=SSMB's= Top Sonic Song 2017 Discussion Thread

[Nepenthe]

Come one, come all, to the most ridiculous contest SSMB has had. Yes, if it wasn't obvious to some or most of you, I'm planning on hosting a music voting thread for a whole month! Before we begin and get into the whole nitty-gritty tomorrow, we're gonna have a bit of talk about the rules and things, because I want this to be as awesome for you guys as possible.

So, the first Item: the current types of games that didn't make the cut are:

• Compilations (Jam, Mega Collection, Gems Collection, etc.)
• Mobile apps and downloads (Eraser, Japanese exclusive-titles, Jump, etc.)(Sonic Runners is the only exception because it had an official soundtrack release)
• Crossovers, Sega or otherwise (All-Stars, Mario and Sonic, Smash)
• Educational games (Schoolhouse)
• Numerous McDonald's and other restaurant giveaway games.
• Amusement park/arcade attractions (Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car, SegaSonic Arcade,)

The songs/audio from eligible games that are not included in the current list are:

• Sound effects and item/Super State jingles
• Options menu music
• Cut scene/event music

Basically, we were looking at only major Sonic releases and spinoffs with widely distributed soundtracks for rule consistency, and from there we wanted to focus as much as possible on their themes and stage/area BGMs. Note that this approach has given you around 1300 choices. Regardless, I'd like to give you the heads up and get your thoughts on these exceptions not only for now, but also for running future events more to your liking. (Note that every soundtrack/song that gets added inherently makes getting certain badges harder. MUCH harder.)

 

Second Item: there's also a few eligible songs we took out because, well, we just can't find reference for them! They are:

• “Practice Stage” – Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
• “Cavern Island” – Tails Adventure
• “Green Island” – Tails Adventure
• “Lake Crystal” – Tails Adventure

If you can provide us with a public URL to these songs in question before tomorrow, or at least confirm that these stages simply reuse other tracks in their respective games, we'd appreciate it! We just don't know what to do with them right now! If we can't figure it out together, they'll simply be left out.

EDIT: Tracker and Friendbot found out what was up. Thanks guys!

 

Third Item: Badges. You guys have been wanting them for awhile and they are being all prettied up and resized as we speak. What I'll tell you about them is that they're tiered, as in the 30 Days...contests; the more you participate, the better the badge you get. Because of how they look, per se, and how each badge is going to have its admirers for an obvious reason, I'm wondering whether or not we should do the usual thing of awarding you the highest badge, or just loading your profiles up with every badge you earn even if it's of a lower tier than the highest one you got. Or whether you want that to be left up to an option.

SO BASIC QUESTIONS TO ANSWER!
 

1. Are you fine with the current game and song exceptions?
2. Can you help us sort these four songs, or do you not mind us simply leaving them out?
3. Do you want badges to be awarded based on the highest tier you earn as in 30 Days, or do you want to have every badge you earn regardless of tier? Or would you simply like the option of either or when the event is over?

Much appreciated for as much feedback as we get throughout. Regardless, we'll be rolling the madness out tomorrow, so get ready for it! 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

1. Yeah, I'm pretty much fine with the game/song exceptions. They make sense and to be honest, it'd be a bit of a cheat if we started saying "Oh yeah, Dr. Wily Castle 1 from MM2 counts because of Worlds Collide". I disagree with the Complications though. I feel like a lot of them still have the regular quality that Sonic games have and it's a total shame that stuff like History would have to be removed because not only is that one of my favourite OSTs, but it's one I feel is pretty underrated. I do have to ask though. Are official remixes allowed? Like you said M&S isn't allowed but what if that's remixing a theme from one of the older games? 

On top of that, what about stuff with different versions? Like for example, I love the normal version of Un-Gravitify but dislike Crush 40's version. On that same note, I like Zebrahead's His World and don't like Crush 40's version as much. how does that work? 

2. I have Sonic's Mega Drive Collection on PS3 so I'll start up MBM and look to see if the Practice stage reuses a OST or has a unique one. I could go through Tails' Adventure too since I have Mega Collection Plus, but that could take significantly longer due to how far into the game I'd have to get and the fact I haven't played through Tails' Adventure properly. 

