Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 21! Bunwaii/Night City, CCD/Highland Fields, DESIRE/WretchdAutomaton

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welcome to Video Game Music Contest 16, 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=475935
Contest info sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_IU5iCFTM_4WEx8ZWKwznMz5v2tarCKh1Ag0mxIgAes
Contest discussion thread: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/8-gamefaqs-contests/80027411
Main bracket playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLT3m7iohpL0xxfgkmGKvEyWfHvNZ53Kbn
Last years spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16XAaBMDuUnQ4c5AxQNL9ZhvD7VG5kQyrXWWZxnkrn-o
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 send an absentee vote to @banshiryuu, or post your absentee vote in the discussion thread!

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Match 1

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Composer: Yoshimi Kudo
Loop Point: 1:31
Genre: DJINN MARCH
https://youtu.be/2P56Qd8ZyS8

Tower Unite - Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Composer: William Reid
Loop Point: 4:42
Genre: PLANET PANIC
https://www.you

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automations

Bunwaii Desert [7]
Alien GF [8.5]
CCD [7]
Grass Ruins [6.5]
DESIRE [7]
Automations [8.5]

9.5
8
9
8.5
9.5
8

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

accelerate and desire both make me want to sing along with the melodies, insanely good (although so much of this quadrant is also insanely good)

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Caravan Stories Bunwaii Desert 4 romp thru the dungeon. funky percussion fills.

Tower Unite Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend) 6 These vocals make this sound like something i'd hear in non vgm music. It's so bold and forthright. Anyway the parts that repeat and stutter are pretty cool, but the general vibe is kinda weird. There are some good standout parts like the last minute's strong vocal change.

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky Colony Collapse Disorder 3 wasn't expecting this song to have such a killer guitar solo. The rest of the chanting like sounds and tribal like mood is annoying

Ketzal's Corridors 4 Highland Fields: Grass Ruins There's a good melody underneath it all. The deep funky ocean sounds arent my vibe though.

Cleopatra's Fortune DESIRE 7 Wow now this is unique. The high pitched repeating fanfare along with the pure swag of the stylish soundfont make this funky and cool. I wanna start disco dancing or dress up in some strange colored 70s clothes to this tune.

NieR 6.5 The Wretched Automatons Actually quite beautiful. I thought the mechanical striking sounds would wear on me, but they hit in a rather rhytmically beautiful way. I feel like im marching in line towards a royal and gothic castle filled with weeping demons.

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky - Colony Collapse Disorder
NieR - The Wretched Automatons

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

I like Yoshimi Kudo :)
I like Yu Shimoda :)
I like Masaru Tajima :)

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Bunny Desert
Cocoa
A Streetcar Named Desire

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Huh, I'm not sure how Bunwaii only got an 8.0. Alien Girlfriend deserves much better than what I gave it, too... It's quite enjoyable.

Bunwaii Desert (8.0^ -26th place) / Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend) (5.6^ - 57th place)
Colony Collapse Disorder (5.7 - 56th place) / Highland Fields: Grass Ruins (7.8 - 31st place)
DESIRE (5.0 - 62nd place) / The Wretched Automatons (6.8^ - 46th place)

DJINN MARCH
FALL DWINDLE
SPHINX'S LUST

frankly not too jazzed on either entrant in match 2
DESIRE is really cool! I think it might be my favorite discovery from the contest so far

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
DESIRE

Very enjoyable day! Match 3 in specific is very tough, but I feel I could vibe more with Desire. The Atelier song sold me for the chorus, it's pretty great.

Desert
Colony
Wretched

Pleased to see the support for desire so far, it just randomly hit my recommendations while in the middle of making my last list with cako, and frankly it was the kind of song that i felt had just captured my attention by chance, especially as i learned the game it was from was a known entity in the community, yet it was clearly far from a preferred pick from it. Honestly really surprised it managed to get in, and even more surprised it can (for now) hold its own against one of Nier's songs.

