Board 8 > [VGMC] Video Game Music Contest 15 announcement!! Noms are 4/15!!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Awesome. Very helpful answers, thanks.

---

barreldragon88 posted...

songs

I don't know that I like any of those enough to support from the beginning. My favorite was definitely No Justice though, and it's the type of song I could at least see myself switching to on the final day if it was already on the border or something.

One FE song I've always liked is Thorn in You, but I think that's been tried a few times unsuccessfully already.

Earthshaker posted...

Similarly, I was asking on a Discord last night if slow songs ever perform well. I was also curious whether minimalistic stuff does well, too, since I might be considering some OLD, not upbeat stuff.

In the absolute sense these can do well, but like without other information I would pretty confidently predict a fast song to do better than a slow song or a complex song to do better than a minimalistic one.

Not that this will stop me though.
---

barreldragon88 posted...

I'm hoping I can gauge interest for some Fire Emblem and Super Robot Wars tracks to help me concentrate my efforts on what has a better shot in the contest.

It wasn't one of the three you posted, but my favourite Super Robot Wars Original Generations track is this, and I'm curious what you think of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUmTTAVqvEE

barreldragon88 posted...

It's difficult for me to grasp b8's taste. Seems like people generally prefer faster songs, but some slower tracks do perform well

It's almost like different people like different things, and that some songs are inherently better than others!

I don't think it's fair to try to characterize "board 8's taste" these days. There may have been a certain character to it in the past, but we're way too across the map to be able to say "this will succeed because it is X." Except for EXSPHERE, because that's literally every possible thing you could substitute for X at the same time, and yet somehow it works even though the song is a hot mess.

---

yeah, pretty sure there's no such thing as "b8's taste" in VGM (nor has there ever been).

---

Mr Lasastryke posted...

yeah, pretty sure there's no such thing as "b8's taste" in VGM (nor has there ever been).

there definitely has been
---

Mr Lasastryke posted...

yeah, pretty sure there's no such thing as "b8's taste" in VGM (nor has there ever been).

NFUN posted...

there definitely has been

I dipped out of VGMC for a while because of it! Here's hoping there's a place for me again.

This is largely because I don't know how to talk the nuts and bolts of music the way most people passionate in this area do, and my brainlet takes boil down to "does this sound good to me" without understanding zany time / key signatures or whatever else.

And also because Gust is overrated.

---

I think you'll find the people who are especially articulate about music are a very vocal minority. (I do not use that term perjoratively.)

---

azuarc posted...

I think you'll find the people who are especially articulate about music are a very vocal minority. (I do not use that term perjoratively.)

They're definitely a majority... in that Mycro on his own gets over half the word count in any vgm match thread
---

you could say "this song sounds good to me" in over 500 words if you try really hard

---

if you feel alienated by people talking about music theory or whatever think about how the people talking about music theory feel alienated by the 95% of people in a topic who feel alienated by the 5% of people who talk about music theory
---

cakophon posted...

you could say "this song sounds good to me" in over 500 words if you try really hard

basically my rankings
---

I like Mycro's posts because he says things that I think but can't say.

Any knowledge of music theory I have comes from Mycro's writeups

---

i have come up with a new theory about music:

you see, some people; music sounds really cool (or bad) but if they think that music that sounds good is bad, suddenly they think that music that sounds bad is good, and now music that is good...is good, and good bad. See: here is the proof: (

[1994] koji kondo write the soundtrack to zelda. and what do you see here? quartal harmoney? what's that? it's what came from when you are an old man and listen to keith emerson LOL what a nerd

[2003] ar tonelico ii came out thenl the reason this soundtrack is "good" (but "bad", if you don't like it) is because this is when kent nagagawa was like saying "hey boys;;;;we're gettin' our hoedown" so then he wrote forest of illusion which is a reference to the Wild West in america composed by The Westside STory which has the ONLY song to EVER be in 6/8 (this is why infelsphere is in 6/8(.

