Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 2! feat. Flowers, Cards, and Math using 10, 11, and 14.3

(+) Yeah! (+)

The URL for RINNE - b10 somehow got messed up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbQexPZNjxk

Minecraft - Aria Math
Sakura Wars - Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Pokmon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR! - Duel VS Fortress Leader

Minecraft - Aria Math
Sakura Wars - Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Pokmon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR! - Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
b10
T11

Aria Math
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
b10
Fortress Leader

b10 is my favourite discovery of the whole contest. Great atmosphere, but the choir takes it to another level. That choir popping in at ~1:35 with the bells gives me goosebumps every single time I listen to this track. Sucks that it had to be in the same quadrant as The Suite.

I also did a top 30 for this year like I usually do, but forgot to post it yesterday so whoops? I'll just post what has shown up so far as of tonight.

1. Enthusia Professional Racing - Awakening ~ Nrburgring Suite
2. ???
3. ???
4. RINNE - b10
5. ???
6. ???
7. ???
8. ???
9. ???
10. ???
11. ???
12. Sonic Adventure 2 - Live and Learn
13. ???
14. ???
15. ???
16. ???
17. ???
18. ???
19. ???
20. ???
21. ???
22. ???
23. ???
24. ???
25. ???
26. ???
27. ???
28. ???
29. ???
30. ???

Minecraft - Aria Math
Sakura Wars - Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group (Sakura Shinguuji & Teikoku Kagekidan)
Pokmon Card GB2: GR-dan Sanjou! - Duel! (GR Fortress Leader)

Aria Math > 14.3 Billion Years > Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group (Sakura Shinguuji & Teikoku Kagekidan) >= b10 > Duel! (GR Fortress Leader) > T11

14.3 Billion Years - 8
Nice song, have to imagine context helps a lot tho
Aria Math - 9.5
Yeah so Minecraft kinda has one of my favorite soundtracks ever, which is probably mostly because I grew up* (age 11+) with the game lol. Anyways yeah this song is absolutely beautiful, C418s work on this game has this vibe that I adore.

Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group (Sakura Shinguuji & Teikoku Kagekidan) - 7.5
Decent little song, I just struggle to get into a lot of songs with non-English vocals

b10 - 7.5
Nice song I like

T11 - 6
Uhh this is a song. Its fine, its fairly inoffensive, but Im just genuinely baffled people actually wanted this song in the contest. Whatever, guess Im just not the target demographic.

Duel! (GR Fortress Leader) - 6.5
Pokemon music rarely clicks for me. Its fine, may be biased due to the existence of a GaMetal remix but I didnt even care for it much lol.

Aria Math
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

Aria Math
b10
T11

Big day for calculation today

Aria Math
b10
T11

Aria Math
b10
T11

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Really awful placement for Aria Math.

14.3 Billion Years
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years is a song I didn't support and that I'm not actually happy to see here. Outer Wilds is my hands-down favorite game of all time and I love the soundtrack but so much of my love of it is tied to my experience playing the game - without it, I can't imagine it would hit the same way, and certainly the ending montage of various motifs would mean nothing at all. This credits medley is RIFE with meaning to those who have played the game, basically serving as a recap for all of the game's threads and themes. Honestly, this isn't even a particularly memorable theme from the game for me - the ending theme of the DLC is the one that REALLY made me bawl like a baby, and if I was gonna put something Outer Wilds in it would have been that - but yeah it's still good. But I wouldn't have bothered including it in VGMC because I just think it'd be lost on people. 8/10

Speaking of having strong emotional feelings for music, I am just too fucking old for Minecraft, sorry! Like, I'm sure Minecraft is an amazing game and I know it's deeply nostalgic for a certain bracket of people, which probably does include some people who are my age, but the whole thing is totally over my head. Aria Math's steel pan drum is an absolutely lovely lead and the track builds a lovely little soundscape around it and in most matches I'd probably support it. I'm pretty sure it will continue on to solid success in this contest, feels like a retirement waiting ot happen. 7.5/10

I don't have much to comment on in this next match. Sakura Wars has a fun old-anime flair to it with its energetic ballad and triumphant horns, and the combination of that and the electric guitar solo places it quite definitively in the 90's. It's fun. 6/10