8.25
6.1
7.1
8.2
8.8
6.5 (i underrated this one but tbh it's just too familiar to get a reaction out of me)

DJINN MARCH
WORLD MAZE
SPHINX'S LUST

on a side note, am confused somebody claimed bunwaii is just a reskinned pmd song and not grass ruins. also on a more sidely side note i'm checking the rest of ketzal's corridors ost now dang this has some really decent stuff outside of that one, that's nice

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky - Colony Collapse Disorder
Cleopatra's Fortune - DESIRE



Ketzal's Corridors is one of my favorite discoveries this year, and it ends up against a song I really love that I tried to get in last year (I think?)

also DESIRE up against my favorite Nier song, this is harsh

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky - Colony Collapse Disorder
Cleopatra's Fortune - DESIRE

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Okay day, nothing I like too much here.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

I wouldn't expect a desert track to be such a banger, but Bunwaii manages it! The energy is high, it doesn't stay in one place too long, it's just a solid enjoyable song.
I like the beat in Alien but the vocal parts put me off, and the changes don't always feel very natural. The first 30 seconds and the final minute are both very nice. There's a good song in here but the whole thing is too messy for me!
Twilight feels more cohesive but the vocals still aren't for me, I think I'd enjoy an instrumental version of this more. Highland is calming but not super remarkable, I could go either way on this one but I'll break from my bracket for the first time!
I don't remember liking DESIRE so much when I listened through the playlist! It's very cool, aside from the like 10 seconds with the vocals in the middle (why am I so anti-vocals today >_>). The constant little woodwind riff makes the whole song. But Automatons has such a great wistful atmosphere. The beautifully haunting vocals complement the busy mechanical DKC-like background, and I like whatever the weird reverberating thing is that starts at :23 and goes throughout. Such a gentle quietly sad song.

Desert: 3.5/5
Alien: 2.5/5
Colony: 2/5
Highland: 2.5/5
DESIRE: 4/5
Wretched: 4.5/5

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Colony Collapse Disorder
DESIRE

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

1. PowerOne
2. You Were There
3. Scroll Stage
4. ???
5. Staff Roll (Super Mario 64)
6. Dreams in a Pie
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. Passing Through the Forest
11. ???
12. ???
13. ???
14. ???
15. ???
16. ???
17. ???
18. Kusanagi Village
19. ???
20. Calling
21. LIN NE KRO NE
22. Egg Reverie
23. ???
24. ???
25. The Glittering City of Yusnaan
26. ???
27. ???
28. Sky Tower
29. ???
30. The Elephant's Foot of Obnoxious Music
31. Time Moves Slow
32. The Apex of the World (Rain)
33. Radical Dreamers ~Unstolen Jewel~
34. Interwoven Stories
35. ???
36. ???
37. ???
38. ???
39. The Wretched Automatons
40. It's Dangerous to Go Alone
41. ???
42. ???
43. xxxx/xx/xx (Remix)
44. Yggdrasil
45. ???
46. ???
47. SaKuRa
48. The Rain Formerly Known as Purple
49. ???
50. Kaze no Ne

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call The Wretched Automatons an underappreciated Nier song, but I'm happy to see it get some recognition at least. That said, SPHINX'S LUST is great too! Tough match, I went back and forth on this one a lot in my favorites bracket.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
DESIRE

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky - Colony Collapse Disorder
NieR - The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

8.2
8.3
7.7
8.3
8.4
9.5

The Wretched Automatons may full well be my favorite song from anything Nier. I'm a sucker for any VGM with industrial clangs, the more the better. Very neat day all around.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
The Wretched Automatons

Match 1 is the highlight today, WHAT is going on in Alien Girlfriend I started lukewarm then hated it then adored it.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

Alien Girlfriend ended up being one of my favorite discoveries from the noms. I have no idea what this game is, but it's hard for me to imagine this playing in a game. It sounds like the type of "regular music" (non-vgm) that I would normally listen to.

2nd match is the only one that's even kind of close.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
DESIRE

Match 2 existed

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

This feels like a day I'm going to be very upset after looking at the scores.

I wish the rest of Wretched Automatons was as good as the first minute.

