VGMC History by kao.na.shi/kaonashi#5636

VGMGG 2021-03: Board 8 VGM Contest History
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_c7TTWI-bk5Oaqb0e9ezEvtoCJvlYieP

[0/49]
@VGM Quiz Participant The Board 8 VGM History guessing game will start in just a few minutes! This is a non-canon guessing game: it will feature a few tracks from guessing games previously run on this server (and tracks used in this list won't count as tracks used in a standard game).
This list, as you may have guessed, focuses on the history of the contest that is at the cornerstone of the Board 8 VGM community: the Video Game Music Contest, run annually on the GameFAQs Contests message board.
It's a contest and community I'm very fond of, and I hope this list does both of them justice.
(Board 8 community members are, of course, not allowed to guess in this game-- but I'd love for you to hang out and reminisce!)

[1/49]
It's one of the most exciting matches of VGMC14: -(Isoleucine)- vs. Endeavour in the finals. After dominant performances throughout its contest run, Isoleucine races out to an early lead, only to be tied up by the plucky Endeavour, which has shown a knack for pulling out close victories time after time. Supporters of both tracks watch the match with bated breath as the 24-hour match length ticks down. Which track will walk away as VGMC14 champion?
-
Wait, wait, you say. How did we get here, again?

Well, I'm glad you asked. To explain, we'll have to backtrack a bit-- let's say, oh, fourteen years.

[2/49]
The first Video Game Music Contest-- VGMC-- was created one fine day in 2007 by the user Ed Bellis, on the "GameFAQs Contests" message board (aka "Board 8") on GameFAQs. A nomination topic went up, other users took notice, and off we went. There were enough nominations to create a 192-track contest, split into three brackets of four 16-track divisions each. Each day, two one-on-one matches would be posted, people would vote for the tracks they preferred, and the tracks with the most votes after 24 hours would advance.

While the rules of the contest would be tweaked and adjusted over time, one key rule remained constant throughout: a track that won its division would be considered "retired", and not permitted as an entrant in future contests. This was to prevent the scenario where future iterations of this contest would be dominated by the same tracks over and over. It would also give these tracks a certain place of honour in VGMC history. This "retiree" designation would loom large over prospective contest entrants and their nominators: a place in Board 8's de facto VGM Hall of Fame.

This is the story of an ambitious video game music project, the people who made it a reality, and some of its most storied entrants.

This is the story of VGMC.
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(Oh, and by the way-- this song you're hearing right now [Metal Gear Solid - The Best is Yet to Come] isn't one of those retirees. Nevertheless, it holds its own distinction, one it shares with another track [Touhou 8: Imperishable Night - Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke]: it has made it into every VGMC to date. In a way, these two titles can serve as a reflection of every nominator's mentality during the nomination phase: they hope the best is yet to come for the tracks they're supporting, cheer on each of them to reach for the moon, and hope their retirement prospects don't go up in smoke-- the way those of these two tracks have, year after year.)

[3/49: Baba Yetu]
The first VGMC was officially known as the Big Ol' Video Game Music Contest, and it was exactly as advertised-- a 192-track single-elimination slugfest filled with some of the most celebrated music video games had to offer. Future Grammy Award winner Baba Yetu had a strong run to retirement, including a win over Metal Gear Solid 2's main theme, a trendy pick for contest winner, in the second round, and making it to the final three.

That's right: the final three. Having run a straightforward 1v1 bracket up until then, Ed Bellis found himself in a bit of a pickle. How could he determine a fair winner from three finalists (Shore of Dreams, Scars of Time, Baba Yetu), especially when two of them came from the same game? In the end, the question was academic-- Scars of Time would win 1v1 matches against both other tracks handily, making it the clear champion.

[4/49: Dr. Wily Stage 1]
The first VGMC, as you might expect, was full of well-known, long-beloved tracks, several of which retired that year. Tracks like Dr. Wily Stage 1 would run through their division without heavy resistance (and until they ran into elite competition like *checks notes* uh Invisible Full Moon), find their place in the halls of VGMC retirement, and allow future entrants to shine without needing to face perennial favourites year after year.

[5/49: Windy Day]
Some entrants are easy to spot as powerhouses. From Scars of Time to Isoleucine, there are a few tracks in each VGMC that feel like they're destined to do well. Some divisions' results can even feel downright predictable. But in every VGMC, there's also been at least one track that seemingly defies the odds to reach retirement. The one to set the standard for this in the inaugural VGMC is Windy Day, which took out much more renowned opponents from Final Fantasy X, Chrono Cross, and Chrono Trigger to reach VGMC immortality.

[6/49: The Second Tower]
After strong interest shown in the first contest, Ed Bellis decided to up the stakes for VGMC2, expanding the field to 256. (This would also conveniently avoid the three-way finals scenario seen in VGMC1.)

This, combined with the retirement of several widely-beloved tracks in the first contest, brought a fresh opportunity for music from some less-recognized video games and series to step into the limelight.

Enter EXA_PICO.

A series (and music team) that would become a fixture of Board 8 VGM made an auspicious debut in VGMC2, with two tracks from Ar tonelico II making it to retirement despite low initial seeding. The Second Tower's run was particularly impressive, taking out a future contest winner and the runner-up of another.

