Welcome back to the Game Music Thunderdome!
If you missed the first time around, you can check it out here: Enter the Game Music Thunderdome. The gist is that everyone nominates their favorite game music tracks, and they’re pitted against one another in bloody single combat (i.e. we all vote on which one should be eliminated each day). It’s fun, and a good way to get exposed to some new music.
For Thunderdome veterans, I’ve made a few tweaks to the tournament structure this time around, so listen up.
Nomination Process
- Nominations are open from now until June 18, when voting will start.
- You may nominate from 1 to 4 tracks of your choice.
- All tracks must be original to a video game (no licensed tracks or remixes).
- The official nomination record is this sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xyp8L6hTmKOln831VsVASG3vjSlV57cF0cUTIcUDVKY/edit?usp=sharing . Feel free to post or discuss your nominations in this thread as well, but the sheet is the source of truth for compiling the bracket.
- When adding nominations, please CTRL-F and make sure nobody else has already entered them.
- Do not re-nominate tracks that made the top 32 of the first Thunderdome. We’ve listened to them enough for now, and it’s time for new blood.
- If you want to nominate a track that is not currently on Youtube, please upload it yourself. A painless way to do this if you have an mp3 is to use tunestotube.com.
- If you want to nominate a single track that is part of a longer video on Youtube, the best solution is to re-upload it yourself a la carte. If you aren’t able to, you can specify the start and end timestamps in the link itself. For example, ‘&start=1m20s&end=3m05s’ placed at the end of a Youtube link will run from the 1 minute, 20 second mark to the 3 minute, 5 second mark.
- The signup sheet has an opening for a link to an image of boxart or title screen. This is optional, but is convenient for anyone who wants to compile a visual bracket.
Tournament Structure
- The tournament will have a group stage, followed by a single-elimination bracket.
- All voting rounds will be posted on weekdays and open for a minimum of 24 hours.
- In the case of ties, they will extend for an additional 24 hours in sudden death; if nobody breaks the tie I’ll flip a coin.
- All entries will be randomly sorted into groups of ~4. In the group stage, I will post one group at a time. Give each track a fair listen, then rate it from 1-10 in the poll.
- Voting is public, and light banter and trash talk is encouraged. However, if anyone is uncomfortable with this, you may PM me your votes and I’ll incorporate them manually.
- Please rate honestly and do not game the system by artificially downvoting other tracks in your nominees’ groups. It’s totally fine and expected to give your own nominee a 10 though, as it’s assumed that you nominated it because you love it.
- At the end of the group stage, the top vote-getter in each group will advance to the single elimination bracket.
- There will be additional wild-card slots sufficient to get to 32 entries in the bracket, which will go to the top-rated tracks that didn’t win their groups.
- In the single elimination bracket, tracks will be pitted directly against one another – vote for whichever you prefer, and the winner advances while the loser is eliminated. This continues until a champion is crowned.
- Challonge apparently has a bracket prediction feature now. After the group stage, I’ll seed the bracket and you can attempt to predict how it will turn out for additional bragging rights.
Good luck, and have fun!
