Board 8 > [VGMC] Day 25! Portugal/Until, Arlosa Mine/Battlerock Galaxy, Sasha/Regal Ruin

(+) Yeah! (+)

Until
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

Portugal has a nice romantic atmosphere, I like how understated most of the instruments are so the main melody really shines. The energetic section from 1:44-2:18 feels out of place though.

Arlosa Mine is another retiree prediction that lived up to my expectations on listening. Battlerocks instruments all sound good but theres a lot of buildup to a kind of disappointing payoff.

Sashas Theme has an uplifting melody thats held back a bit by the DS compression.

The Elder Scrolls Online - All History Is Vengeance is a good one.

Portugal
Battlerock Galaxy
Back in Time

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

something something votes

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Sasha's Theme

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

Portugal is such a happy, carefree tune, with its soft European-inspired instrumentation and light vibes. Everything about this is very charming to me, from the brief castanet section to the interplay between the accordion and the acoustic guitar. I can't help but smile and slowly rock my head as this plays, god BLESS Kanno and everything she does.

Until isn't too special to me, but it does manage to check every "good anime OP/ED vibe" box in my head and I'm satisfied enough with it as is.

Arlosa Mine is easily one of my favorites from what I've heard of the entirety of the Caravan Stories OSTs so far, I REALLY dig the mallet work in this song. I get this idea of "modern DKC meets a Kirby 64 remastered track" when I listen to Arlosa, and it just fills me with this sense of "adventure that only a young person can experience". I really like how much this is making my brain keep imagining what's going on as this is playing, that's how you know I'm engrossed in this!

Battlerock isn't a top favorite of mine from the Galaxy games, but it's certainly earned a mark of approval from me. This is very much the right way to handle the more dramatic part of a space adventure, with the strings doing God's work here by guiding the rest of the instruments into their proper place and time. Very good song indeed, this was one song I looked forward to hearing back when I got my copy of Galaxy and was happy to experience for myself.

Sasha's theme sounds decently fun to me, though I think this is probably the first time where I've found that the DS soundchip is working against the song for once, I would really like to see how this would sound with more modern instrumentation.

I'm sorry Living in the City, but THIS is my absolute favorite from the Sonic R soundtrack, and I'd even be bold enough to say it's my favorite Sonic vocal song of all time. TJ Davis continues to be an absolute treasure with her vocals, and every synth and note is just pure heaven to me. A near perfect song, it's an incredible experience every time I relisten.

Portugal
Battlerock Galaxy
Sasha's Theme

Until
Battlerock Galaxy
Back in Time

Until
Battlerock Galaxy
Back in Time

match 1 and 2 all good but kinda around the same "dont feel strongly about it" level

From TunnelScene:

Portugal (Uncharted Waters)
Arlosa Mine (Caravan Stories)
Back in Time (Sonic R)

this yoko Kanno one could be in the 5th pokemon movie(the one with Latias and Latios

4:19 sounds like 90s stock music and I mean this as a completely unironic compliment. close match

arlosa mine is up with eden1 and the frogger beyond one and all those other songs I keep saying I like in this contest. but I keep forgetting to mention it. well anyway it is a 10/10. I like polyrhythms and metric modulation and "klonoa on drugs" chord progressions and mallet percussion and reversed sounds and this has all that at the same time while still sounding cohesive. feels both like rotating machine gears and wondrous ancient nature at once. all these things always say I look for. always a pleasure to listen to a basiscape original sound track

I tend to like chord changes where part of it heavily emphasizes a pitch class that is a semitone above the initial root and this does that so I like that. probably the most viscerally powerful chord movement to me other than parallelism stuff which is part of why i like basiscape so muchso many of them like doing that. the echo beep is a nice space sound among everything else.

is that a pmd1 sound. suddenly I am nostalgic for that game which I have never beaten because I am a fake pmd fan. the chord changes do neat things that move me sometimes

regal ruin is probably the one I know the vocal layer to the least well which is probably place's fault. I usually prefer to listen to this ost as instrumentals but can you feel the sunshine is an exception where I strongly prefer it with vocals. well anyway Richard Jacques is good at putting cool sounds in his songs and I've made it clear I love when ancient ruins wind up represented by electronic sounds