[7/49: King Dedede's Theme]
Sometimes, VGMC nominations would see a flood of nominations from a recently-released game whose soundtrack was very popular with the community. In VGMC2, that game was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which ended up with a robust thirteen entries to make it to the main bracket. Out of so many entrants, only one would make it to retirement that year, and not one that many expected. In retrospect, the track's arranger might have given us a hint-- Yoko Shimomura had great success early on, with a retiree in VGMC1 (Legend of Mana - Title) as well as two other retirees in VGMC2 (Kingdom Hearts - HIKARI Instrumental Version, Super Mario RPG - Beware the Forest's Mushrooms).

[8/49: At the Frozen Depths of the Heart]
What series would end up with the most retirees in VGMC2? A few big-name series would get a brace of them: Metal Gear, Mega Man, Zelda. Ar tonelico would also retire two.

Only one series would retire three tracks: Wild Arms.

While one was among the most iconic in the series (Into the Wilderness), the other two were from its most recent entry at the time, both possessing an electronic flavour that would be a harbinger of future taste trends.

[9/49: worldenddominator]
Sometimes it's hard to pick out one soundtrack that really defines a VGMC. VGMC2 had a lot of Brawl tracks, but only one that retired that year (and limited influence beyond that). It had Ar tonelico II, which would continue to impact VGMC in the future, but gradually.

VGMC3 had Umineko. Oh boy, did it have Umineko.

Specifically, it had zts tracks from Umineko-- sprawling 7-10 minute suites of pounding electronic beats and synths, melodic lines carried by violins and harpsichord, all evoking a sort of gothic, sinister vibe. They were an instant hit. Three such tracks retired immediately. And while each of them was (surprisingly) stopped just after the retirement round, together they delivered a message: Umineko music had arrived, and it was here to stay.

(worldenddominator's loss to Riches in Me was notably controversial, as some people cast what they called "pity votes" for Riches in Me in a match that Riches in Me would narrowly win.)

[10/49: The Unwound Future]
Each year brought incremental changes to the rules and format of VGMC; in year 3, the nomination phase was streamlined from a somewhat arduous two-phase process to a single, simple allocation of nominations.

Each year would also, of course, bring a wider field of potential nominees.

As participants sought out fresh video game music to nominate, newer releases would become a major source of inspiration. These nominations were also a bit of a headache to check for eligibility, as they were from games that none of the participants had played yet. (Key eligibility rules at this point in VGMC history: tracks must come from a game that was already released, and must appear in-game.) The newest Layton game at the time had released in Japan a few months before VGMC3, and its main theme was very appealing-- but was it eligible? After some frantic searching, a poorly-recorded cutscene from the game on youtube was proudly presented as evidence. Thus did "Theme of the Last Time Travel" (as it was called at the time) make its way into retirement.

[11/49: Diving]
But wait, you might ask. All these new tracks retiring-- had the supply of VGM from earlier eras been exhausted already? Did the well of classic VGM to find success in VGMC run dry by its third iteration?

Not at all. VGMC3 would see the retirements of such luminaries as Corridors of Time, Dire, Dire Docks, Gerudo Valley, and Gangplank Galleon. It also featured VGM that gained cult classic status in VGM circles independent of the game it originated from, such as Diving-- a beloved track from a poorly-reviewed licensed game of a notoriously bad movie.

[12/49: Din Don Dan Dan]
VGMC4 showcased a contest and a community that was really beginning to hit its stride-- both its overall field and its retirees featured a remarkably diverse cast of entries. Old and new, popular and obscure, conventional and strange: VGMC4 had a lot to offer.

One thing it didn't have was a balanced bracket. There were some early matches that had people asking questions; one of the most infamous of these was Din Don Dan Dan's first-round match, which saw it up against Dorchadas from Shikkoku no Sharnoth. Both tracks evoked a Celtic aesthetic, and appealed to voters in similar ways, with several expressing dismay that one of these two would fall so early. Din Don Dan Dan would become one of two Yoko Kanno tracks to retire that year; this first-round match would prove to be its closest on the way there.

[13/49: Silver Will]
In the early VGMCs, bracket seeding was determined by the total number of nominations a track received. (In VGMC3, "Donkey Kong 25m" from Brawl was pushed by nominators to a 1 seed as a joke.) By the start of VGMC4, the value of this approach to seeding had already waned considerably, as nominators quickly took to maximizing the number of their favourite tracks making the contest field instead of the seed they'd receive. But it was VGMC4 that truly sounded the death knell for this seeding approach: eight of the sixteen retirees that year received seeds of 14, 15, or 16. After this contest, Ed Bellis would begin adjusting the bracket's matches to factor in expected performance-- subtly at first, but eventually separating seeding from nomination totals entirely.

Silver Will was one of these low seeds to retire. Like EXA_PICO before it, the Trails series (and Falcom Sound Team) would quietly make itself known with an early retiree that would serve as a harbinger of later success-- aiming for the future, so to speak.

[14/49: KIMERA II]
From the space-whale sounds in the intro to the relentless rhythmic clangs of metal and machinery to the haunting vox and choral samples, Kimera II's one-of-a-kind shmup soundscape, simultaneously primal and futuristic, remains one of VGMC's most striking retirees. Its retirement in VGMC4 is perhaps a sign of a community beginning to embrace music outside its traditional comfort zones, or simply a testament to the track's irresistably compelling energy. (It had previously performed respectably in VGMC3, making a third-round exit.)

