[SotW] Song of the Week - WEEK 186 Voting/WEEK 187 Nominating

first off gotta nominate something:

• Album: Bomberman Hero (Game Rip)
• Artist: Jun Chikuma
• Track #: 2
• Track Title: Action Scene B
• Year: 1998
• Additional Info: This is "redial" on the OST, but the soundtrack is one of those continuous mix deals where each track blends into the next one and so it ends abruptly, so let's go with a sound test recording. Not that this will place even with the fadeout ending, but I do care about you guys a little bit.
• Source: PSCN-5066: Bomberman Hero Original Soundtrack - VGMdb, Game Credits for Bomberman Hero

NOW WHAT WERE WE TALKING ABOUT, ah yes, drastically low nominations. Cutting the number of tracks we vote on per week seemed to have some support. I'd prefer six, which was the number most often mentioned, if we go with that. The current method of point distribution would also work pretty well with six tracks (save for the 1-1-1-1-1-1 distribution, which would be moot for obvious reasons); any amount lower than that and we should consider changing how we allocate points too.

Rimo suggested sticking with eight and only reducing the number of tracks when we need it, which could work.

Also, this is going to sound incredibly rich given the current topic, but I skipped Blah's nomination for this week in case people want to discuss it, because some people are probably going to throw a fit over it:

Originally Posted by Bigblah

Album: Osaisentoka no Karaoke
Title: Alice->Dere (Karaoke)
Original Composer: ZUN
Arranger: ARM

Note: Arrangement of "The Doll Maker of Bucuresti" from Touhou Youyoumu

This is a fan arrangement, and to the best of my knowledge, ARM has written six pieces of music total for games: four tracks for The Rising Sun -Oceanic Suspense Adventure- (some eroge), a character song for Little Busters! (I don't think this was actually in the game), and a theme song for Paitouch (Blah insists I do not want to know what this is).

SOTW NOM SQUAD DO YOU THINK THIS IS OKAY.

Feel free to discuss whether or not you think the situation with the queue should affect the decision if you want to see if we can spill blood over this.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by Crash Landon

Aren't we of the mind that doujin arrangements are verboten regardless of the composer's other credits? It's not actually in the game, not from an official album, and not a completely original composition from an established composer. Aren't those the three strikes we use to disallow a track?

We've been allowing them for a very long time, as long as the arranger meets whatever the conditions are for being a "VGM composer." The earliest one I can remember is the winner of Week 49, but I didn't go through the nominations up to that point so there may have been some before then.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Stalky

I've got a nomination that's a bit problematic, it's from Okami (hope that's not too popular anyway), it's a piece that has two parts on the original soundtrack (the second part is a more energetic version basically), so nominating either one would be odd because each has a cutoff at the end or beginning respectively. Because of that i have taken the liberty to merge both tracks

Album/Game Title: Okami
Track Title: Wep'Keer

They're both separate pieces of music that play in Wep'Keer. I believe it's the in-game clock that determines which version of the piece you get, because if you sit in town for long enough, it'll transition between the two very much like how it does on the soundtrack.

Originally Posted by Stalky

I hope that is not too much of an infringement

We've had tracks before which have been edited from the OST. As a ridiculously convenient example, I do believe orion_mk3 modified his current nomination, The Town of Notia, from the soundtrack, adding a loop because the CD version doesn't loop. Since the Wep'Keer themes are variations of each other that do transition into each other in the game and are split into two tracks on the CD that transition into each other, I'm okay with your joined version.

Originally Posted by Stalky

I hope that is not too much of an infringement, also i wonder what one would call the album since no such track is on the original soundtrack and it's not directly from the game either.

For our purposes, I'd just call it a game rip like I did the Magna Carta track, for lack of a better term.

Also, re. Mega Man Star Force 3, we've had noms from X8 and Battle Network 6, so I'm okay with that too. I for one haven't played any of the SF games or checked out their music.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

3 points: LINEAR COMPi 2007 - Sleets from Stratus
2 points: pop'n music 12 Iroha AC and CS pop'n music 10 - MAGICAL VOICE SHOWER
1 point: 11eyes Original Sound Track and Arrange Sound Track - Reduced Occult Moon
got points in alternate universes: Rainbow Song (Extend Version), Warblade In-Game Music (MOD)

Oh my god the pitch bends in the synth melody halfway through Reduced Occult Moon made me spit out my water, so awesome. Gotta be my highlight of the week besides the entirety of Sleets from Stratus.

It was actually pretty hard this week to decide how to distribute the other three points, to be honest. The Warblade track was hella cool, but I didn't really like how the main melody was all over the place; it just seemed kind of random and sloppy to me.

How ya doing, buddy?

Voting is closed and nominations are restricted!

1). [22] pop'n music 12 Iroha AC ♥ CS pop'n music 10 - MAGICAL VOICE SHOWER
2). [15] LINEAR COMPi 2007 - Sleets from Stratus
3). [14] Warblade (Game Rip) - Warblade In-Game Music (MOD)
4). [12] 11eyes Original Sound Track and Arrange Sound Track - Reduced Occult Moon
5). [9] Magna Carta: Tears of Blood (Game Rip) - The Town of Notia
6). [8] JET de GO! - Rainbow Song (Extend Version)
7). [7] Atelier Iris ETERNAL MANA 2 Arranged Tracks RED LUCIFER RISING - The Legacy
8). [3] KANON original arrange album 'anemoscope' - Sunny Street

By the way, dudes, next week we are going to have a trial run with six tracks so that we can see what people think about this.

Originally Posted by Chuckster

1. How many regular nominators do we have? In the current queue it says 17. Is that a fair estimate of the number of people putting up tracks on a regular basis?

Thereabouts, yeah, with a deviation of a couple on either side.

Originally Posted by Chuckster

What about loosening the eligibility requirement for what is considered "popular" and known? Can we decide to be a little more lax in nominating tracks from more well-known games? The trap, of course, is that it turns into the BSC contest, where people put up their favorite tracks to gauge community reaction. I'm not saying Final Fantasy VII, but (to use just an example), what about Dew Prism? Okami would be a similar type of game in the popularity spectrum.

orion was the only person to actually explicitly talk about being temporarily looser with nom requirements, but no one's seemingly batted an eyelash at Okami or Kirby 64, so...

(we had a Dew Prism nom in Week 20, not that it affects your point)

I was speaking idiomatically.