[2009] neon tokyo. well when this game came out, it creates some new music theories, they weren't around before. I'll give some examples. This was the first video game to use "fake choir" instead of real choir. they took singers, and chopped them up; this resulted in many deaths so future games decided to not literally murder vocalists to make their music but instead used a computer to sample the human voice and use it in strange ways......

[2018] breath of the wild' well this is when they realized that there were too many music theories. so they decided to make a game that doesn't have any music. but they still accidentally made music---so to get around this mistake, they decided to pretend that the soundtrack was supposed to be minimalist and influenced by steven reich, and made all the instruments piano and marimba so that i would sound like music for 18 musician

[2020] pso2 episode 6: this is when they realized that pso2 music was "too good" because it had so much music theory in it, so they decided to make it slightly less good by changing every instrument to super saws and dubstep bubbles; but they failed at making it have less music theory so now it is the best sonic forces ost of all time
---

this post is being made merely for the sake of using my newfound power to post. for those who are hungry, fear not... noms are coming soon

---

hey kama, welcome to the board.

lol mycro

---

Toxtricity posted...

i have come up with a new theory about music:

you see, some people; music sounds really cool (or bad) but if they think that music that sounds good is bad, suddenly they think that music that sounds bad is good, and now music that is good...is good, and good bad. See: here is the proof: (

[1994] koji kondo write the soundtrack to zelda. and what do you see here? quartal harmoney? what's that? it's what came from when you are an old man and listen to keith emerson LOL what a nerd

[2003] ar tonelico ii came out thenl the reason this soundtrack is "good" (but "bad", if you don't like it) is because this is when kent nagagawa was like saying "hey boys;;;;we're gettin' our hoedown" so then he wrote forest of illusion which is a reference to the Wild West in america composed by The Westside STory which has the ONLY song to EVER be in 6/8 (this is why infelsphere is in 6/8(.

[2009] neon tokyo. well when this game came out, it creates some new music theories, they weren't around before. I'll give some examples. This was the first video game to use "fake choir" instead of real choir. they took singers, and chopped them up; this resulted in many deaths so future games decided to not literally murder vocalists to make their music but instead used a computer to sample the human voice and use it in strange ways......

[2018] breath of the wild' well this is when they realized that there were too many music theories. so they decided to make a game that doesn't have any music. but they still accidentally made music---so to get around this mistake, they decided to pretend that the soundtrack was supposed to be minimalist and influenced by steven reich, and made all the instruments piano and marimba so that i would sound like music for 18 musician

[2020] pso2 episode 6: this is when they realized that pso2 music was "too good" because it had so much music theory in it, so they decided to make it slightly less good by changing every instrument to super saws and dubstep bubbles; but they failed at making it have less music theory so now it is the best sonic forces ost of all time

Dedf1sh posted...

I like Mycro's posts because he says things that I think but can't say.

---

Mycro is an absolute blessing, and he better not change just because I'm a wuss.

---

trdl23 posted...

I dipped out of VGMC for a while because of it! Here's hoping there's a place for me again.

This is largely because I don't know how to talk the nuts and bolts of music the way most people passionate in this area do, and my brainlet takes boil down to "does this sound good to me" without understanding zany time / key signatures or whatever else.

And also because Gust is overrated.

board 8's taste in VGM is "people can talk about music theory"?

---

lasa is really sleeping on 2011-2013 b8
---

2011-2013 b8 was maybe /especially/ "talking about music theory is actually considered really weird if you do it and people made fun of me and almost bullied me off the site for it" tbh

but also it was definitely a heyday for stereotypical b8 favorites like umineko and gust and stuff moreso than current; though a different flavor of such than what right now is.

i think "board 8's taste" both past/present is incredibly distinct (even if in different ways over time), and i value how distinct it is. but it's definitely something that if you're not part of it it might seem offputting especially because it is definitely /not/ the norm, and the average person is going to feel more at home elsewhere online to talk about vgm. Simply because lots of people are enthusiastic about niches here that don't get recognized elsewhere; and those niches actually sometimes overtake what is more conventionally popular outside of here.