From rwlh:

Portugal
Battlerock Galaxy
Sashas Theme

Uncharted Waters - Portugal
Caravan Stories - Arlosa Mine
Sonic R - Regal Ruin : Back in Time

Portugal [ ]
Until [=]
Arlosa Mine [ ]
Battlerock Galaxy []
Sasha's Theme [ ]
Back in Time [ ]

Good to be back (in time)! And perfect (back in) timing, too.

Portugal
Arlosa Mine
Back in Time

i want to play jtoh

Tears to Tiara - Until
Super Mario Galaxy - Battlerock Galaxy
Sonic R - Back in Time

Tears to Tiara - Until
Caravan Stories - Arlosa Mine
Advance Wars: Dual Strike - Sasha's Theme

MATCH 1

Portugal is fine, but it feels a bit flat for my tastes. That said, 1:44-2:01 adds some interesting tension to the song (albeit without a particularly satisfying resolution, unfortunately), and 3:10 sounds a bit nicer than the previous loops of that melody with the extra accordion being added.

Until is incredibly good, and I knew I had to jump on it the moment I saw it get nominated. Naturally, it's also my C1 retiree in my favorites bracket. Quite a few people have described this song as "generic anime ED" and...well, you're not wrong about that. But this is a generic anime ED that's done extremely well, if that makes any sense. There's plenty of generic anime songs that feel uninteresting to me, but I love sappy songs like Until when they're done right, and this just hits all the right spots. Though, honestly, I'm just a big nerd for anime-sounding songs, so even "generic anime song" is something that I probably really like on average. Anyway, as for Until, I really love everything in this song, but to give some concrete examples of things I really enjoy, well-timed minor chords in a bittersweet song like this such as 1:15 really add to the emotional factor of the song. I can't say enough about my enjoyment of vocal harmonizing, so the oooo's in the chorus at 1:26 are also really good. I always fond of the trope of key changes at the end of the song for anime stuff, so that's very welcome here as well. Another thing that makes the song more emotional to me. I first heard this song via Rate the VGM back when it was just getting started (or revived, more accurately, from the OG GameFAQs topic). This was all the way back in September 2019, so nearly 4 years ago now. It was a big hit for me back then, and while I'd of course listen to and get very invested in plenty of other songs over the years, Until never truly left my mind as something I really enjoyed. So fast-forward to this year, seeing this song pop up again is like seeing an old friend of yours who you haven't seen in a long time, but you never forgot about one another and pick up right where you left off the last time you saw them. I anticipate that this song is gonna get absolutely walloped by Portugal, but I've made peace with that, and I'm really just happy that with my help this song was able to get into the contest to begin with (and that the cutoff was lower this year than expected allowing for 5/3's to get in). Thanks pyre for introducing me to this!

MATCH 2

Arlosa Mine isn't exactly my kind of song, but it has some interesting moments! 0:27-0:55 has this cool sinking feeling from its modulation and the choice of notes/scale used. 0:55-1:22 is the most appealing part to my tastes, especially that bit from 1:12-1:15.

Battlerock Galaxy is nice, but not really anything special to me.

MATCH 3

Sasha's Theme feels more like an ending theme to me, but that's not a bad thing at all because the reason I feel that way is because it has a sentimental mood to it that I really like! Feels like you're saying goodbye and running off into the sunset. 1:11's my favorite part because, once again, key change! I wonder if the drums could be improved, though. Feels a tad bit unfitting for the song, but meh, it's not really a big deal to me.

I like Back in Time, but something about it just feels less exciting compared to the other songs from this game. I think I would've voted for literally every other Sonic R song over Sasha's Theme except for this one. Though, this was actually a really difficult match, so I still enjoyed both songs here. I wouldn't mind this song advancing.

Until >> Sasha's Theme > Back in Time > Arlosa Mine > Portugal > Battlerock Galaxy