[15/49]
After VGMC4, Ed Bellis set up a "Tournament of Champions" bracket featuring all 60 of the retirees from the first four contests. (The winner of each VGMC would get a first-round bye.) It went over like gangbusters-- all of the music with proven track records in the community in the same bracket. It also turned out to be fairly unpredictable in places.

Scars of Time and Shore of Dreams always seemed to be on a collision course, though. They were the powerhouses from VGMC1, two of the most popular VGM around. Both tracks cut through their TOC opponents handily, to set up a rematch of the VGMC1 finals. Scars had won the original clash comfortably.

The tables were turned here, though, as Shore of Dreams eked out a two-vote win to be crowned the first champion of champions.
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Some other notable facts during this era of VGMC:

-VGMC was originally inspired by two things-- a video game music contest held in the gamingforce forums, and a contest specifically for Final Fantasy series music that was held on Board 8.

-The record for largest one-day vote total remains a fifth-round match in VGMC1, a legendary encounter between Shore of Dreams and To Zanarkand that ended 49-48 in favour of the former.

-In VGMC2, two users nominated exactly the same set of ten tracks, all from the Lunar series. They all made it into the contest, and promptly got ejected in the first and second round by largely unamused voters sick of listening to Lunar music. Afterwards, a rule was instated: no blatant copying of nomination lists, and nominations would be limited to a maximum of two entries from the same game, and five total from the same series.

-The first two VGMCs used a file-hosting service named Putfile to host VGM. After Putfile went defunct, the community grudgingly moved to an up-and-coming video-sharing site: Youtube.

-VGMC3 had a very large-scale vote-stuffing controversy take place during the early rounds-- it was discovered that the user UltraAirForce was using somewhere in the vicinity of 20 alt accounts (posing as different users) to vote for certain tracks they wanted to advance. The user (and their alts) were promptly banned from the contest, but given the sheer size of the deception, Ed Bellis considered restarting the contest from scratch (though he decided against this).

-between VGMC3 and 4, Ed Bellis ran a small Mario series-specific 32-track VGM contest just for kicks. The Staff Roll from Mario Kart 64 would prevail. (Amusingly, neither Floater Land from Super Mario Galaxy nor Dire, Dire Docks from Super Mario 64-- both retirees in VGMC-- would make it to the finals.)

[16/49: Love Song of a Certain Dragon]
Fairly or unfairly, the VGMC voterbase to this point was seen as largely averse to non-choral vocal tracks. It's certainly true that some voters cited vocals as significantly detracting from their enjoyment of a track, and such tracks had historically not seen great success in VGMC. Love Song of a Certain Dragon's retirement in VGMC5 was the first crack in that dam, and remarked on as such by voters even then. By VGMC6, a vocal track would make it to the finals, and a vocal track would win VGMC7 outright.

(Love Song of a Certain Dragon was also the first example of a track winning by slim margins all the way to retirement, though certainly not the last.)

[17/49: Positive Force]
Unlike vocal tracks, chiptunes (and the chiptune aesthetic)-- especially tracks focusing on simple waveforms that evoked memories of the earliest consoles-- showed strength among the community in early contests but appeared to be on the wane, with no retirees in VGMC4. In VGMC5, they came back with a vengeance. Classic chiptunes Monty on the Run and The Moon were both retirees (after runs in earlier VGMCs fell short), but also notable was a new darling in this style: the VVVVVV soundtrack, which made initial overtures in VGMC4 and would go on to retire four tracks in the next three years, with Positive Force leading the charge.

[18/49: The Extreme]
Sometimes you'll see some strange results in VGMC history. There's an infamous one in VGMC1 that's still joked about occasionally today, when big climactic FF-series track The Extreme lost to a track seemingly from "Trans World" (by the inimitable BIBER ZSOLT) by one vote in the first round-- a track that was later discovered to be an ineligible remix. (You can actually hear it here: http://www.remix64.com/track/biber-zsolt/transworld-trans-project-stage1-4/?modalwin=1 In retrospect this is something we could have realized a lot earlier-- Trans World is a C64 game.)

After this humiliating defeat, and a second run that fell short in VGMC2, The Extreme dropped off the radar-- laid low by such a result, it wasn't clear it would return to the contest again, much less become a retiree. But return it did, to finish on the highest note possible, walking away the winner of VGMC5.

In general, this was a great year for tracks that tended towards the epic and grandiose-- ME2's Suicide Mission, Xenoblade's Unfinished Business/Battle, the Mjolnir Mix from Halo 2. It was greatest for a track that seemed very far from such a position four years prior.

[19/49: Zero]
Some contest entrants retire on their first appearance. What about the ones that don't? Many are nominated again in a later contest (in some cases ad infinitum), hoping for better results. The unofficial name for such tracks is 'returners'; you've run into a few of them already on this list.

VGMC6 was a pretty good year for returners. The number of retired tracks that year fitting this designation wasn't unusually high-- 9 in total, roughly in line with the average of the previous three years-- but for the first time in a VGMC, all four semifinalists were returners. It culminated in a finals match between Zero-- a track that had done well in the first two VGMCs before encountering retirees each time, and then (perhaps taking a cue from The Extreme) took the next few VGMCs off-- and Dorchadas. (Remember Dorchadas?)

[20/49: Yoru no Himawari]
There's a subset of retirees we haven't really touched on until now-- they feature heavily piano-driven melodies (often paired with light, ethereal synths) evoking a certain wistful melancholy. They're also very consistently from visual novel soundtracks. (Tracks in this mold are jokingly referred to as "sadvnpiano.mp3".) Hope (from Umineko), the champion of VGMC4, is the earliest and most prominent example, but more would retire over the next few years, including tracks from Clannad, Air, and this one from Subarashiki Hibi (also known as Wonderful Everyday).