3. I'm not really sure how to answer this question. I mean either way, I'd be trying to go for every badge in the event, so I guess either way?

[Pawn]

It all sounds great. I'm absolutely fine with the exceptions and with leaving out the four elusive tracks. As for badges; whatever you decide is good with me.

[Wraith]

Like Ryan said above, I only disagree with the compilation rule because whatever list I make would probably have "History" on it. The other exceptions I don't really care about.

I also kind of wouldn't want my badge displayed to be filled with a bunch of badges for the same event, but that's up to you all. Wouldn't care that much either way. Most of this sounds fine to me.

[Nepenthe]

13 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

1. Yeah, I'm pretty much fine with the game/song exceptions. They make sense and to be honest, it'd be a bit of a cheat if we started saying "Oh yeah, Dr. Wily Castle 1 from MM2 counts because of Worlds Collide". I disagree with the Complications though. I feel like a lot of them still have the regular quality that Sonic games have and it's a total shame that stuff like History would have to be removed because not only is that one of my favourite OSTs, but it's one I feel is pretty underrated. I do have to ask though. Are official remixes allowed? Like you said M&S isn't allowed but what if that's remixing a theme from one of the older games? 

On top of that, what about stuff with different versions? Like for example, I love the normal version of Un-Gravitify but dislike Crush 40's version. On that same note, I like Zebrahead's His World and don't like Crush 40's version as much. how does that work? 

2. I have Sonic's Mega Drive Collection on PS3 so I'll start up MBM and look to see if the Practice stage reuses a OST or has a unique one. I could go through Tails' Adventure too since I have Mega Collection Plus, but that could take significantly longer due to how far into the game I'd have to get and the fact I haven't played through Tails' Adventure properly. 

3. I'm not really sure how to answer this question. I mean either way, I'd be trying to go for every badge in the event, so I guess either way?

1. We weren't allowing compilations because most compilations don't have exclusive soundtracks of their own, or if they do, they don't have enough songs on the list to make what we're considering a full legal ballot which we feel would skew the scores quite a bit. So we felt it easier to leave them out altogether. However, I literally have no idea what History is and it was never brought up in staff conversation about this. If you can provide us the soundtrack, we can look into it. Again, we made an exception for Sonic Runners.

And so far, we're only listing music that was in the games proper, as far as I can tell (the list is fucking huge so there's probably mistaken entries); so, for example, the E3 version of His World is on Sonic 06's actual released soundtrack, but- being the E3 version- it's not in the game, so we left it out. Remixes are allowed to the extent that they accompany separate stages and bosses. Sweet Mountain is essentially remixes of the same basic song. Each different remix per act has been included regardless. A lot of the Act Clear jingles have been included too, and most of them are remixes of Sonic 3's. So essentially, the music that's on the list generally is attached to a stage or boss regardless of whether or not it's a remix. I mean, heck, if no remixes were allowed Sonic Generations wouldn't be in. xP

3. Basically, say there's three badges that you unlocked via your participation. Would you want the best badge of the three- and only that badge- or would you want all three displayed on your profile?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

@Nepenthe Well, I'm not 100% sure how many songs need to be present to qualify a soundtrack, but Mega Collection/Plus has around 9 or 10 original OSTs.

And this one, which they forgot to include in the playlist above:

(This is History btw, a beautiful track IMO). 

2. I'd pretty much want all badges on my profile (I mean technically the requirements for each retrospective badge was completed so I think it'd only be fair to include all of the ones everyone successfully fulfilled). 

Edit: History is listed as Game Options in the playlist.

[Nepenthe]

The current rule for what a full ballot must consist of is at least five songs that are not in the banned tier I mentioned: option menu themes, item and Super state jingles, and cut scene music. From the soundtrack you provided, it has at most two songs that I'd put on there based on the title alone: The Title Screen and the Credits theme- because every actual song in Mega Collection itself accompanies an option menu of some sort versus a stage or boss, because ultimately Mega Collection isn't a unique game onto itself, but an emulation or port pack with menus to guide you to specific games and features. 