I can't think of anything to say about b10. I have no idea what Rinne is, music sounds like some kinda dungeon-exploring music - it's a nice little discovery. It's moody and weird. I like it. 7/10

Speaking of games I have no idea what they are, Boing Boing & Roger! T11 is another lovely discovery. The lo-fi sound and awful recording quality sort of lends a haunting quality to it. It's a beautiful little melody but I'd be lying if I said the flutes didn't start to pierce the ears a little bit after a couple of minutes. These are the kinds of avant-garde discoveries I love to see in vgmc though. I think I'm more into this for the kangaroo spinning around in perfect time to the music though. It's hypnotic. 7/10

Uhhhh yeah so, Duel VS Fortress Leader was my nom waaaay back in VGMC8, and I'm VERY surprised to see it come back all of a sudden. Figured I was the only one who gave a shit! This is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time - Ichiro Shimakura composed this like he was on a mission to drop the absolute hottest funk the GBC has ever seen. The soundtrack is kind of a one trick pony, but the trick is AMAZING. 8-bit music theory did a great video a little while back covering the compositional mastery used to really wring as much out of the limited headroom you have for full instrumentation on a mere three channels and like every song in the TCG games it's on full display here. I play this game for the music alone and will always keep coming back to it. Catchy and highly addictive - this is pretty much the music I wish I could learn to make. 10/10

Outer Wilds - 14.3 Billion Years
Sakura Wars - Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Pokmon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR! - Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
b10
T11

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 works awesome in-game. On its own, it's still nice, but lacks the same power. Aria Math, OTOH, doesn't rely on context at all, just being an incredibly smooth and chill experience that I enjoy for its entire playtime.

I do not like the singing style of the Sakura Wars song. It's old-fashioned in a bad way to me. It's a pretty good example of this style, though. I like the triumphant riff it has at the end of the verses. b10 reminds me a lot of Steins;Gate music but maybe not as good. It's way more my style, but a worse song, I think.

T11 is booooring. Pokemon music doesn't generally do much for me, but this is a fun example of it. I mostly like the cool intro.

14.3 Billion Years
b10
T11

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

As stupid as this is gonna sound, listening to the first part of 14.3 Billion reminded me to a 100 gecs song, and it improved the experience. It's a pleasant combo of nostalgia for home and orchestrated graciousness, it summarizes the game well, and I like it. Aria Math has been growing on me, it has a captivating design and unusual even for Minecraft itself. I thought this match was going to be closer, but gotta give it to the classics.

Oh, this is sweet! The chorus is a fantastic addition, actually. Strong stuff here for an opening, nice job, Sakura. b10 is epic, but I think it doesn't hit as hard as the melody makes it out to be. It's good for what it is though, just not my stuff.

T11 is... mesmerizing. Beautifiul melody connected with some instruments that evocate better times. I'm pretty speechless, it's great! It's kind of what I expected for such a game title. On the other hand, we have a common TCG banger. Not much to say, it's danceable and high tier Game Boy music. Hmm... yeah, I gotta give to the kangaroos. Too good to pass. Hard decision though!

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

mihata no moto ni is actually a song i've considered nomming multiple years in the past, and while that one is def my fav sakura wars song i love the og op as well!! T11 is one of those songs where it's absolutely insane i know of its existence now and i'm so grateful for it tbh lol, reminds me of soilscraper with how i think my life is noticeably more enriched by knowing this exists

From TunnelScene:

14.3 Billion Years (Outer Wilds)
b10
T11

I've come to appreciate folky guitar melodies, something incredibly distant from anything I ever said I liked when I was younger. I think moving to a desolate desert and enjoying it here, it a major part of my identity certainly has something to do with that affinity. this hits that spot while being an interesting journey. I like numbers

tuned percussion is one of the greatest sounds for my ears. thank you for that, person who is named after number I love those(by which I mean I love numbers)

