Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 44! Best of Times / Mahoujin / DNF / Dreams in a Pie (LAST DAY OF R1)

(+) 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.
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Purple
Pie

As usual, I have nothing else to say except that this is Light of Nibel but also Nier Automata

another song hitting me harder than usual. Especially 1:10 that part is PSO hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Every contest needs at least one Taiko rep otherwise it shouldn't count

if only gamefaqs allowed usernames as long as my other handle

surprisingly nice. it's obviously super nice--that's essentially it's defining feature--yet it still manages to surprise on each listen. I remember not liking it too much some time ago. I guess I've come around to it a bit. At the very least, it's impossible to hate, which makes it the de facto winner of this match

day of colors

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF

taiko banger?
DNF is something I have COMPLEX feelings about. I like a lot of the melody, but the backing and non-melody portions turn me off. I'll vote for it here, but this will probably be the only time in the contest unless things go badly wrong somehow.

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Woo! I had to wait 44 days, but I finally get to vote for Dreams in a Pie!

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

I keep forgetting that World of Goo actually has really good music.

Not even the best "Murasaki" VGM smh (actually this is very close)

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DNF is far from my favorite Blue Reflection song, and Blue Reflection is far from my favorite Gust OST.

Dreams in a Pie is simple, but pretty.

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

Dreams in a Pie is nice. But it is matched against top tier VGM. I see (ALL PHASE MIX) and I vote. If someone had nominated Flightless (ALL PHASE MIX) I would have voted for it by reflex.

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

World of Goo - Best of Times
Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream - Dreams in a Pie
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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie


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Sceptilesolar posted...

Dreams in a Pie is nice. But it is matched against top tier VGM. I see (ALL PHASE MIX) and I vote. If someone had nominated Flightless (ALL PHASE MIX) I would have voted for it by reflex.

nom this next year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgFK3VqNgg

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)
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Best of Times
Dreams In a Pie

Dreams In a Pie [9.5]
DNF [8.5]
Best of Times [7]
Summon Delta [7]

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

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Best of Times (233rd) vs Mahoujin -Summon Delta- (153rd)
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX) (4th) vs Dreams in a Pie (241st)

the final day of round 1 is also the SCARIEST and has the match i feel the strongest about in round 1 lmfaoooooo oops

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

More like not the best of times lolololol. I mean I don't think it's bad it's really not the best tho. Mahoujin has that melody at 1:19 - 1:30 or so that feels copied from another song. Hunter's Chance? Instrumentation here kinda sucks.

Not really a fan of phase 1 of DNF. Maaya Sakamoto is pretty good. Close match.

DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX) = Dreams in a Pie > Best of Times > Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

Best of Times (7.0 - 42nd place) / Mahoujin -Summon Delta- (9.4^ - 7th place)
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX) (8.5v - 17th place) / Dreams in a Pie (9.2^ - 9th place)

Dreams in a Pie got such a bad draw. Hopefully it can (at least) lose respectably. [THANK YOU rwlh for nominating this. It's one of my favorite "emotional" pieces ever. The real rating is 9.53, 24th place overall] Oh, hey, R1 is about over! That means it's time to post my final rankings! Sorry, they've been revised...well, mostly just the top ~75. Everything below that is still really rough, and I just don't have the drive to revise the score for that many tracks! Also, props to Toxtricity... all eight (if eight is correct) of your nominations ended up in my top 25! o-O Believe me, not all your noms of previous years would have scored that high. I did give cako and kaonashi higher prelim ratings for Day 1 noms this year, though. Anyway, the spreadsheet is bare bones because I didn't prepare properly! I'll probably add the composer and nominator at some point.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zcxrtk1dw90RQV3VygAQ4lZgIB2mDDIkr6tPwHIHnME/edit?usp=sharing

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

I impulsively threw in the Mahoujin nomination after listening to every single Taiko no Tatsujin song by Hisui and becoming instantly obsessed with him (ask Toxtricity). Really cool synth prog composer, it's not shown off in this song but he uses Japanese instruments in his music a lot too if that's your kind of thing

I probably chose incorrectly and should've picked Gashadokuro from Kimidori Ver. instead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV0k-bLTbQQ), which I think is a little better overall. The reason I picked Mahoujin is that it has my favorite part of anything I've heard by Hisui, which is, of course, the syncopated piano bashing in the first half. But it's not just that the part is inherently cool on its own (tho it is), but it's also cool how it's developed in the song. The first time through, it smoothly flows into a very pretty line that leads into the soaring section at 0:25, and the second time through, it stays aggressive and sinks down into the dark organ section that follows (hi quartal run at 1:04). Both extensions of the same piano part are completely different and yet feel completely natural and I just think that's neat