Furthermore, the way ballots work is that points are given to a song based on its ranking in your personal list. The higher it is, the more points it gets. Because there's so few songs on Mega Collection that would be allowed under the current rule list, it means that no matter how you felt about these songs, if we allowed you to make a ballot with them they'd automatically be amassing a huge amount of points per every vote, and we feel that wouldn't accurately portray where these songs ultimately sit out of the thousands of others you'd be voting on. This is why compilations have been left out.

Also @Josh You make a good point about not wanting to have a bunch of badges from the same event taking over your public profile. It'd be neat if you could choose which ones to show, but c'est la vie. EDIT: Wait, you can. Lol!

[Jango]

Sounds awesome, I'm all in for this! If there's one thing that's always making me return to Sonic games, is their music. Many times I've decided to play a Sonic game, just to hear one specific piece of music. Heck, half of my MP3 player's space is Sonic music lol

I'm okay with the rules too.

[FriendBot]

Oooo more events, count me in!

As for the question? I'm fine with the rules, it's not necessary to include every game's music into it; just the notable ones is fine.

As for the missing tracks, Cavern Island shares the same music as Volcanic Tunnel, Green Island shares the same music as Polly Mountain and Lake Crystal is pretty much the Sea Fox theme. Never heard of Practice Stage from Mean Bean Machine, isn't that pretty much Exercise Mode? And for the last question, I would like to have the choice of having all of them or just the tiered badge, choices are nice.

[Bowbowis]

Sounds fun. 

Out of curiosity, where exactly do character and credits themes sit regarding the ban on cutscene music? Would "It Doesn't Matter" or "Live Life" be accepted? How about "E.G.G.M.A.N. Doc Robeatnik Mix" or "Sir Percival: Knight of the Grail"?

[Nepenthe]

20 minutes ago, FriendBot said:

As for the missing tracks, Cavern Island shares the same music as Volcanic Tunnel, Green Island shares the same music as Polly Mountain and Lake Crystal is pretty much the Sea Fox theme. Never heard of Practice Stage from Mean Bean Machine, isn't that pretty much Exercise Mode?

Thank you so much!

As for Practice Stage, I'm not sure whether or not it is exercise mode. I'll have to check that out myself, if someone else doesn't beat me to the punch.

20 minutes ago, Bowbowis said:

Sounds fun. 

Out of curiosity, where exactly do character and credits themes sit regarding the ban on cutscene music? Would "It Doesn't Matter" or "Live Life" be accepted? How about "E.G.G.M.A.N. Doc Robeatnik Mix" or "Sir Percival: Knight of the Grail"?

Most character and team themes are in due to the credits rule more often than not overriding the character themes that were cut scene specific. Plus, like the Sonic Runners soundtrack which should've been excluded due to the "no mobile games" rule, they're popular enough that we couldn't get away leaving them out on a technicality anyway. xD The rules kind of came after the choices, in all honesty. We knew for certain which games and songs people were going to vote for and did our best to craft rules that made sense for the most songs, with leeway to make understandable exceptions. In short, it was like "Sure, I really like this song, but if we allow it then we're opening up the floodgates to a lot of shit no one cares about." Easier to do a bit of selective gatekeeping instead.

[Tracker_TD]

I just had a gander, and I can't see a "Practice Mode" option beyond Exercise Mode in Mean Bean Machine. In which case yeah, that theme's readily available; and better known to some as "Sticker of Puyo Puyo".

 

[Nepenthe]

Well, that settles all of the mystery songs! Thanks a bunch, you two!

[Alienrun]

1. Seems fine to me, only nitpicks I have are with cutscene music, specifically Mephilis's theme that I'm sure a lot of people would want to vote for, but it makes sense since a lot of cutscene music isn't all that interesting. (then again, some of it is, simply due to the fact that most level music is super fast and cutscene music tends not to be.)

I'm fine with the jingles too, It'll suck not being able to vote for Sonic Spinball's Options music or Sonic 3's Invincibility song (it is a remix of the main them after all) but again, this makes sense as we got a crap ton of songs any ways.