[21/49: Sburban Jungle]
Is Homestuck music VGM? A simple question kicked off a debate that started in VGMC5 (when Homestuck tracks first made it into the bracket) and raged on through VGMC6. After extensive argument, much of it about the semantics of what a "video game" is, a ruling was made: Homestuck tracks would not be eligible for future contests, but the ones that made it into VGMC6 would be allowed to stay. When Sburban Jungle attained retired status that year, it immediately became an anomaly: a retired track whose very status as VGM is questioned to this day.

[22/49: The Poet and the Muse]
We're fast approaching the halfway point in this history. The year is 2013, and it's more brisk business for VGMC. Longtime VGMC participant meisnewbie creates a script to automate nomination counting (as long as nominations adhere to a specific format), making it significantly easier and less error-prone. Ed Bellis creates another 256-track bracket (after the usual howls of "WHERE'S THE BRACKET"). A few early matches crack 50 total votes. The contest is a well-oiled machine.

Let me take my historian hat off for a second. (Whew, that's better.) I think most people who were present for the majority of VGMC history agree that at some point, there was a downturn. Each person might have a different opinion on when that begins; I think the inflection point happens here, in VGMC7. Nothing feels ostensibly wrong, but I struggle to remember interesting matches or storylines about it. The field is fine, but seems to reflect a slowly calcifying collection of tastes. 12 out of 16 retirees are returners (the largest number to date), including all four semifinalists for the second year in a row.

One thing that does stand out is the continuing ascent of vocal tracks. This set of retirees yielded five of them (among them the eventual champion), including a couple of firsts: tracks with entirely English lyrics and predominantly male vocals. The Poet and the Muse had taken a couple of shots at retirement, coming very close in VGMC6; it would not be denied a third time.

[23/49: Bloody Tears]
Back in VGMC3, a user named Repus_Yortsed nominated seven different versions of Bloody Tears (three of which eventually made it into the contest). Ed Bellis swiftly introduced a new rule in VGMC4 stating that only one version of a track could be nominated in any one person's nomination set.

No version of Bloody Tears retired in the first six VGMCs, though the original from Castlevania 2 came close a couple of times. (Perhaps it was cursed after that incident. WHAT A HORRIBLE CONTEST TO HAVE A CURSE.) It would be the Super Castlevania IV version that would finally break through, in VGMC7.

No track older than this one (1991.10.31) has retired from VGMC since.

[24/49: Tin Soldiers]
Earlier comments notwithstanding, there were certainly some atypical retirees in VGMC7. One of them was from a soundtrack that had really captivated a subset of the community: Neotokyo, evoking a somber cyberpunk aesthetic with breakbeats, ominous strings, fragments of voices, and echoing, wavering synths and samples reminiscent of the chattering of sentient computers-- music that was full of blues and greys, of dark alleyways and LEDs and surveillance drones.

Starting from VGMC5, there was a consistent push to get a few Neotokyo tracks into the contest, and VGMC7 saw Neotokyo's high-water mark for contest success.

Tin Soldiers's retirement felt like a bright spot in what otherwise felt like a bit of a down year for the contest. Worse times would come: VGMC7 would have not 16 retirees but 17, as Ed Bellis would leave the Board 8 community soon after this contest, handing the reins of VGMC to a trusted lieutenant: lefty.

[25/49: Theme of Laura]
With Ed Bellis's departure, the decline of VGMC became more evident. While lefty kept things running smoothly, vote totals were down across the board, culminating in the lowest vote count in a finals match up to that point in VGMC history. 13 of 16 retirees were returners, including all semifinalists for a third straight year. It felt like VGMC was just going through the motions.

The retirees themselves generally didn't reflect that mood, though. There was a surfeit of big, exciting battle tracks once again-- from Bravely Default, from the Ys series, from Xenoblade and Sonic Generations and Ace Combat. It was like VGMC retirees were partying through the night in a last burst of energy, oblivious to the hangover to come. Only Theme of Laura, playing guitar in the corner, seemed to capture the mood of the moment in retrospect-- the looming shadow of an ending.

[26/49: Shining Wizard]
Still, there's always something to find that points to the future. Music from rhythm games had a woeful record in VGMC up to this point, with not a single retiree from dozens of entries-- from IIDX, from pop'n, from jubeat, from DDR and In the Groove. (Nekomata Master, whose music seemed like a good fit for Board 8 tastes, had three different tracks fail to make it past the third round.) Given the diversity of styles that showed up in rhythm games as a whole, this was an astonishing streak of futility.

The turning point began with a somewhat unexpected track: Shining Wizard (whose genre is labelled SORCERY PROG in pop'n). Its retirement suggested, perhaps, a growing interest in both rhythm game music and VGM with prog influences. The former would become almost immediately evident; the latter, much more gradually.

[27/49: Zero Two]
Even among returners, Zero Two was a particularly persistent one. It appeared in the first six VGMCs-- one of only six tracks to hold that distinction. It was notably absent in VGMC7; the break might have done it some good. It returned once again in VGMC8 and made it count this time, going all the way to the finals. In doing so, it would set a record for most attempts to successful retirement-- a record promptly broken a year later by Someday the Dream Will End (which had followed a very similar pattern). It was also the first Kirby series track to retire, which seemed a somewhat remarkable drought for a big Nintendo series with fairly well-liked music (though, as we would see eventually, not as remarkable a drought as some.)

