like this)-

-[i really like jerry martin from what i can tell...based on the music i've heard credited to him in the sim games. I like this instrumentally (marimba and plucked strings and piano are all instruments i like hearing in this style!) but this particular song comes off a lot more goofy and rigid to me than i'd like from this style (which is a style i usually like)]-

-{easy vote for mrd but this would be a harder match if things were just slightly different about either song: if mrd was less perfectly produced/arranged to my liking or if broadway was just a bit less fake/stilted/"cheesy" in its presentation of its composition}-

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-(hahaha and i complained about "fake sounding" above on a song that has actual live jazzy solos. here we have one of the most bluntly artificial "video game music" sounding songs in the contest. in a way, the artifice is a perfect tribute to Kikuta's own arrangement style despite this arrangement not even being him. secret of mana (both remake and original) is full of music i'm a huge fan of very consistently throughout. I fluctuate on how much i like danger...i have no aversion to dissonance in general and this is "proggy" but i actually find myself exhausted by it's level of grating aggressive chaos sometimes, really need to be in the right mood to intake it all properly. surprisingly not even close to my favorite song in the original secret of mana even though i also get annoyed at people who are loud about disliking it. What makes this arrangement so fun is all the style cycling, in the same vein as sky of twilight in some ways....goes from that super artificial start to eurobeat to girl choir enchanted forest to crazy guitar wailing to "video gajme computer notes" to GUST MOMENT when it has lyrics. this arrangement wildly changes what my favorite parts are; in this version i lean way more toward the prettier melodic sections (especially any section with vocals or choir i really love here), while in the original i lean more toward the bluntly dissonant and garbly sections (1:48-2:04 is probably my fav section in the original, which in this version i often don't even think about))-

-[5 has some nice dramatic anime melodies in the strings i probably would not have called them "anime" if i didn't see the youtube thumbnail though so that may just be an ILLUSION just like the ones generated going inside of a suikoden song. what the heck i am noticing so many extra cool things about this after listening a 2nd time. like the synth background layers are really cool and boost this a lot and i didn't even notice them until now?! wtf. i like the style of this song but i find it pretty unmemorable, i often say that isn't important to me, but i think it's a factor in what holds this back for me]-

-{really hard to place danger because my response to it is super variable, and it's hard to compare my opinion on the original to this arrangement, which i'm not even sure i like more than the original now that i think about it (and i'm typically more positive than most about the som remake music). well either way i definitely like it more than 5, but how much more is up for question. also i wish i could say i was voting for the song called "5" so i could put "5" in my vote panel at the top because that is "funny"}-