2. Its seems this is already answered so I don't have to worry about it.

3. I'll just parrot what everyone else said and say choices are the way to go. For what I assume to be obvious reasons.

Legitametly looking forward to this!

[JezMM]

59 minutes ago, Alienrun said:

1. Seems fine to me, only nitpicks I have are with cutscene music, specifically Mephilis's theme that I'm sure a lot of people would want to vote for, but it makes sense since a lot of cutscene music isn't all that interesting. (then again, some of it is, simply due to the fact that most level music is super fast and cutscene music tends not to be.)

To be fair, Mephilis' cut-scene lemotif doesn't have any singular version like Sonic and Eggman's, and they're all variations on the melody from his boss fight music, which will of course be included.

[Sephy]

Out of curiosity, how is it that Sonic Boom Fire & Ice didn't make it in the final list? Personally I think its songs are better than the other 2 games from the series.

It's not like I really care, we got plenty game songs to vote...

[JezMM]

I cast my first votes, but two things!

Two tracks are missing from the Sonic Chaos list.  I assume the character select screen is intentional, but the other not so much: Electric Egg Act 3 has a unique song.  It's the same dramatic tune that plays during the opening movie as well.  Some game rips list it as "Final Level".

Second thing is a question - in games with smaller soundtracks that I overall don't care much about, can I intentionally list them as lower numbers if at all?  Like, Sonic Spinball Game Gear has such a naff soundtrack, it seems weird to give whatever song I consider least boring of those the same amount of points as songs I adore like Sonic 2 8-bit's Bad Ending theme.  I wouldn't mind being able to rank the tracks I care about as just 8 9 and 10 on my list to give them a couple of points and consider the game accounted for without giving them a whopping boost in the overall rankings.  I assume after all you ideally want each user to cover every game (with badge incentives?) but some soundtracks are just worse than others and it's weird that the best song from Sonic Spinball Game Gear would be considered on par with the best song from Sonic Adventure 2, etc.  Sorry if that's a question that kind of upheaves the entire ranking system to propose.

[Nepenthe]

57 minutes ago, JezMM said:

I cast my first votes, but two things!

Two tracks are missing from the Sonic Chaos list.  I assume the character select screen is intentional, but the other not so much: Electric Egg Act 3 has a unique song.  It's the same dramatic tune that plays during the opening movie as well.  Some game rips list it as "Final Level".

Second thing is a question - in games with smaller soundtracks that I overall don't care much about, can I intentionally list them as lower numbers if at all?  Like, Sonic Spinball Game Gear has such a naff soundtrack, it seems weird to give whatever song I consider least boring of those the same amount of points as songs I adore like Sonic 2 8-bit's Bad Ending theme.  I wouldn't mind being able to rank the tracks I care about as just 8 9 and 10 on my list to give them a couple of points and consider the game accounted for without giving them a whopping boost in the overall rankings.  I assume after all you ideally want each user to cover every game (with badge incentives?) but some soundtracks are just worse than others and it's weird that the best song from Sonic Spinball Game Gear would be considered on par with the best song from Sonic Adventure 2, etc.  Sorry if that's a question that kind of upheaves the entire ranking system to propose.

Yeah, we weren't intent on including character select screens in this. However, we didn't know about the final song. I'll put that in there (and do some edits on CD's soundtrack. I haven't forgotten @Pawn!)

As for the second question: we want users to cover the soundtracks they want to; less stress and all. Badges are partly there to increase the data we get on this through incentivizing participation, and partly to force people to listen to music they hadn't heard in awhile or otherwise wouldn't (but mainly they're there just to gift them to people), but earning the first three should account for most people's favorite soundtracks, which are undoubtedly going to be the classics, Adventures, Rushes, modern games, etc.. Point values, while tiered, are also pretty low- a single song can, at most, only score 4 points anyways. 