It's an ominous retiree for an ominous moment in VGMC history-- the contest was heading into stormy waters.

[28/49]
The second Tournament of Champions, as might be expected, was a much more subdued affair than the first. It was actually run in parallel with the VGMC10 main bracket, and contained all of the retirees from VGMCs 5 through 8.

If the first Tournament of Champions had some unpredictable moments, the second one felt like a total crapshoot, in part due to the considerable reduction in the size of the voting base. Many champions and runners-up fell early, and The Poet and the Muse rode a wave of support and razor-thin margins of victory all the way to the finals, where it lost to lastendconductor from Umineko. What an foreboding title for the track that would be the final champion of its era.
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Some other notable facts during this era of VGMC:

-there was something of a coordinated effort by a few users to maximize the number of Touhou tracks to get into the contest. In that regard, they certainly succeeded-- seventeen Touhou tracks made it into the main bracket in VGMC5. The tracks themselves met the same sort of fate as the Lunar tracks back in VGMC2-- not a one made it past Round 2. (At this point you might expect the story to go "and then Touhou nominations were never the same again" but not at all-- there were 14 Touhou entrants in VGMC6 and 11 in VGMC7.)

-The user azuarc began participating in VGMC5. He enjoyed the contest, but thought it would be cool to have another contest that showcased the strength of full soundtracks, instead of individual tracks. He launched his contest idea-- Best OST Contest, or BOST-- in the months between VGMC5 and 6, attaining a solid following. It would become an annual fixture during VGMC's off-season until it went on hiatus after VGMC8 (and its reduced participation). The first four winners of BOST were Ar tonelico II, Shatter, Atelier Ayesha, and Bravely Default, which is a pretty accurate snapshot of Board 8 VGM tastes during this time.

-VGMC officially dropped the "Big Ol'" in front of its name in VGMC6.

[29/49: Memories of You]
Ed Bellis was a titan of the Board 8 VGM scene, articulate and friendly, a nexus for general VGM sharing and discussion. The community-- we-- missed him greatly.

Two years after his departure, VGMC engagement had cratered. lefty was left holding the bag, though he made a valiant attempt to carry it.

Voting slowed to a trickle; matches were left open for multiple days to accumulate more votes. (lefty refused to have matches fall below 20 total votes under his watch.)

Still, VGMC shuffled along, even at its nadir. Matches were resolved, retirees selected. Business would proceed as usual, though none of us were sure for how long.

[30/49: Evolution Era]
The retirees of VGMC9 were an unusual collection: the lowest number of returners since VGMC2; three retirees from the "Tales of" series (and the only three ever to retire from that series); only the second-ever Game Boy track to retire; vocal tracks reminiscent of 90s anime OPs. It was a strange mix driven at least partially by much smaller voting pools. (In a sign that some things didn't change, Umineko gained another two retirees.)

Another notable result-- after years of zero rhythm game retirees, VGMC9 featured no fewer than three semifinalists from rhythm games. (It would, of course, be the non-rhythm game semifinalist that would seize victory.) Maybe, if VGMC could get out of the rut it was in and rebuild, one or more of these developments would lead to something greater, an opportunity for the community and its tastes to shift and evolve once again.

[31/49: Strike the Earth!]
The clock ticked down the last seconds of the final match of VGMC9.

lefty had done it-- he had dragged a truly godforsaken iteration of VGMC to the finish line, but the effort had exhausted him. It felt like the appetite for VGMC was disappearing for hosts and participants alike-- who would carry the torch next?

Up stepped azuarc, who had four years of BOST hosting experience under his belt by then. BOST had some intriguing differences from VGMC, and perhaps he could bring some fresh ideas to its older, flagging cousin-- a new foundation.

But no new foundation comes without digging. And to revive VGMC, azuarc would need to dig deep.

[32/49: ASGORE]
azuarc introduced changes from the outset, trying a new approach to the nomination process (which was met with decidedly mixed responses) and slashing bracket size to 128 tracks to better align with the current interest level VGMC was drawing. This would mean that the bracket would yield only 8 retirees. It would also make VGMC more manageable in the short term. With luck, this would be a year for the contest to quietly reload and refocus.

Ha!

A certain game and its soundtrack had dramatically different ideas. Undertale would hit VGM communities with a seismic thud. Board 8 was no exception: despite the smaller bracket size, nine Undertale tracks would make it into the contest, and two would retire. One was ASGORE, which had a fairly straightforward contest run by most standards. The other... would require an entirely separate story.