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Times
DNF
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Mahoujin
DNF

-(when i was younger(the vgmcs a long time ago when this best of time song was in) I was very critical of this because i derided people who like the big scary epic orchestra choir songs as the big scary shallow old men who live in the fake castle. i am NOT like that anymore; and i thought i would be rating this way higher because I like "the big scary epic orchestra choir songs" because i have turned into a big scary shallow old man now that lives in a fake castle, but something about the vocals here THIS specific listen only is bothering me. I think it feels too silly in the way it's recorded like a "siiva rip" or something, kinda the same complaints i have about the impresario and then i can't take the darkness seriously anymore; still everything else about the mood and tone is great and evil and i like that)-

-[chz sent me like 200 (20) taiko songs all by this composer as youtube links on discord and then i did not listen to any of them and he kept talking about it and without listening i said he should nominate one for vgmc and then he nominated this one and then i listened to this during noms and i felt BAD for ignoring all the cool songs my cool friend was linking me because this was so cool. Unfortunately i never got back to listening to all the links before the videos all disappeared which is why i had to upload this. i'll get around to exploring this Hisui composer at SOME point
~~~~~
it's not a secret that i like "progressive rock" and this is very neatly fitting into that genre because it has a rock organ that plays weird notes and stuff. My favorite moment is the part where the piano is doing a pseudo-5/8 rhythm but everything else is in 4/4 (polymeter) like at :53-1:09. the piano loop is like 5+6+5+6+10, which adds up to 4/4 after a few bars, but the "feeling" is absolutely "two different timesigs at once" which is the more important part about why i love polymeter and polymeter-like things than any technical definitions. It generates this sudden sense of freedom and ROTATION that fits with the video background that "polymetric manectric on youtube" made that is spinning around, clearly cycling motions of various sorts intersecting and sometimes lining up but sometimes not. This transitions very nicely into the actual full on 5/8 part immediately after.
~~~~~
i have changed my mind my actual favorite part is a l lthe transposing chords on the piano/synthbell combo thing at like :08-:19 that feel like "video game music boss (tarkus(video game)) like when i went to my cousin andrew's house and he was playing a "violent video game" called Super Mario 64 which had checker board tiles on it and also half-life but the music i heard from some other game that had a gun i have 0 chance of remembering was like some harsh opl fm synth dos game song that had a fake sitar that was really loud and atonal and it sounded like tarkus but also i am probably making this all up because i was a child when this memory occurred. but like the idea of "video games" sounding like that was kinda foreign to me because at the time i mostly played games that were like not games "people who played video games" played, like Myst and Alan Parsons On Air Interactive CD-ROM and Moraff's Escapade Shareware Version...so that foreign mystique of "video game music is atonal" was cool (though i was already primed to it because of Lode Runner The Legend Returns having a lot in that vein; i feel "boss music" is quite a different world than "dissonant dungeon theme". i guess it's better to say this faint memory re-inforced this concept. I was playing all these "computer games" that were "computer games" because old people played them, but he was playing "Video games" that were rated M while he was 10 and i was just like OMG thetse games have the big notes that are so unique and sound like a video instead of a computer and i wasn't alllowed to play them because i was to osmall so it was like getting a glimpse into another reality where music was even weirder than lode runner the legend returns meltdown metropolis)
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"every section of this song is cool" and it flows between all of them very well, and references earlier ideas in fascinating ways that make me happy to hear. It doesn't feel like it's only 2:23 somehow]-

-{i miss place's taiko no tatsujin plush that was so cute i loved interacting with it becaise the smile on its face made me so happy and also it is the face of so many of the coolest rhythm game songs in the world of which this is one of}-

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-(blue refelection m usic sounds like the color blue and crystals because i said that it did. i never remember what any of these songs sound like except for albiero lake which is my favorit eone. but that's ok, because : ) that means it's always a new experience every time! A new adventure! the big string chords sound like they are ready to take me for a fun journey into the cloud. Hayato asano song has polymeter or otherwise "rhythm patterns that are like a weird asymmetrical device" in it which is my favorite part "obviously james". I love the low string from 4:02-4:13's weird pattern that is too hard to think about without "trying". but actually it's not my favorite part is the big chords that make very shiny blue plastic appear in my vision that is very reflective at the moment phase 3 gets so shiny at 5:20. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH that part feels so cool!!! oh and i guess it has polymeter there too with the 3+3+3/16 patterns in the one layer at 5:31 that are like all the zts songs that do that like deadangle. yeah i like those things because they sound like a computer calculating the next move before the cyber CANDY BOOK STORE (i wonder why i don't complain about blue reflection songs being too happy))-