I love the chord spasms of Takayuki Negishi (well I assume his influence is why this is like what people think modern xenoblade fusion adjacent music is except living even further inside of a dart board)

b10 is like everything I like in music these days at once tbh. RINNE has become one of my favorite soundtracks. I used to find functional harmony with motion I perceived as too predictable very frustrating, but a recent shift in me is coming to actively seek composition in that vein out---i just definitely prefer it done in a subtler, new age-y scenario like this. It winds up giving a climactic fantastical mysterious feel. There's a lot of complexity here seamlessly woven atop too, the 7 (that I somehow didn't even notice in first many listens, which is rare for me to say about odd time), and some trick parallel motion ambiguating a lot of stuff. and yea the production is absurdly perfect for my inclinations, and with dense ethereal 90s (00s) new age dungeon themes at peak of my interests right now, while of all my noms this was one of the ones i was most attached to. This game actually seems weirdly tightly to my tastes and it's high on my list of things I plan to play when I can find the room. Anything featuring lots of collection, and transforming into creatueres, and prerendered isometric presentation? with THIS music? count me in

Boing Boing & Roger is a game I got as a kid at a local bookstore when I asked if they had any computer games and then someone came out saying a thing along the lines of oh, we know someone who makes computer games, we'll have her bring out some stuff she worked on. and then I got this, and a couple seemingly off-brand re-issuings of other educational (or even just like weird video editing) software. i lived in the middle of nowhere mid michigan so I have no idea if these people even knew what they were talking about, but the game is insanely obscure so maybe she did have some loose connection or something. the intensity of that obscurity is something I didn't even conceptualize until recently, there's very few hits for this game even existing online, though i know for sure there were a couple now-gone soundtrack uploads in the past. anyway, growing up I almost didn't even realize how strange a lot about the music is. Most of it is waaay too long for you to hear all of it in the context it plays---the game is largely silent and the couple dozen songs either are bgm to random mysterious stock nature FMVs the game has in it for no reason, or just play to titles/various win game conditions that you'd likely skip early into the track. It's also all very low quality with the raw audio files legit clipping, and instrumentation includes synths that came out over a decade before the game did (like DX7/hardware synth FM patches are actually very rare to hear in VGM even in 1994). This particular track is actually the select who plays first bgm though, and it is definitely weirdly serious & mysterious for the scenario. It also just happens to be quite to both my compositional and timbral tastes! lots of ambiguity in possible places you can be driven to instinctively feel beat 1 which tests your perception of the surrounding composition. Very minimalism-y in that way, though probably more Adams/Glass than reich?? Tho maybe most comparable to real 80s new age like Ray Lynch. Chord changes get pretty interesting with these powerful unexpected emotional motions at these well chosen sparing times. and of course, I'm really enamored genuinely deep with the exact way these distorted clipping loud recordings of whats supposed to be beautiful FM harps justfeels. I love the instrumentation of this soundtrack overall, but this is the most idiosyncratic case imo, like a grainy TV static-y sliiightly corrupted portal viewing into relics of a once beautiful lost temple in ze forest. How symbolic.

ichiro shimakura is someone I associate heavily with music that is very dense and full, like star soldier vanishing earth & frogger's adventures the rescue. it's difficult to express that spacious full production tendency in a chiptune. except he actually does somehow, implied harmonies and just careful choices make me forget how little space the chip this is playing on even has

Aria Math
b10
T11

man that first 8-pack is long though. how is live and learn, a 4 and a half minute song, somehow the shortest one on there...

also those latter two matches are brutal, i'm a bit disheartened not voting for sakura or pokemon here... (they were really tough calls too)

bonus genre posting
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/8/8a91370e.png

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
b10
T11

Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

boy this first match is not for me. b10 is neat and spooky and handily the best song today.

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
b10
T11

14.3 feels particularly pacific northwestern to me. it's pretty but not raw enough to be the kind of folky music that I enjoy, movie trailer music. feels like the woods outside a college town, this may appeal to some.
i love beach percussion.... songs built around percussion will always be really interesting to me, osts like spyro 1 have recently become some of my favorite vgm

lofty castle for vgmc 19

Aria Math
b10
T11

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

feel bad voting aria math bcos i know it'll prob win by a landslide for multiple rounds but eh
BOING BOING SWEEP

Aria Math
b10
T11

14.3 B
B10
Duel

Aria Math
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Outer Wilds remains one of those soundtracks I imagine sould hit harder in context. Aria Math wins in that for me as a result (and I dont know where in Minecraft it plays either)

I'm voting for Falcom o no.