[33/49: Despair of ELFERIA]
This isn't Megalovania you're listening to, but you may have guessed that it was the other Undertale retiree regardless.
-
First, some background information. As mentioned earlier, Board 8 is the "GameFAQs Contests" board: a place for people to discuss the site-wide video game popularity contests that would happen on occasion. As it would happen, one such contest took place a few months before VGMC10 was held (the third installment of "Best. Game. Ever.") While The Legend of Zelda series typically rules GameFAQs contests, this contest was won by-- what else-- Undertale, as a result of some big rallies. This was controversial, and members of the board took fairly strong stances on the game as a result. The rallies also brought an influx of new users to the board, many of whom were fans of the game and its music.
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All of which set the stage for an extremely contentious VGMC10 final. In the red corner: Megalovania itself, Toby Fox's most famous track. In the blue corner: Nekomata Master's first-ever retiree.
-
And what a mess of a final it was. 24 hours passed, and it appeared that Megalovania had won the day by two votes. But one of the core tenets of VGMC is that every voter must listen to both tracks, and vote based on their enjoyment of the music, not on the game the music is from.
-
A few Megalovania voters appeared during the final that had either never voted before, or hadn't ever voted in matches outside of ones featuring Undertale music (voting for the Undertale track each time). It was impossible to tell if they were voting according to the rules or not.
-
In his first year as VGMC host, azuarc would stare down the barrel of one of the ugliest voting controversies in VGMC history. Supporters of each track argued their cases vociferously; it seemed that no matter what azuarc decided, a good portion of the voterbase would believe that VGMC10 had a paper champion.
-
After extensive deliberation and consultation, azuarc declared... a tie. The score was officially recorded as 20-20, and the match moved forward with standard tiebreak rules: an additional 24 hours, with all votes reset.
-
The Megalovania voters under question did not appear for the tiebreak. Your VGMC10 champion: Despair of ELFERIA, by a score of 20-20, 24-20.

Did this result satisfy everyone? Not at all. There was a fair amount of grumbling. A few users swore off VGMC entirely. But for whatever it's worth, azuarc evaluated the situation carefully, took decisive action, and lived with the consequences. It was quite the start to his VGMC hosting career.

[34/49: Soaring Clouds, Drifting Haze]
VGMC11 provided the quiet regrouping period that VGMC10 did not, and felt much more like a natural extension of VGMC9, for better or for worse. Only three Undertale tracks made it into the bracket proper; familiar titles such as Umineko and the Trails series would find themselves in the retiree circle once more, along with a track from a series that had been quietly growing in strength over the years.

The Atelier series had gotten entries into the contest since VGMC2, much like the series it shared a sound team with (EXA_PICO), but hadn't found the same success. It would take until VGMC10 for its first retiree to appear, but (as in various prior instances) as the community became more familiar with its music, a flurry of other retirees would follow, including Soaring Clouds, Drifting Haze-- an RPG boss battle track that was a good match with the community's taste for high-energy orchestral-and-guitar arrangements.

[35/49: Emil / Karma]
What makes a VGMC champion? A simple way to see it might be that it's the track that succeeds at having the largest number of participants enjoy it consistently. A more jaded formulation of that idea is this: it's the track that elicits the fewest negative responses among the participants; it's the "least bad" track for the largest audience.

This is the unflattering description that's often given to VGMC11's champion, Emil / Karma. Despite winning the final match in a commanding blowout, there didn't appear to be much enthusiasm for this champion; very few people in the community would put it at or near the top of a personal ranking of champions.

But history doesn't lie: seven different tracks had a chance to stop it, and didn't. Only one even came close (goldenslaughterer, from Umineko). For seven rounds, this was the track that the largest number of participants enjoyed consistently, and no other track could say the same in VGMC11.

[36/49: End of All (Land)]
VGMC11 was a return to relative normalcy. But would this remain the eventual fate of VGMC, doomed to a static audience and an eternity of 20-to-30-vote matches?
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Stability was not enough. We needed to grow, once more.
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The user NFUN landed in Board 8 during the wave of new users accompanying Undertale's domination in the "Best. Game. Ever." contest, and stuck around afterwards, participating in VGMC. He was also part of another VGM community-- siiva, known for its high-quality rips.
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The siiva community also ran VGM guessing games on their discord server. NFUN thought it would be neat to start running games in the Board 8 discord as well, and advertised it on the board. Curious, members of the Board 8 VGM community began to join and participate in them.

NFUN also advertised VGMC on siiva, convincing a few of its members to participate. azuarc, in the meantime, had been doing some advertising himself, on other boards and in the videos of a certain youtube VGM channel.
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Maybe these felt like small things at the time. Incremental improvements.
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Do you know what, though? I think these things mattered a lot. The guessing games got people talking about and sharing VGM in a fun environment, encouraging more activity in the board 8 VGM discord channel as a whole. The new faces were noticed and welcomed. Speaking personally, I had no real interest in the Board 8 discord prior to this, and waning interest in VGM as a whole; but playing the guessing games, and seeing an uptick in the engagement of the VGM community in the run-up to VGMC12, I decided to get up and prepare a proper nomination list for the first time in years. I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same.
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VGMC12's nomination period was the liveliest it had been in years. When the contest began in earnest, the evidence was plain as day: voting had returned to VGMC8 levels. Perhaps we'd never reach the peak of VGMC's heyday, but against the odds, the Board 8 VGM community had been revitalized.

The modern era of VGMC had begun.
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Did this change the makeup of the retirees? In VGMC12, not to a great degree. Persona 5 did well, which was unsurprising. An EXA_PICO track met an Ys track in the finals, which aligned with prior success for both series.

It did seem to throw off the seeding a bit, though. By this point, tracks were seeded entirely based on predicted strength of each entry; getting a 16 seed meant that the bracket creator expected the track to be among the weakest in the contest.

Two 16 seeds retired in VGMC12: Amusement Park from NieR: Automata (which later became a running joke due to azuarc's bemusement at its success), and End of All (Land) from Fire Emblem Fates. The latter would be (despite Id ~ Purpose's best efforts) the first Fire Emblem series track to retire.