I think that that is a /good/ thing, not because i like "anti-popular_things hipsterism" (i actually extremely dont like that behavior, despite what one might expect from how obscure or weird what i love most is); but i think it shows this community can foster a variety of dissimilar tastes that other places don't even have the open mind (or even enthusiasm/knowledge for digging for obscure or unusual gems) to humor most of the time.

and it's important for there to be variety in types of communities out there; and i would say b8's vgm crew is one that has a distinct feeling to it---it can alienate those who are averse to the unfamiliar, or those who just happen to not fit in with it (i certainly didn't fit in from like the full range from vgmc3-11, only recently is what i like more appreciated, or did i start to align with things b8 liked that i didn't used to), but like even back in vgmc3-5 when i absolutely didn't fit at ALL, i thought it was "cool" that music shared in board8's vgm community was very noticably different stuff than what i'd get exposed to elsewhere online
---

a few points:

first of all, mycro is definitely right about talking about music theory being considered not done in '11-'13 and that people acted like asses to him because he did do that (i remember this well enough that i actually could name names but let's not start drama/bring back bad memories). but that has nothing to do with music taste. someone who writes a 5000 word music theory essay about geofront 4 can like the song the exact same amount as someone who has nothing to say about it other than "this song is so awesome dude cool beat."

second of all, i'm not sure if we're all talking about the same thing here. the board 8 VMGC is definitely very different than a more typical video game music contest where stuff like the super mario bros. main theme and one winged angel or whatever would end up very high. so i echo what mycro said about that. but that doesn't mean the board generally gravitates towards the same kind of songs. look at some of the songs that did the best last time - can you say they all sound similar?

• endeavour: symphonic pop song
• isoleucine: dance song with orchestral and electronic elements, lots of "fusion" chord changes
• geofront 4: downtempo, ambient song

i dunno, i always find the selection of songs to be incredibly diverse (that's one of the things i love about this contest btw!!) so it's weird to me to say that there is such a thing as "distinct board 8 VGM taste."

---

lasa is really sleeping on 2011-2013 b8
---

NFUN posted...

lasa is really sleeping on 2011-2013 b8

i'll admit that i don't remember the past VGMCs all that clearly. i know that umineko was SUPER huge in '11-'13 but i'm pretty sure there was lots of different stuff that ended up high in the contests as well!

(also, even within umineko, there's plenty of variation, so i'm not sure if that really proves your point! dai's stuff is very different from zts's stuff.)

---

I would even say Umineko was huge before 2011-2013 b8 when it had 3 songs retired in both 2009 and 2010.

---

Mr Lasastryke posted...

i'll admit that i don't remember the past VGMCs all that clearly. i know that umineko was SUPER huge in '11-'13 but i'm pretty sure there was lots of different stuff that ended up high in the contests as well!

(also, even within umineko, there's plenty of variation, so i'm not sure if that really proves your point! dai's stuff is very different from zts's stuff.)

zts's stuff was trancey and a bit electronic. That was part of "b8 taste" then. dai's stuff was emotional VN music. That was also part of "b8 taste" then. Look at the retiree field; it is extremely, if not exclusively, self-consistent.
---

"trancey" is actually probably one of the most consistent elements of "board 8 taste" across the entire range of like 2009 to now lol. it lines up with everything from zts umineko to even isoleucine/geofront4 at some level haha

but what factors people lean in on definitely change over time; and obviously between different groups of people here. and what i was talking about is how there's a /variety/ of very distinct sectors of taste here. there's always been the people big on zts umineko style or dai umineko style; which aren't necessarily the same people who've been big on falcom battle themes, or gust vocal stuff (or gust instrumental stuff!), or rhythm game music! all these categories are totally different, but make up things that aren't highly represented outside of this community necessarily, and that definitely defines a jarringly different vibe (or set of vibes) you'll experience here, relative to outside of here.