Caravan Stories has a lot of good songs. Not sure why Bunwaii of all songs is the one that keeps getting in. Accelerate is great. Real unique sound to it that I like a lot.

You've got your Ar Tonelico in my Atelier! Which is a good thing. Some real cool songs today. Highland Fields isn't as exciting. Kinda feels like a knockoff Chrono Cross song.

DESIRE don't have much goin' on either. Wretched Automatons is an inferior version of another song, but it's a good song, so eh.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend) > Colony Collapse Disorder > The Wretched Automatons > Bunwaii Desert > Highland Fields: Grass Ruins > DESIRE

Caravan Stories - Bunwaii Desert
Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky - Colony Collapse Disorder
NieR - The Wretched Automatons

MATCH 1

Bunwaii Desert's a song I thought of nominating myself in the past, so I'm very happy to see it in the contest this year! I love the bouncy rhythm of the percussion, and the melody from the flute and strings is really great too. Another song with some phenomenal harmonic depth with all the layers of instruments in it. I think I'd put this song at maybe third or fourth best in Bracket B.

I don't care for the verses of My Alien Girlfriend all that much, but the chorus at 1:01 is really cool! Some interesting melodic lines in the vocals and synths.

MATCH 2

Colony Collapse Disorder is my second-favorite song in Bracket B! I love how frenzied this song gets. 0:16-0:26 is just one example of this. But really, I love everything about this song.

Highland Fields is sort of a mix of stuff I like and things that are kind of meh. Starting with the positives, 0:25-0:31 is kind of nice, and 1:02-1:23 is pretty cool too. But I don't really like the melody from 0:13-0:24. Also, overall, I'm not a huge fan of how the instruments sound. I'd rather they sound more...I don't know, natural? I can't tell what exactly my issue is with the sound, but all I can say is that I'd rather the instruments sound more like Bunwaii Desert's.

MATCH 3

I like the funkiness of DESIRE. Though the more I hear that brass loop, the more I wish it was a little quieter.

Emi Evans' vocals in The Wretched Automatons is super good! They always are in Nier songs, but the melody here and the echo-y sound of the vocals really makes this song stand out to me.

Colony Collapse Disorder > Bunwaii Desert > The Wretched Automatons > DESIRE > Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend) > Highland Fields: Grass Ruins

bunwaii has never been nominated before this year and the only two caravan stories to have ever been in were laurara's dance and raging spirits

Bunwaii Desert
Colony Collapse Disorder
The Wretched Automatons

Bunwaii Desert
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
DESIRE

NFUN posted...

bunwaii has never been nominated before this year and the only two caravan stories to have ever been in were laurara's dance and raging spirits

...huh. Guess I'm misremembering then. Not sure why I thought it was in before.

Accelerate ~ Night City (My Alien Girlfriend)
Highland Fields: Grass Ruins
--

oh no I am kind of busy and overwhelmed today and may not have a chance to write as much as I want today which is a shame because I have things to say because hey Bunwaii Desert is a good song and I am voting for a vocal song instead. I guess I have a new song to add to my tiny list of "vocal songs I get to enjoy" though I partly wonder how much of that has to do with the Alien aesthetic going on with the instrumental part because I am a sucker for Alien aesthetic and this song does it right. instrumentally at least. Getting into the actual lyrics, I mean eh they're okay, I'm glad they're just about "lets go to outer space" over and over and not too much annoying romance+ type stuff. Really though the real meat of this song is the instrumental stuff but I'm very pleased that it somehow does not feel diminished by the presence of the vocals, which is very rare for me (other than maybe the awkward opening line of "I have a girlfriend"). But yes the instrumental portion of this song is great, does a lot of fun warpy alien effects in varied ways with the pleasant surreal unnatural synths and those unhuman high pitched scratchy squeaks I'm glad the song has those. great stuff this song's might just be my favorite new discovery here that I missed during nominations. Hm these vocals do sound kind of similar to that get jinxed song that I also liked, hmm...

oh and match 3 I can't immediately decide on and I'm feeling a bit rushed and dunno if I'll be around to decide on later but maybe I will but maybe the way I don't know right now is a good reason to abstain