[37/49: Zenith]
One thing to note about the siiva VGM community: Yousuke Yasui tracks are very popular. Board 8, in contrast, didn't seem to have much interest-- YO-KAI Disco, from Mamorukun Curse!, had been the only notable Yasui entrant up to this point.

It is probably not entirely coincidental that VGMC12 featured the first Yasui retiree in Zenith. Its nominator? deogenerate (alias BANSHIRYUU alias THE GUNNER), a prominent member of the siiva community and an energetic presence the moment he arrived on Board 8. Its round 4 match to determine which track would retire was against Glass from Zakuzaku Actors; there's very little that could feel more 'deo' than that.

[38/49: Battle!!/Torna]
With participation back to pre-VGMC9 levels, azuarc decided to expand the field once again, to 192. But how to avoid the conundrum of a final three? After some consideration, azuarc proposed a bracket with sixteen total divisions with twelve tracks each; the top four seeds of each division would get a bye to the second round. Based on this system, tracks with a bye would only need to win three matches to retire; it would also restore the total number of retirees to 16.

Would participation keep up with a larger contest? It did better than that-- voting increased once again, to levels not seen since VGMC6. A full year had passed since the spark that emerged prior to VGMC12; VGM guessing games were all the rage, and even more siiva members had joined the Board 8 VGM community. Business was booming.

The bye system got a somewhat lukewarm reception-- due to the inexact nature of predicting which tracks would be strong, byes weren't really predictive of which tracks would retire (just over half of the retirees had first-round byes). It was also questioned whether getting a bye was actually helpful to the tracks that received them, as one less round meant one fewer opportunity for the track to grow on voters. It did keep Round 2 fresher than usual, though, with an entirely new set of tracks making their first appearance.

Torna Battle was one track that felt like it may have deserved a bye in retrospect, rolling to the semifinals before losing to the eventual champion.

[39/49: 1NF3$+@+!0N (Theme of Crabulon)]
The guessing games themselves would, by this point, have at least some influence on the tracks that got into the contest. People used the guessing games to introduce new music to the community, and some tracks (or even whole soundtracks) would gain enough of a following to drive successful nominations and, eventually, retirement runs.

The Terraria Calamity Mod music written by DM DOKURO would be one such example. This was a soundtrack that NFUN had used in several guessing games, including the very first one hosted on Board 8. Its first track in Hard difficulty? "1NF3S+@+!0N" - Theme of Crabulon.

In total, three Calamity Mod tracks would make it into the VGMC13 bracket, all with byes, and two would retire.

[40/49: steelchambers2]
New participants would continue to introduce successful tracks outside of more traditional Board 8 VGM fare. One of the most surprising retirees of VGMC13 was a track from an Amiga pinball game, nominated by first-time VGMC participant rwlh. (It's also one of only two retirees since VGMC10 to hail from the 20th century.) In VGMC14, a track from a TurboGrafx-16 game would make it to the main bracket. Such nominees-- from unexpected sources, and of unconventional styles-- would ensure the field did not get stale, and it showed in the number of first-time entrants to retire-- 12, the highest number since VGMC2.

[41/49: Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE;]
What makes a VGMC champion? VGMC11 had one answer. VGMC13 had quite another.

The third edition of the Tournament of Champions was run concurrently with VGMC14. It featured the 56 retirees of the past five years; all champions and runners-up received first-round byes. It would also lay down a judgment on which vision of a champion would point to the future.

Emil/Karma from NieR, the VGMC11 champion, would lose its second-round match by a score of 29-15. Sunshine Coastline from Ys 8, the VGMC12 champion, would do likewise, 25-20.

The other two champions would meet in the finals.

One of them was Despair of ELFERIA, the VGMC10 champion; the other, this track: Class::EXSPHERE_NOSURGE; from Ar nosurge, the VGMC13 champion.

Successful VGMC tracks generally press one or two of the right buttons to appeal to the Board 8 community. EXSPHERE had a different proposition: what if you pressed a whole bunch of buttons at once?

Maximalist, sprawling, ambitious, it turned out to be exactly what the community was looking for. What makes a TOC champion? The answer would be something that seemed unimaginable, back in VGMC11.

[42/49]
Some other notable facts during this era of VGMC:

-Tournament of Champions 3 was the culmination of a pattern in azuarc-hosted VGMCs-- side brackets that ran in parallel with the main bracket. VGMC10 featured Tournament of Champions 2 as a side bracket; VGMC11 featured the VGMC Masters tournament, featuring non-retired tracks that had made it to the fourth round in prior contests; VGMC12 featured the "auto-include" bracket, where each nominator was permitted to pick 1-3 tracks (depending on how many of their nominations made it into the main bracket) to enter the side bracket by fiat.

-The track Id ~ Purpose from Fire Emblem Awakening continued a streak of four straight round-four (i.e. retirement round) appearances without actual retirement, dating back to VGMC8, truly defining itself as the Sisyphus of VGMC.

-azuarc expanded the definition of VGMC eligibility to include VGM tracks that were technically arrangements or remixes of non-VGM tracks but strayed so far from the original as to feel like its own track; by this new interpretation of the rule, the version of The Devil Went Down to Georgia entered as an eligible entrant in VGMC12.

-What happened to BOST? After VGMC13, deogenerate picked up the mantle of BOST host, running a highly successful BOST5. The winner was... Umineko. Some things change; some things stay the same.