-[Yoko Kanno is such an eclectic composer it's hard to fathom. there's a couple sounds i can point to that she has but this is very different from the songs i think of when the name pops into my head. My favorite element here is although there's a pretty constant steady 3/4, how many groups of 2 join the rhythm to alternate it at various times and make it so "trippy", this first becomes noticeable at 1:00 when the flutes come in and it's so pretty and fun!!!!!!! this is one of thos vocal songs where i don't know the words at all except for random parts i know really well and like the way the words sound; happy : ) sad credits music (why am i not complaining about this song being too happy????)]-

-{wow now i have listened to and ranked every song NO MORE WRITEUPS EVER good bye}-

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta- (14th/256)
DNF FW15C (75th/256)
Dreams in a Pie (154th/256)
Best of Times (214th/256)

here are the ranking spreadsheet (VERY rough tbh take it with a grain of salt)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fPEVWhLu_1Vm0L8N7WQfrnZGPXziguz6R6tpIHqSyqs/edit?usp=sharing

originally i rated every song with a number but i got rid of that since it didn't make any sense. it was kinda like a points based score system in the vein of rwlh's non-vgm ranking topic and it resulted in things like Natural Life A (2nd place) being 9.4/10 while central tower axis pillar was 10/10...like that represents how over the top high i love axis pillar relative to almost all other music but doesn't make sense with how most people think of ratings because it'd mean there's like 0 songs between 9.4-10 (natural life a is a contender for top 100 song for me lol)

one thing that was originally there was Everlasting Love (256th) being 0.6/10 and psycho soldier (255th) being 3.5/10. that's still "real" of a gap (largest gap by far in the ratings)
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Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

What the heck Best of Times had a part with lyrics this whole time!!! This is just like what happened with Danger, but at least they fit pretty well in context this time.

~= END OF: ROUND 1 =~

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Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

might change my mind on the second one

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

-{close}-

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

"Nice song" vs "Woo Taiko no Tatsujin!!"

Voting like this makes me feel all icky because Yoko Kanno is one of my absolute favourite composers and Hayato Asano is nowhere near there. However, I do feel that the Blue Reflection song does a lot of things I like. The melody is a bit cheesy for my tastes, but it matches the magical girl context. The stars of the show as usual with these kinds of Asano songs are the fun chords and the production. I want to like the Kanno song more than I do, and it is a very typical "Kanno song", but it's also not the style of Kanno I'm a huge fan of. With that said, I'll be nomming some "better" VGM Kanno next year (Nobunaga's Ambition, Uncharted Waters) and I hope that does well.

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

dreams in a pie :(

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

I feel like Dreams in a Pie is sort of like Bound Together, but not the full deal, in that right now I like this song more than it may seem like I might, but it's still not enough to be all that competitive. I do respect it though. I like the thing with those single syllables going into that alternate key tone at :29 and then :39.

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Taiko no Tatsujin: Murasaki Ver. - Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Blue Reflection - DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)
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Best of Times
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

I've cooled off on DNF a bit, but it's still pretty solid. Dreams in a Pie is cute though

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

Dreams in a Pie just makes me smile, and I can't stop :D

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie
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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
Dreams in a Pie

This isn't what I expect from a game titled World of Goo. I am intrigued but also mildly terrified. (Not of the song. The song itself is some good shit.)

Summon Delta is really fun!

My biggest fear with long songs is that I will not enjoy them all the way through, but when I thought only three minutes had passed, it was well into the fifth minute. There's a lot going on that I like! A lot of little bits and bobs that remind me of songs I like.

This seeding is very mean and I'm mad. I like both songs about equally, as someone who values fun and exciting tracks as much as sweet and emotional.

Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

At long last, it's finally here. I've been in love with Dreams in a Pie for ages. The best word to describe it is "lovely." The piano, the vocals, the strings, the playful lyrics. The lyrics alone are worth the price of admission! Few songs are as...well, wholesome as this. I'm so happy I could finally get it into VGMC and share it with you all. (Also the copyright protection helped with that.)

HasteDeux posted...

THANK YOU rwlh for nominating this. It's one of my favorite "emotional" pieces ever. The real rating is 9.53, 24th place overall

I'm so glad you like it! I've noticed most of the songs I really like tend to place low on your rankings/ratings, so I'm glad we have at least one overlap.

Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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World of Goo - Best of Times
Napple Tale: Arsia in Daydream - Dreams in a Pie

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World of Goo - Best of Times
Blue Reflection - DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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Best of Times
Dreams in a Pie

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Mahoujin -Summon Delta-
DNF FW15C (ALL PHASE MIX)

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best of tims
DNF FW15C ALL PHASE MIX

dreams in a pie really did get a bad draw.
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