Ken Hisuag

@buskerdog Glad to hear it! I suggest checking out the collaboration circle The 11th Hour as well. @Drunken_Flower Not familiar with the game, and the soundfonts are a bit rough, but it's a really good arrangement. There's a combination of themes mixed with some original composition to tie everything together, and it comes out perfectly. I'll have to look more into this. I randomly came across this acoustic arrangement of Tomboyish Girl that uses a kalimba! While this was an original arrangement, the performer has done quite a few rearrangements of a circle called Sensitive Heart. So I looked them up, and found a variety of uniquely instrumented synth-focused remixes. Good stuff.

The music of 30XX sounds like cross between Shovel Knight and Rivals of Aether with a touch of Sonic; high energy tracks with a casual lean, not afraid of blending a variety of instruments, featuring a varied range of styles. The game is currently still in alpha, but already has a reasonably sized OST filled with great tracks. Ideally, the game will get even more music as development continues.

Great arrangement of quality metal with the contextual acoustic intro and outro re-enforcing its impact. Wish the instrumental track was on Youtube. Ironically, also from that album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxjiCCnALEw Feels like I haven't posted much orchestra for a bit, so now seems as good a time as any.

I really like that Crest piece; I'm surprised I don't come across more swing rock, whatever genre that may be considered part of. I'm still not up for sceam-vocals, though. Your Valentine's Day comment made me think of a piece I found the day before. There's been a "new" channel reposting a bunch of stuff from an older account (at least I think that's what happened), so I've been getting a bunch of their posts in the daily feed. This particular arrangement seems fitting, if a bit more upbeat than normal.

Festival Blaze was one of the first GET IN THE RING arrangements I found (this exact video, actually), and it did a good job at catching my attention and keeping me on the lookout for more; maybe it's just me, but imaginative Broken Moon arrangements seem difficult to come by. I posted Over the Rainbow here back around Christmas time as a piano-focused arrangement; it certainly stands out from the circle's typical projects, and showcases the diversity of skillset they have. Rebirth, on the other hand, is a new one to me. Another thing I love about this circle is their approach to medleys, in that they blend the varying motifs into a single seamless work. This is the kind of medley I prefer (as opposed to having individual motifs transitioning into each other one at a time).

The latest in internet gaming trends seems to be Friday Night Funkin. I can't say I find the game very appealing, but there's definitely an element of charm to it. The compositions are intentionally simplistic, but stand out for the Shopkeeper-esque song battles they're respectively structured around. My biggest complaint would be the lackluster endings; most tracks have little to no wind-down, all but cutting off from the "action." While this makes sense in the context of the game, imo it results in some wasted potential for these songs as stand-alone pieces.

You are right to be afraid, and I respect your restraint. Time for that GET IN THE RING I've been holding back on! I wouldn't say these are my favorites (they might be up there), but I think they're a good representation of the circle's work.

I don't know anything about Tengami. I just happened across its soundtrack, noticed David Wise, and was impressed by the oriental style. That's selling it a bit short, though; the compositions are very well arranged. I can't be sure that it's the David Wise, but it wouldn't surprise me.

It's still Saturday where I am! With that taken care of, I'm going to bed. I'll come back tomorrow to check what I've missed.

I've had difficulty getting into the Metroid series music; the series is reasonable expansive, and I'm not sure where to start. But in the meantime, I've got Axiom Verge, which I'm told is comparable. This is another deceptively simple soundtrack. The compositions are far less complicated then most modern games, but still manage to be creative in creating the game's atmosphere.

It's Groundhog's Day today! . . . Yeah, I don't really care either. But while I don't know any specifically Valentine's Day related songs, I do know a Groundhog's Day song! So here y'all go!

After the acoustic guitar discoveries, I've tried making a regular habit out of checking for newly uploaded Touhou remixes. I was pleasantly surprised to find this PC-98 arrangement of a Kaisendo Group theme; Wanwan's works don't normally get considered for remixing purposes (unfairly, in my opinion), so I'd consider this a rare find indeed.

The three-year anniversary of Celeste happened, and in commemoration the team formerly known as MattMakesGames released a sequel to the Pico-8 classic version. While there was technically only one track composed for it, the piece holds its own as a follow-up to both the original classic and the main game.

Spontaneous appreciation for Louie Zong. There's something very "music for music's sake" about his style, and even though his compositions are a bit on the short side, they're always full of charm. He's also fairly diverse in the genres he covers.

The editing of this makes it less funny than it could be. But it's still pretty funny . . .

