Rimworld - Moving on and Sole Nobre
I kind of forgot about the Rimworld one… good choice.
Group H Results:
Before the Storm: 18
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: 15
Treasure of the Rudras: 9
Chrono Trigger: 6
Group I
Solo Nobre and Rimworld
This might have been the toughest group for me so far. Brigador is one of my favorite recent soundtracks, and Solo Nobre always had a lock on my first pick, but I really liked all three of the others and went back and forth among them while listening. C&C has the nostalgia going for it, but the news announcer bits got annoying on repeat listens. And Rimworld is lovely, but didn’t quite hold my attention after the first time.
So I’ll go with
Brigador
MUSHA
Brigador and Musha Aleste
Surprisingly
Also my vote. Brigador was easy, and at first I was about to write off Musha, because sound quality. But it stuck with me more than either of the others, though C&C nearly got a nod.
Brigador (I really must go back and play more of it too)
And rimworld surprisingly. I was all set to choose C&C before I listened to them, but for some reason the nostalgia kick wasn’t as big as I was expecting!
Brigador and Musha
For me, Brigador is the clear winner in this bracket. Musha is a little bit more irritating than Rimworld, but also a fair bit more interesting.
Command & Conquer and Brigador
I would have nominated Hell March instead of Act on Instinct, but thankfully the former was already in. That left what I consider the most iconic track from the original game as a fallback option. That said, Act on Instinct does have two versions. The one I nominated is the original version of the track that Frank Klepacki put together for the game, but the developers found that the vocal samples clashed too readily with the unit acknowledgements (i.e. “Yes, sir?”, “Affirmative” and so on) so they asked for a version without them. That version is ultimately the one that made it into the game, but the unaltered version was left on the game disc as a Redbook audio track (along with a few others) and was technically part of the game.
Ultimately, I just went with the track I’d originally nominated and didn’t ask to swap it, even though I agreed with the earlier conversation that music from actual gameplay is generally more meaningful than stuff like credits songs, since the two tracks are 98% similar. This is the in-game variant:
Dude you need to play it, it’s one of the best shmups of the Genesis era.
Brigador and Command and Conquer
Musha Aleste and C&C.
Musha Aleste because it’s awesome and boy, in-game with the varying scrolling speeds, it is even better!
Brigador didn’t survive that nostalgic impact of the first listen here: it turned into a feeling of parody on the subsequent ones - and all those synthwave tracks released in the past couple of years sound samey to me.
I was going to default on the easy-listening Rimworld, but I didn’t feel I was being very fair to the C&C track: I am reading a lot of people thinking 90s with that C&C track, but it sounded Depeche Mode when they got depressed in the early 80s to me, and I overdosed on that. But it’s not something I heard a lot in videogames. I also preferred the version @Otagan posted above.
Haha I got that feeling too. Rimworld must be a wicked game to play.
Comand & Conquer
Rimworld
Brigador and Rimworld for me. I’ve never played either game, but both of those tracks immediately clicked. I was surprised that the C&C track didn’t hold up for me as I have a lot of nostalgia for that game. And while I think I’d dig the Musha Aleste track played with real guitars etc, I just didn’t care for the sound of those synths.
Rimworld and Brigador for me too.
This one was easy peasy for me
Solo Nobre and Rimworld.
Just got to that track as I read this, hahahaha. I do like the laid back, slightly frontier western sound but I’m not sure it’s quite enough to push through here.
Okay, so I like synthwave but the Brigador track felt like it was building up to something… then it faded out. I liked what was there though so, hmm.
C&C has a special place in my heart because my brother and I used to cane it. Act on Instinct is the track that comes to mind when I think of C&C and while that DANG-DE-DANG-DE-DADANG DANGDANG-DE-DANG-DANG is iconic, I stay for the chorus.
The biggest surprise here for me is the MUSHA track. Again, like C&C’s Act on Instinct and Chrono Trigger last week, it’s the chorus or refrain that keeps me listening. The sustained intensity does seem like it would be exhausting but several loops later and I’m still good.
So let’s go with C&C and MUSHA.
Group I Results:
Brigador: 20
RimWorld: 12
Command & Conquer: 10
Musha Aleste: 10