Boing boing is cool but I'm a bit more mesmerized by the metronomic kangaroo than I am the actual melody throughout. TCG2, meanwhile, doing funky GB soundchip things.

Match 3 was the standout for me today.

14.3 Billion Years: One of my favorite discoveries during the nom period. Pretty simple composition, but it's so emotive. Love the instrumentation.

Aria Math: Gorgeous soundscape. Still one of my favorite Minecraft songs. The fact this is a R1 match is pretty rude.

Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group: Definitely sounds like a 90's anime OP, with fun city pop influences. The brass and strings are the highlight here. The vocals are okay, but not my favorite. Good song regardless.

b10: I wish there were an official release of this one, cuz this one feels like it'd sound way better with a proper master. Very atmospheric and neat choral and ambient effects. Cool song overall.

T11: Very nice song, but it's brought down by the audio quality being pretty poor. There's some serious clipping going on here. Still, the instrument choice is neat and there's some solid melodies.

Duel VS Fortress Leader: This is a cool chiptune with a really solid melody. Better than most GBC songs I've heard.

Match 1 is way better than the other two matches.

Votes:
Aria Math
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

I didn't support it, but I love that Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group got in. I've always loved this song. It's so classy.

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

Aria Math
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years is definitely a favorite of mine. Love the use of motif and the cello harmony is just immaculate. Context certainly doesn't hurt, but I don't really agree with the notion the song relies on context. At least personally I loved the song before having played the game at all, and the motifs are all pretty all established pretty well even within just this song. Aria Math also one of my favorites in bracket A, but it had the wrong matchup here. Tuned percussion has always been a pet thing of mine though, and Aria Math delivers in spades there.

Not in a writeup mood for the remaining matches but honestly all the songs are great. Very strong day.

14.3 Billion Years > Aria Math > Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group > Duel vs Fortress Leader > T11 > b10

14.3 Billion Years
b10
Duel VS Fortress Leader

14.3 Billion Years
b10
T11

Aria Math
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Duel VS Fortress Leader

Aria Math
b10
T11

Big day for calculation today

14.3
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
Boing T11

It's hard to judge 14.3 Billion years out of context. How much of what I feel is the culmination of that experience, and how much is the actual song itself? I think 22 minutes does a bit better in isolation, which is why I prefer it, but the universe has chosen otherwise. Though I wonder: what were the odds that the Outer Wilds 'verse is exactly the same age as our own? Does it matter, given that the point of the number is to evoke a certain connection in the listener? Hmm.

Aria math is not for me sorry progheads i'm secretly not one of you (GASP). I do like the strings late in the loop a lot.

this song makes me laugh so much. It's just so, so... Nostalgic? Nostalgia, for a game I never played in a series I played one game of? Look if I start questioning my brain now we'll be here all day. The chorus is just so happy. The mixture of western and eastern sounds works so well; i'mma assume the game is set in Taishou-era Japan? Or somewhere around there. Maybe Meiji but ~1920 feels more right to me. The backup singers I think really seal the deal, just adds that extra bit of magic and uniquity the song would otherwise be missing.

Did you know rinne means samsara, which refers to metempsychosis? If so, congrats on knowing what metempsychosis is! The song feels mysterious. I wonder how much Buddhism is engrained in the game's story. I think this is really cool but it doesn't quite blow me away as much as its opponent, I don't think.

I don't know why I like this song. It feels like a broken music box at first, but then the lower notes come in and it feels like it was right and it was always right and why did you think it wasn't dowolf? Yeah. I dunno. I wish I did.

TCG2 has such a good OST why wasn't it localized boooooooooo. Again a close match where one song just resonates.

14.3 Billion Years
Declaration! Imperial Floral Assault Group
T11

Getting some pretty similar ambient vibes from both of the first match's songs; 14.3 Billion Years does some more cool things in it though

Match 2 is today's highlight, both very good discoveries here (and whoops, one has to go bye-bye on the second day of the contest!)

T11 reminds me a lot of those MIDI dungeon synth albums I binged a while back (really cool sound!), DvFL is one of the better Pokmon TCG songs I've heard (even if I prefer mainline series music)