Group R:
Gabriel Knight and Nex Machina
Gabriel Knight
and Nex Machina. I have the album on my mp3 player. It’s excellent.
Oh, and at some point I forgot about Rez. Probably because I class this Adam Freeland track as my music collection, not game music. The thing with Rez is that all 5 main track sound best in game with the sound triggers/etc but this one ended up on my regular breaks/d&b playlists for years.
It’s about 3:00 where the vegetation grows out of the floor and new creatures start evolving, its just perfectly done in game.
CHOOOOON
as they say
If you don’t bold your votes, they might miss counting them.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to find this specific arrangement around the time Rez was originally released.
Yeah, I’m working on this too!
Haha, and believe it or not it’s one of the least post-apoc areas! ;-)
The Amusement Park track is one of my favourites from Nier: Automata so that’s an easy choice! Love the melody of the vocals and strings.
I like the powerful brass and piano driven tune of the Sins of the Fathers track but wasn’t wild about the section that starts two thirds of the way through which felt quite weak comparatively. Glad that gave way to the main melody again!
Fire Caverns was a stomper. Strong first impression and quite atmospheric but it didn’t really hold my attention as much as I’d expect.
The FFXIII-2 track was lovely but then the vocals abseiled through the window and kind of spoilt it. They sounded flat at times to me too. Still, I thought the rest was stronger than the other FFXIII tracks here.
Nier: Tomato and… I could go for either Nex or FFXIII-2 but I’m going to go for the latter. One for my soft side.
Yeah, Mind Killer totally is a CHOOOOON. Major love for the California Soul sample too.
Edit: oh and I’m a big fan of his remix of Metronomy’s Gimme Sympathy.
Group R results:
Nex Machina: 17
Gabriel Knight: 14
NieR: Automata: 7
Final Fantasy XIII-2: 3
Gotta go with Street Fighter II and Katamari Damacy.
Edit: I’m torn, but I changed my vote. Hate to see HaIo miss out, but I guess I can’t vote for three.
Overall really liked this group, Halo excepted. But I gotta go with Etrian Oddyssey and Katamari
Etrian reminds me of neoclassical influenced prog Metal, something like old school Vinnie Moore Time Odyssey era stuff. Which I fully approve of.
Katamari is… so very Katamari. Weird, fun, and unlike anything else of its era.
There’s not a bad song in the group, but my nod goes to Etrian Odyssey III and Halo - Combat Evolved.
If Street Fighter II - Guile’s Theme doesn’t go through, something is really messed up here. Classic.
I love the Etrian Odyssey track… Yuzo Koshiro!! His mark is on this contest at least. That said, Katamari Damacy is excellent and that track is superb.
Group S:
Katamari Damacy, Street Fighter 2
Etrian Odyssey III and Street Fighter II
Katamari Damacy
and
Street FIghter II - Guile’s Theme, after all, it goes with everything.
This is probably the uniformly strongest set of songs so far, for me. I had a really hard time choosing. I was particularly surprised by the Etrian Odyssey tune, which I expected to be middling fantasy nonsense as I wasn’t aware Koshiro did the soundtrack for those. It might have edged out Guile’s theme, but at the end of the day I figured SF2 was more timeless.
I wanted to retro-gamer-cool-kid-hipster-hate Halo, but I couldn’t, it’s a really good tune as well. Probably 4th in this particular set for me, but still very good.
Oh my fucking god this group is so unfair. Loved all of these (and knew I loved Katamari and SF2 going into it; I never actually played Halo or Etrian Odyssey).
That said, I think. . . think. . . I have to go with
Etrian Odyssey 3 - "Hoist the Sword with Pride in the Heart"
and
Katamari Damacy - "Katamari on the Rocks"
But damn that was hard. Particularly dropping “Guile Theme” which has so many awesome meme-based memories tied to it (but exactly zero positive gaming memories because I always played Guile in SF2 when I was a kid and got my ass kicked 100% of the time by people who knew how to do special movies in that game but wouldn’t teach me the secrets. If you ever want to know why Super Smash Bros is my favorite fighting series by a country mile, it’s because I believe tying success in fighting games to manual dexterity based power moves is fucking bullshit and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise, but only in SSB because otherwise I’ll lose).
Etrian Odyssey III - Hoist the Sword with Pride in the Heart
Halo: Combat Evolved - Halo
Katmari and Guile
Etrian Odyssey III
Halo - Combat Evolved
Halo and Katamari
Katamari. The track was perfect for the first level of the game, as was any of the other songs tailored for their respective levels. Using it again for the final level was sadly anti-climactic because it was soooo daaaaarn looooong, the 6 minutes song still had to loop three or four times, to ill effect.