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-(444 is like everything i like about music in a song music song. it starts off with AMBIGUOUS DOWNBEAT MINIMALISM (literally until :59 it's almost impossible to nail barlines or a timesig, while still retaining its pulse, and that's cool!) and cool spanish guitar that reminds me of "zero" that is almsot a bluesy note scale( like a "cowboy desert" and then it turns into "progressive rock and/or metal" and sounds like dream theater when it gets some big odd time parts and then it turns into fire emblem ?!?!?! It's just like uf8 said except i thought of dream theater instead of paper mario at the part that i at least think we're both talking about there which no one would compare unless you know how many jordan rudess songs sound like paper mario:
https://youtu.be/owkGKO_rsEI
~~~~~
one thing i think is important to note is that compositionally, this song does a lot of things i'd be averse to in other songs because they are "cheesy" but in this song i like those same things because they are "Edgy" ? ? ?? ? why? ?? what makes these same traits be "cheesy" in one song but "cool and edgy" in another? i don't know, but the pattern seems to be that i'm far less averse to pentatonic blues-esque stuff when it feels like the context is "tough" rather than "the animated kids walking in the sidewalk while holding chalk", whatever abstract divider generates that difference. part of it's the prog metal adacency for sure. i didn't actually link a dream theater song above i just linked a song by their current keyboardist that sounds like paper mario but now iam going to actually link a real dream theater song with lots of blues licks in it that gives me the same "vibe" as 444 and is part of why i like it so much. This is one of my favorite dream theater songs and the adjacency 444 has to whatever this IS is why i like it so much:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9j-v9EbBBM
~~~~~
i think beyond the shallow descriptor of "certain guitar things = tough", part of the reason i have tolerance for this composition in a rock/metal context, or even like "acoustic guitar with trippy synths" context, is because it feels /alive/, it feels like yyou are so angry and brooding but also uncareful but too skilled for carelessness to matter becauase you can jump on top of plateaus
~~~~~
444 evolves gradually across disparate things i love, from trippy to gritty to manic to beautiful, all so seamlessly!!! it tells a "story". the cool moment devolves into chaos while you are in the SKY music. all elements present musically
)-

-[this is actually really well done and i want to like it more. it's good at being playful and there's some pretty cool explorative winding moments of its progression that feel cool to me, but so many parts that feel like there is a condescending finger pointing at me to make fun of me. this song would fit in mad rat dead lol, but not the portion of the ost that excites me. anyway my response to this is variable, i think it depends on how easily i am able to skim over the things in it i find difficult to take seriously. i would probably LOVE this if it was spm/ttyd-like instrumentation, i say that a lot on cartoony stuff but it's true...it makes all the difference on this kinda song to me]-

-{so many songs today where i have no idea where to place them jeez}-

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444 (21st/214)
Danger (82nd/214)
Passion in Blue (144th/214)
Five (149th/214)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai (178th/214)
Sim Broadway (204th/214)
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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

So much of the Danger Arm is so good but dang what a rude sucker punch to throw in that vocal section right at the end

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Passion in Blue
Five
Vs 'Merican Yo-kai

Passion in Blue
Five
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

This was a really fun day. All the matches were close and I won't have any issue with any of these progressing to R2.

In the first match, you have a really cool flamenco-inspired electronic tune from Mad Rat Dead. The kind of thing I'd normally consider voting material. In the other corner you have Sim City 3000 providing a refreshingly jazzy tune with some really nice chords and soloing. I went with the jazz.

Second match is close too. Danger was always the kind of song that I couldn't really stand because it felt like the arrangement put too much weight on the most grating part. Thankfully, ARM's arrangement remedies this. There's just a lot of sick stuff going on and it thankfully enhances the progginess of the original rather than reducing it. If Five was going up against a more "normal" song, I would've voted for it. It's a really pretty sounding melodic trancey thing. Reminds me of Takahiro Unisuga's trance stuff more than say, zts, and that makes it really refreshing in my eyes (ears? lol).

And in the third match, you have a really neat AC7 song that really encapsulates a lot of what I think is cool about Ace Combat. I love how Ace Combat incorporates a lot of elements from seemingly distant genres but packs them cohesively in a very "cinematic-sounding" context. This track is slightly atypical on that front, since the orchestral elements aren't as prevalent from the get-go, but they're kind of introduced gradually which gives the track a sense of rising tension. It also helps that there's a lot of neat harmonic and rhythmic stuff going on in the second half, that's always a plus. The Yo-kai watch track is an interesting, swingy kind of thing. It's a solid bop but doesn't do as much to interest me as AC7, so my vote goes to Kitadani.

Passion in Blue

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

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Sim Broadway
Five
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
444

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM Version)
444

Match one is so ridiculously mean. why. who seeded this?? I have words with you. Like with the World's End Valentine/Besaid matchup, I'm going with the song where my feelings lie more comfortably and intimately. If I haven't been bored of Sim Broadway until now, I highly doubt I'd ever really grow bored. No tears if Passion in Blue wins. What a certified banger.

Danger is one of those songs that the first second hits and I'm just like "ugh why". I've always preferred slower build ups to starting off immediately at the deep end. Especially after Sim City 3000 and its chill vibes but wow, Danger goes into a lot of wild directions, unexpected vocals, and once I grow used to the louder volume + energy (which there is plenty opportunity for that considering the length) I grow to love it. Five is a solid song, I just simply don't feel as strongly about it.

Please read Toxtricity's writeup on 444 for a more intelligent way of describing how I feel about it. Reading it I just kept nodding my head in agreement. I've quickly grown passionate about this franchise's music, there's such a strong sense of identity and sense of storytelling through the music!!! I'm glad to see a nice amount of AC retirees and I would not say no to more!! Ok ok ok Murican Yokai I enjoyed reasonably well enough! On the subject of "musical storytelling" I really like how the song screams "ayy I'm walkin' here!"

Passion in Blue
Danger (ARM version)
444
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Passion in Blue
Five
444

Passion in Blue
Five
444

GTFO Danger. I can name 44 songs on the original soundtrack better than you. Yes, I just said I'd rather listen to the file select screen jingle. The remake's little vocal insert is nice, but it's too short, and it comes during the only part of the song that was actually decent to begin with, while doing nothing about the minute-plus of cringe at the start.

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Sim Broadway
Danger (ARM version)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai

Mad Rat Dead - Passion in Blue
Mahoutsukai no Yoru - Five
Ace Combat 7 - 444

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