more newly grown (as in past few years) is the "prog/fusion/[complex music] sphere" which does contain a few older members like me/kao/jona/lasa, but also plenty of newer members allow it to be louder like cako, nfun, place, sergio, haste, etc. even if we don't all agree on everything, stuff like pso2 or geofront or whatever certainly wouldn't have the success it has now. and not every community has a bundle of people that react in this sorta way to music

another newer sector is definitely the group that likes 'weird' and especially weird electronic music distinctly, ie gamebop/hotdogturtle/collen/place/etc, and i think that little niche helped push the more electronic stuff further AND the more weird stuff further. this trend certainly shows in recent retirees, and strongly contrasts the kinds of stuff that used to do well in the past and even contrasts the sorts of things the group described in the previous paragraph might push, despite where you might expect overlap

the music you hear in the contest reflects these varied sectors of interests that different groups of people have. but it still is "board 8 taste", just like any individual can have a varied taste, a mesh of communities and their intersecting subsets of fandoms can have a varied taste; but it coalesces into something you won't find elsewhere, once you combine this variety together.

like you have the people who like complex-ish jazz fusion harmonies and the people who like umineko trance. what happens when you combine those categories together? (isoleucine)

and these combinations of overlap, that's what makes it so a band of dozens of people who might otherwise not have much musically in common with each other to go YEAH I LOVE KEN NAKAGAWA and enthusiastically dig for more other stuff that fits their odd areas of intersection

this is why i think the compatibility chart thing (especially the thing p0 hosted with the visuals) is cool; you can almost visually see the different categories of music people in this community like, as long as you know the kinds of things the different people listed tend to represent

i'd love even more stats and features with it. maybe some programming that doesn't leave those who don't hit the right thresholds out? like if someone's maximum compat is 55%, chaining them to the nearest person with a dotted line?? it definitely left people who DO fit, out of the picture, even tho they certainly have compatibility pairs. i'll definitely be way too busy to deal with that stuff so i hope player0 or haste or whoever will be messing with those stats can come up with some fun new ways to analyze that stuff.
---

yeah that makes sense. i didn't actually think about this super hard or do much research, i was just like "i always hear a lot of different stuff in VGMC" but i absolutely believe that the board 8 VGMC crowd gravitates towards a number of specific genres now (and didn't care so much for these genres in the past).

---

I've always felt that there was a general kind of music that "B8 VGMC voters" liked and that it has shifted over the years but lacking the technical knowledge of music theory to describe it I've always been left with profoundly unhelpful descriptors like "okay so at the very beginning vgmc was all about the usual popular songs from the general music community with maybe a tilt towards the games specifically popular on b8. then it started shifting more towards some trance and alternative stuff like zts umineko, gust, and falcom. then a period i can't rightly describe but rhythm game music did well here but that's not even a genre at all it covers so many things. and right now i think it's more electronic-y and 'weird' (but not in a bad way!) music then it once was."

so i try not to talk about it too much other than stating that i'm pretty sure you could divide vgmc into some rough eras that share similarities with one another and yet are distinct from the others.

---

Toxtricity posted...

i'll definitely be way too busy to deal with that stuff so i hope player0 or haste or whoever will be messing with those stats can come up with some fun new ways to analyze that stuff.

Whoa don't go saying I have some great programming or advanced math skills here like P0 [and many others] does! (good with spreadsheets, though) Really, though, there are things we can do to help connect users better that are relatively easy. For example, comparing users by the kind of vgm is something I thought might be fun to do, where compatibility stats wouldn't even be required. Metal, "weird", 90's, 16-bit, eclectic, orchestral, Nintendo.... There are many ways we could classify music from which we could obtain all kinds of voter data, just simply saying what % of the time they vote for XXXX classification (some categories would work better than others; e.g. "Nintendo" vote data could be interesting, but it's very broad)

---

HasteDeux posted...

There are many ways we could classify music

This tends to create much larger issues.

---

HasteDeux posted...