With all of that said, you also have to remember that points aren't vacuous; what's essentially going on is that we're holding around 50-something song voting contests simultaneously, thus a song's ranking is ultimately going to depend on how many other people bother to vote on the game and song in question which you can kinda predict based on each game's popularity. Even if you give the shittiest song on Spinball GG's soundtrack all 4 points, for some odd reason, the likelihood that it's going to significantly outrank something like Live and Learn in the final rankings when all is said and done is pretty much zero since it's not a popular soundtrack. Your own personal ballots aren't necessarily competing with each other; they're competing with other members' ballots on the same games. If the former were true, it'd probably be much more conducive to just open up the entire song list to one big ballot you make that includes all of the eligible songs and call it a day, but considering the amount of songs on the list, it'd be ridiculous and probably harder to keep track of.

For further assurance, here's the rankings from the last time I ran this contest. It had a much smaller sample size than what I'm expected from SSMB, but it should give you an idea of what the results are gonna look like at the end of the day. If weird oddities do arise from this iteration however, I'll play around with the rules and keep in mind the idea of allowing people to intentionally score certain songs lower with skipped rankings, or perhaps by just changing the way point allocation works altogether, but in general it hasn't been too much issue.

[Nepenthe]

On 5/23/2017 at 5:09 AM, Sephy said:

Out of curiosity, how is it that Sonic Boom Fire & Ice didn't make it in the final list? Personally I think its songs are better than the other 2 games from the series.

It's not like I really care, we got plenty game songs to vote...

Honestly?

For real, for reals?

Fire and Ice didn't make the list because we collectively forgot it, having actually started on all of the set-up before the game was released. When the game came out, it was such a fart in the wind that it didn't even register to us that it existed, and that was actually with me arguing fervently to my bewildered colleagues that even Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal deserved representation on the list by virtue of them adhering to the rules of eligible games.

I only remembered its existence literally minutes before the contest was scheduled to open, and by that point to add it would've honestly been a pain in the ass in regards to fixing the functions in the spreadsheet (Google is calculating you guys' votes for us because fuck manually counting) and put it off that much more later in the night for our European members, that we just threw our hands up and said "Next year."

[Your Vest Friend]

Every single video in the Triple Trouble section has been taken down. 

[JezMM]

Another quick question - why are the Glowball and Slot Machine bonus stages listed under Sonic 3 rather than Sonic & Knuckles?  While they CAN appear in Sonic 3 when connected to S&K, they weren't introduced until S&K.  Besides, the S&K Act 1 boss theme isn't available as a Sonic 3 choice, so I assume "they CAN appear in Sonic 3" isn't the reason they're there and it's a mistake.  Even if they're present on the ROM, I assume only tracks heard in gameplay are meant to be available (otherwise... back to Sonic Chaos, what would become the Sunset Park Train theme from Triple Trouble is present in the data as an unused track lol).

To clarify I voted for Glowball as part of my S&K list, but even if I disagree with your reasoning obviously I'll edit this to adhere to the lists laid out if you're sticking with it being on the Sonic 3 list.

[Nepenthe]

22 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

Every single video in the Triple Trouble section has been taken down. 

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll get on to fixing that.

9 hours ago, JezMM said:

Another quick question - why are the Glowball and Slot Machine bonus stages listed under Sonic 3 rather than Sonic & Knuckles?  While they CAN appear in Sonic 3 when connected to S&K, they weren't introduced until S&K.  Besides, the S&K Act 1 boss theme isn't available as a Sonic 3 choice, so I assume "they CAN appear in Sonic 3" isn't the reason they're there and it's a mistake.  Even if they're present on the ROM, I assume only tracks heard in gameplay are meant to be available (otherwise... back to Sonic Chaos, what would become the Sunset Park Train theme from Triple Trouble is present in the data as an unused track lol).

To clarify I voted for Glowball as part of my S&K list, but even if I disagree with your reasoning obviously I'll edit this to adhere to the lists laid out if you're sticking with it being on the Sonic 3 list.

They probably appear there either because of random placement error or because whatever soundtrack listing we used had them there and we shrugged about it. I'll get to editing the list. Note: You will probably find we had more reasoning for keeping stuff off the list than actually placing stuff on it. xP

EDIT: Alright @VEDJ-F @JezMM Broken links fixed and songs moved to the more appropriate place.