Tournament thoughts: The PC-98 themes are generally perceived by the fandom to be lesser known. I assume this is because the games are more inconvenient to play, and the majority of the fandom is familiar with the music they hear in-game. I've sometimes wondered about the popular opinion concerning Akiyama's OST bonus arrangements. The popularity poll doesn't distinguish between different versions of the same theme, so the rating likely reflects upon the original version in any given case. There have been several cases where I've preferred Akiyama's version over ZUN's, or at least considered them on equal footing (each with strengths in different aspects). So on the chance that some may not have discovered these remixes yet, here's some especially noteworthy tracks.

Well, I was correct in my prediction concerning Ori and the Will of the Wisps; now that I've played some of it, I find I'm enjoying its soundtrack immensely. This was the case for the first game, too. For some reason, I needed the experiential context to appreciate the music. Possibly this is due to the cinematic nature of the soundtrack, but I would need to compare with similar experiences to be sure. No matter, here's my selection. Had I managed to play the game earlier, its soundtrack would have been my #4 for the year. The main leitmotif of the first game is retained for this one, but in a more restrained and powerful manner, possibly representing Ori's interactions with the new world. There's also a second leitmotif introduced early on which seems to be a variation of the first; whether this is Ku's theme, or an expression of the expansion of the second game from the first, I am currently unsure of. I'm really glad I finished the first game before playing this one; Escaping a Foul Presence felt that much more satisfying as a brief return to old experiences.

Gonna try and get this in before Jssf posts the first round. Second day of the year I thought it'd be interesting to check Youtube for Touhou of that week, to find the last of old year and first of new. One specific acoustic arrangement sent me down a rabbit hole, and I ended up finding a bunch of really old but really good guitar solos. So here's some of those.

For obvious reasons, I won't normally post independent remixes here. However, I believe an argument can be made for their inclusion into the metagenre of VGM. Arrangements most often take their source material's contextual situation into consideration, and I've yet to find a remix that can take the game out of the music. In several cases, my first exposure to a soundtrack that I would later consider among my favorites was a remix. In commemoration of that, here are three such pieces which introduced me to larger spheres of VGM.

For the final chiptune artist feature (though certainly not the end of chiptune on this thread), I present . . . actually, I'm not sure which is his primary alias. It's either "pigdevil2010" or "Pigu." When I said my submission to RT3 wasn't the best example of Touhou chiptune I knew of, this was the guy I had in mind. Unlike most of the previous features, his style encompasses both retro and experimental, while also making use of a variety of chip types. I specifically considered his Egoistic Flowers as a tournament submission, but ultimately decided against it. Just to rap it up, an extra chiptune piece from an unexpected artist:

Tower of Heaven registered as a Flash game on my browser, so it should be noted to try it by Monday if you're interested. EDIT: This comment was instigated by a preceding feature from a since deleted account. This is a restoration of that feature's contents.

It's about time we covered Rivals of Aether. I probably don't need to sell it, but . . . Composer flashygoodness has a unique style to his chiptune that settles on the fringes of the genre; he's able to create impressively complex arrangements of sound that set them apart from retro style, but aren't so far from it that it has to be considered something else (Undertale might be a good example of that; maybe CrossCode?). There's also a slight reverb that gives his pieces an airy feel; I'm unsure of the intended effect, but for me it adds another layer of complexity to the sound. As a sort of bonus, I'm linking the main menu theme. It's not so much for the music, though. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpuy_uKMroE If you can't figure it out, sort the comments by new and start from the bottom.

This is not intended to be an extra chiptune feature, but . . . +TEK's recent album featured guest artist Rumya, and I was struck by the style of the extra arrangements. They remind me a bit of Rivals of Aether; an airy, floating chiptune that still maintains exhilarating energy. Also, it seems Jaz:3 visited recently, and I just happened to find this accordion remix the other day.

I wanted to be careful about this first post of the year. For some reason, this piece stood out to me. Happy New Year, everyone! I'm about done with the chiptune features; there's only one more artist after this one, and I'll have covered the highlights from my perspective. I chose to use +TEK in RT3 because the sound of his productions appeals to me strongly. While it is still technically chiptune, it's on the far fringes of the genre (especially in the latest album), and I'm not comprehensively sure why.

With that, the year is on the verge of conclusion. In commemoration, these are my personal top five video game OSTs of 2020. For the record, I haven't played any of these; my experience with them is almost entirely musical. If anyone's willing, I'd love to hear what soundtracks stood out to others this year. For reference sake, I'm also including a record of the postings made on this thread over the past year (plus the time previous, since there wasn't much). As of initial posting, it only includes the tracks which are currently available; some links are broken, and as such I can't determine what they were. This is partially why I'm creating a reference record now, in hopes that I can accurately maintain this thread as a catalog (of sorts) of VGM. Note that some of the broken links are mine, and I intend to fix them. When I do, and if any of the other broken links are fixed, I'll try to update this list to reflect the new availability. New posts will be cataloged for next year (assuming we all last that long).