For example, comparing users by the kind of vgm is something I thought might be fun to do

iirc this has been done...kind of? i dont know if these charts ever made it onto the board proper but i remember huge overlapping venn diagrams of taste being workshopped in the discord..

actually i am probably misremembering and this was for vgmgg. though the point still stands there's vague precedent for it though i am not a fan of how reductionist it can be at times especially when categorizing people who don't have much of a say in where they go

---

I am an alt of Nez, Plas and Place, which is pretty accurate. Though I think I'm more Dire than Plas, and those two aren't connected for some reason which is silly. Should be Akk too tbh

You're Pablo, Moon, Glacier and Zoom, which I don't think is as correct...
---

pyresword posted...

I don't know that I like any of those enough to support from the beginning. My favorite was definitely No Justice though, and it's the type of song I could at least see myself switching to on the final day if it was already on the border or something.

One FE song I've always liked is Thorn in You, but I think that's been tried a few times unsuccessfully already.

@pyresword I listened to the Roar version of TiY recently and prefer it FWIW. Wonder if it has a better shot. Fates may have a shitty story, but it has a killer soundtrack

sergiocornaga posted...

It wasn't one of the three you posted, but my favourite Super Robot Wars Original Generations track is this, and I'm curious what you think of it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUmTTAVqvEE

@sergiocornaga Sadly, Alfimi's theme never touched me the likes of Ash to Ash, Trombe, Arrow of Destiny have

---

kamakazikila posted...

this post is being made merely for the sake of using my newfound power to post. for those who are hungry, fear not... noms are coming soon

Adorable <3

---

HasteDeux posted...

Whoa don't go saying I have some great programming or advanced math skills here like P0 [and many others] does! (good with spreadsheets, though) Really, though, there are things we can do to help connect users better that are relatively easy. For example, comparing users by the kind of vgm is something I thought might be fun to do, where compatibility stats wouldn't even be required. Metal, "weird", 90's, 16-bit, eclectic, orchestral, Nintendo.... There are many ways we could classify music from which we could obtain all kinds of voter data, just simply saying what % of the time they vote for XXXX classification (some categories would work better than others; e.g. "Nintendo" vote data could be interesting, but it's very broad)

kaonashi programmed the hard stuff, I just stuck it in a website...

For anyone out of the loop, a fun bonus of voting in the contest is that we collect your data and sell it to-- uh, I mean, analyze who votes the same in each match to create a compatibility network: https://p0p0p0p.github.io/src/vgmc14/bracket.html

The bracket makers probably take notes on each song's "kind of vgm" when seeding the matches. If it could be distilled into meaningful categories, I'd certainly be hungry for more data to play around with...

Toxtricity posted...

i'd love even more stats and features with it. maybe some programming that doesn't leave those who don't hit the right thresholds out? like if someone's maximum compat is 55%, chaining them to the nearest person with a dotted line?? it definitely left people who DO fit, out of the picture, even tho they certainly have compatibility pairs. i'll definitely be way too busy to deal with that stuff so i hope player0 or haste or whoever will be messing with those stats can come up with some fun new ways to analyze that stuff.

I remember you suggesting this before - I didn't forget! I can do something with the graphs like Haste did in VGMC 13 with that "best friends/worst enemies" spreadsheet.

I already showed my planned first 5 in the Discord guessing games; sharing here as well for informational purposes. I know I felt very silly last year when two of my day 1 noms turned out to be duplicating other people's...

Star Ocean: The Second Story - We Form in Crystals
Oninaki - Battle -Threat-
Etrian Odyssey III - Labyrinth VI - The Vengeful God in the Dark Ocean Abyss
The Caligula Effect: Overdose - Cradle
Final Fantasy III (DS) - Memory of the Wind ~Legend of the Eternal Wind~

I have a bunch more stored away as well, but will decide if I want to use them after taking notes on day 1 noms.