[JezMM]

As usual I can't do a single vote post without finding some small thing to report in this thread lol:

This track is missing from the Sonic Drift 2 list.  It plays during Death Egg instead of the regular song when racing against Eggman in the final extra race following the final GP.

 

EDIT (17/05/28):

As of today I have another missing track to report: Chao Karate from Sonic Adventure 2.  The other songs added to battle are included but not Karate.  Also seems odd to present the other Chao songs as the medley format they appear in on the soundtrack CD rather than the individual tracks as they appear in-game?  If you did want to seperate them out, the individual tracks would be:

Chao Lobby (Dreamcast)
Chao Lobby (Gamecube)
Chao Kindergarten
Chao Garden
Hero Garden
Dark Garden
Beginner Race/Jewel Race (Beginner is just the first refrain of Jewel Race on loop)
Challenge Race
Hero Race
Dark Race
Chao Karate

Those are all of the Chao GAMEPLAY themes (the medleys include some menu themes as well).

 

EDIT (17/05/29):

Just another small one, Sonic Rush is missing "Medley Rush #1", the credits theme for the regular Sonic/Blaze story (after Point W).  Easy to miss since the official soundtrack only includes Medley Rush #2 (it's a somewhat incomplete soundtrack release, but this is the only track missing that adheres to the rules of what tracks are included for voting).

Edited May 29, 2017 by JezMM

[Your Vest Friend]

Still curious as to what the mystery tiered badges are. As the voting one is pretty much over, I'd guess it's either something to do with comments explaining your choices or getting a number of your song choices into the eventual Sonic song list. 

The lone one I'd say was watching the eventual Livestream of all these songs. 

[JezMM]

From the latest games I voted on just some more things, the tracks "Party Dress" "Yellow Sneakers" "Blue Shirt" "White Gloves" "Purple Pants" and "Pull on it!", while only being in the party mode, ARE technically all gameplay themes in Secret Rings.  Dunno why anyone would vote on them over the cool-ass regular music but yeah.

Also idk this one is just personal opinion but it does feel odd to have the act themes combined in Sonic 2006 and Sonic Rush Adventure just because that's how the soundtracks present them.  In-game they're all seperate tracks, to the point that Crisis City and Kingdom Valley's soundtrack melodies do have moments where the track dies down with a special effect because there's no way to segue two acts together otherwise.  End of the World would be a definite exception though, that song is clearly MEANT to be seen as one long thing even in-game.

Granted unlike my previous nitpicks, these are from two big games that a ton of people have prolly already voted on so prolly not worth the hassle of "fixing" now even if you do agree.

Like tbh there's a bunch of games where it would make more sense to consider all acts of a zone to just be "one song" for voting purposes (i.e. Launch Base Zone Act 1 and 2 are barely different but are seperate songs, yet Kingdom Valley ~Lakeside~ and ~Water~ are hugely different yet considered one song) so maybe for future contests it'd actually make sense to do MORE rather than less combinations... I dunno there's no right answer and I am just being really nerdy and organisation-obsessed here lol.

 

 

17/06/01 EDIT: Final nags from me regarding issues with the song list now that I'm done voting.  I assume it's too late to fix them now since so many people have voted, but worth considering for the next time you do this I guess?

Sonic 4 Ep 1: The pinch mode boss music is missing, though frankly anyone who would want to vote for it has such poor taste they shouldn't be allowed to pollute the voting sample.

Sonic Generations 3DS: I feel the rival battle and mission music songs could be included here, in the same vein as the Sonic CD Past themes being votable on either soundtrack.  Also technically the version of Water Palace Act 1 used was only ever previously heard on the Sonic Rush soundtrack, so it's usage here is the first time it's ever been heard in-gameplay in the series, I feel it'd make sense to include as a choice but that's just me.

Shattered Crystal: "Seaside Race (vs. Sticks)" is the same song as Seaside Jungle 1.

Sonic Runners: Where To Today? and Ambition are both menu themes as far as I'm aware, and Going My Way is the invincibility jingle.

Edited June 1, 2017 by JezMM