[43/49]
We've almost made it to present day. It's been a long journey, hasn't it?

VGMC13 was, by most measures, a big success; but people were lukewarm about the bye system, and a 256-track bracket still seemed a bridge too far. There were also concerns about the nomination phase getting too frantic with last-minute changes as people tried to maximize their nominations.

azuarc decided to try something different once again. Why not? Trying out new approaches had served him well up to this point, and besides-- he'd announced that this would be his last contest as host.

So azuarc proposed two changes: a system to 'lock in' a track, guaranteeing it a spot in the contest if it reached a certain number of nominations by a certain date, and a wild-card system.

The lock-in system turned out to be wildly popular. The wild-card system was not-- but that's another story.

[44/49: Second Dark Matter Battle]
Throughout this history, there have been stories of lengthy periods of futility for some notable properties. Touhou had dozens of contest entries over the years but only one retiree, in the inaugural VGMC; rhythm games didn't break through until eight contests in. There's another such streak that really stands out.

Have you seen a single reference to a Pokemon retiree before now? Over forty different Pokemon tracks got into VGMCs 1 through 13, touching on a huge swath of its games and spinoffs. Classic. Modern. Remakes. Mystery Dungeon. The Gamecube games. The trading card games. The Nobunaga's Ambition crossover! The typing game!

Not a one retired. VGMC14 looked like more of the same-- nine Pokemon tracks entered the main bracket, and began dropping off one by one. Sword/Shield's Battle Tower-- a 1 seed-- lost in the first round.

But when the dust settled, one Pokemon track stood proudly in retirement, the first of its kind: the suitably climactic Second Dark Matter Battle. Would a flurry of other Pokemon retirees follow, as in some previous instances? Only time will tell.

[45/49: GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE]
Chimeratio had been an avid VGMC participant since VGMC3-- and for most of that time, he'd felt that his musical tastes were out of step with the rest of the community. Tracks that he championed would typically not make the field, or fall in the early rounds. (This was most evident in VGMC10, when precisely one of his nominations made it into the main bracket, promptly losing in the first round.)

Perhaps nothing summed it up better than this fact: until VGMC14, despite consistently nominating (some very remarkable) tracks, exactly two tracks in which Chimeratio was the first nominator had retired.

So when GUERRANT-OFENZA-SUPRONT-UNNE retired, it felt like a clear sign of change. The apparent gulf in musical preferences was no longer there: Chimeratio had grown to enjoy more of VGMC's historically popular styles, certainly, but the B8 VGM community had moved to embrace more of his favourite music as well. Its representative tastes had shifted considerably.

Perhaps nothing sums it up better than this fact: in VGMC14, five tracks in which Chimeratio was the first nominator retired.

(KCF, another longtime participant with an even bigger streak of futility-- zero retirees among his nominations!-- also retired a nominee for the first time in VGMC14.)

[46/49: Credits]
So what was the wild-card system? Basically, it was a second-chance system for tracks that got eliminated in the first two rounds. Each division began with 12 tracks; after the first two rounds, 9 of them would have lost. These 9 tracks would be thrown into a wild-card match where participants would assign points to the tracks they liked the most in that group; whichever track got the most points would be reintroduced to a different division's third round matches.

It was a cool idea in principle; in practice, participants had objections to evaluating nine tracks at once, thought the wild-card matches slowed down and broke the flow of the contest, and questioned whether any of the wild-card winners would make anything of their second chance.

Out of the sixteen wild-card winners, one of them did: Credits EX.

At first blush, Credits was a stunning retiree; as recently as two years ago it would have been an unfathomable prospect. But now, it felt like it belonged.

like YOU
like YOU
like YOU
like YOU

[47/49: -(Isoleucine)- x Endeavour]
And so, as VGMC14 neared its end, two tracks were left standing: -(Isoleucine)- from 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and Endeavour from Idola: Phantasy Star Saga.
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The finals match would come down to the wire, each matching the other vote for vote. Back and forth they went, until five minutes remained.
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Five minutes... and the match was tied, 23-23.
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Then, two votes came in, right at the end of the match. After all they had been through, their source seemed entirely fitting.
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The second-last vote was from lefty.
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The last vote was from azuarc.
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ENDEAVOUR 25-23 ISOLEUCINE

[48/49]
And thus did the latest entry of VGMC draw to a close.
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What would come next? What does the future hold in store for this contest?
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After the final match, azuarc officially stepped down as host, handing over the reins to Chimeratio and deogenerate. They've had some discussions about improvements to make VGMC even better. We're excited to see what ideas they'll bring.
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Beyond that... the next pages of VGMC still wait to be written. The history ends here, but not the story. VGMC15 nominations, after all, will begin in April.
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And to you, dear listener-- if you would like, you can write a part of that story as well. It's a story of hope and disappointment, of giddy triumph and abject defeat, but more than anything else, it's a story of a community that continues to grow together, to share and celebrate a common passion: our love of video game music.

The door is open. Will you step through?

VGMC is waiting for you.

END

[49/49]
THE BOARD 8
VIDEO GAME MUSIC CONTEST

A HISTORY
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Special thanks for story consultation:

azuarc
NFUN
Chimeratio
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Thank you, VGMC hosts, without whom this history would not exist:

Ed Bellis
lefty
azuarc
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And most of all, thank you to the Board 8 VGM community.
You are the lifeblood of this history,
and of fourteen years of fond memories.
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VGMC will return
2021.04.15
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See you then.