---

random minor thing i felt like mentioning now since i've been mulling it over a bit more today

there's a specific rhythm game nom i've been considering for a while that i think i'll actually go with, but the thing is i'm very likely going to pick a live play link for it specifically because i like how it sounds with the game's intro and outro bgm. not sure if that's a thing i should be doing or not <_<

also feel free to guess which song i'm considering based on this, there's probably a lot of valid answers but this is maybe one of the more known, predictable ones?

UF8 posted...

random minor thing i felt like mentioning now since i've been mulling it over a bit more today

there's a specific rhythm game nom i've been considering for a while that i think i'll actually go with, but the thing is i'm very likely going to pick a live play link for it specifically because i like how it sounds with the game's intro and outro bgm. not sure if that's a thing i should be doing or not <_<

also feel free to guess which song i'm considering based on this, there's probably a lot of valid answers but this is maybe one of the more known, predictable ones?

well many, many times, i have said that speed star kanade sounds 90x more cool with the sound voltex effects actually applied to it....

i'm not really sure what you're talking about with intro/outro bgm tho, i'm not sure how i feel about that

BUT i guess actually uhhhh we left that intro jingle sound in Got Hive of Ra because i didn't know how else to get it at the time lol
---

ok i'll just admit it

it's the obligatory nekomata pick i quietly settled on after checking ones a while back
https://youtu.be/WP6Ruk1yLQM?t=5

those starting and ending jingles are used in all nostalgia songs but they rarely fit as well as here.. or maybe not fit so much as complement it

well azu definitely wouldn't have allowed that (a Bergentrckung situation, but even less related?) but...deo....the biggest Bergentrckung fan in the world...would he? (or would i? i'm undecided right now but i'm leaning no at the moment lol it feels cheating) ((also this song is really good but i'm not surprised to enjoy it given the composer))

regardless i am actually very impressed how well those starting/ending jingles fit with the song, curious how deliberate that is. this is what professor layton music would sound like with nekomata master as composer
---

i understand that it's kind of... well, yeah, very technically problematic and that's why i knew i should ask about it, but i feel that perhaps as long as people correctly identify that the jingles aren't literally in the song, but that conversely the song is somehow built around them quite well (while still being a pretty damn good nekomata song on top of that)... i dunno, bergentruckung definitely did come to mind as a precedent to still not do so but it still is a contributing factor in me wanting to pick it and i feel like it'd be a shame for that aspect to not be clear to others since it is actually pretty cool imo

good chance i might pick a different song otherwise, it was basically really just that potential x factor with it that was making me lean towards it, if possible, over other options from him

i guess the best way of putting it is that while i definitely don't consider these jingles part of the song (or even part of the same game soundtrack lmao) i consider them an essential aspect of it, which is rare to say the least and exactly why i knew i wanted to pick it

UF8 posted...

i guess the best way of putting it is that while i definitely don't consider these jingles part of the song (or even part of the same game soundtrack lmao) i consider them an essential aspect of it, which is rare to say the least and exactly why i knew i wanted to pick it

As much as we try to judge these songs as discrete entities, knowing the surrounding context like this sometimes has a huge impact on how we perceive them. This also reminds me of DM DOKURO's outros, which have gone mostly unchallenged before.

i mostly close the video when dm dokuro's outros play lol

i think...dm dokuro outros are very obviously not part of the songs, to me (in guessing games people always assume it's a new song, if they're not already familiar) but uf8's case I had to actually pay attention to notice the intro/outro jingle weren't part of the same song and wasn't immediately clear where the division was
---

clearly the real solution is for me to get 5 songs from the nostalgia series in so everyone realises they have the same jingles

terraria calamity BANNED

---

NFUN in shambles

But how many YO is he? Is Crabulon HOT!?!?

---

but the Outro was a pretty song an u r jus bad at vgmc nommo cus bad u bad an want all oms to be serious bu t outro wanted 2 be different so he like I silly songo an wear no an if I ge t removeded from contest then all song be like the same an u make vgmc turn int o communist . I think that the next vgmc song should be super edge and named SagnusScrotum
---