The month of May is soundly here, and here goes thus another bout of the VGM guessing contest comes along with it. It's a bit of a step down from my previous one in multiple ways, but please bear with me. Let’s get this party started!

Rules

All you have to do is listen through the numerous 33-second tracks linked to down below, and write down which game or franchise each track you recognize belongs to. Do mind that while there may be melodies that are featured in multiple games, only the games that feature the exact arrangement sampled will give points.
The answers are to be sent to me by PM. You may revise or add on to your answers as many times as you like by sending me another PM as long as the deadline has not yet been reached.

The deadline is May 23rd, 8:00 PM (CET).

Guessing the correct game will give 1 point.
If you are the only person to guess a particular track correctly, you get an extra ½ point.
Guessing the correct franchise/game series (or a different game in the same series) will give ¼ point.
Wrong guesses give no penalties.

Please refrain from conferring with other people to discuss answers and the likes before the contest has ended. Searching on your own is fine, as is boasting about how much/little you have recognized already. Posting hints/answers in the thread or elsewhere in the forums is prohibited.

In the case of any ties, they will be resolved by ordering the tied parties by their ratios of correct game answers versus correct franchise answers. If users still remain tied, the people who sent their final answers/addendums in the earliest will be favored.

Prizes

*1^st place*	*$25*
2^nd place	$15
3^rd place	$10

Prizewinners may decide whether to receive their winnings through PayPal or another form to be agreed upon post-contest.

Prizewinners will be contacted by PM when the contest has ended in order to discuss the details. If for any reason they fail to respond by June 23rd, their prize is effectively voided.

Music list

There’s a meager 50 tracks in the selection this time around. There is no real common theme at work here. The difficulty level is not that high this time, so I'm expecting to see a fair share of ties. If you know some of the somewhat more obscure ones, you might have an edge here!

Download them all as a .zip, .7z, or listen to them through a simple online playlist here.
Be forewarned that the loudness of the tracks may vary considerably from one to another. Some tracks may also suffer from poor audio quality, but they should still be recognizable.

You may want to simply jump from one track to the next at first, judging from the first couple of seconds whether it rings a bell. Of course, if you would prefer to listen to the 27 ½-minute ensemble back-to-back, be my guest.

Feel free to ask questions and whatnot; I will try my best to answer them. Best of luck!

オンバット~ ♥

I've got a couple I immediately recognize, and quite a few that are familiar that I'll need more time on.

I quite like what I hear of the selection though. Sometime I oughta go back and replay the game #8 is from.

Originally posted by Tokiko

The difficulty level is not that high this time

Huh, are you sure? I ranked 7th in your last contest but don't even feel like bothering with this one. I could just be completely out of touch here, but a heads-up for you nonetheless.

Also, I forgot to mention this last time, but:

Originally posted by Tokiko

only the games that feature the exact arrangement sampled will give points

Originally posted by Tokiko

Some tracks may also suffer from poor audio quality

There have been times the version I had in my library sounded slightly different, and I wasn't sure whether that was because of audio quality, or because it was the wrong version. Personally, double-checking that kind of thing isn't something I enjoy in these contests. Again, just leaving this here as an FYI, and others might disagree.

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I know what 14 is, and I thought I recognized 29, but I tried to look for it, but I can't find it in the game I thought it was so I'm not sure. Those are the only two I recognize, and the rest seem really hard.

Originally posted by AxemJinx

Huh, are you sure? I ranked 7th in your last contest but don't even feel like bothering with this one. I could just be completely out of touch here, but a heads-up for you nonetheless.

Well indeed, levels of difficulty in this sort of thing is a bit finicky to even try to make a statement about... either one knows the tracks, or one doesn't. If someone hasn't ever heard the SMB theme before (somehow...), its inclusion in an event like this makes it impossible-tier already. It's not 'easy' for -them-.
There's no particular "skill" involved in this type of thing to accurately measure a sense of difficulty, other than potentially being diverse in one's video game tastes perhaps helping some.
All I meant to indicate is that there are way fewer really obscure things this time, as... I kind of exhausted those options last time, heh.

Originally posted by AxemJinx

There have been times the version I had in my library sounded slightly different, and I wasn't sure whether that was because of audio quality, or because it was the wrong version. Personally, double-checking that kind of thing isn't something I enjoy in these contests. Again, just leaving this here as an FYI, and others might disagree.

A valid point! In the worst case scenarios there what difference it makes is 3/4 of a point in each case (or well, a whole point + 1/4 if it happens to be something nobody else gets).

Last time I included a handful of tracks with the explicit intent to beguile and lead listeners astray in that way (a cruel move, I know) - and got some pretty entertaining results in return. This time, I can "only" really think of two tracks that might mess someone up - but again, if they guess what I suppose they could misinterpret it as being from, at least they get a quarter of a point rather than nil. Hopefully it will not be too much of an issue; if they go and listen to what they THINK it is, they should realize it really isn't quite right (and thus should be able to sniff out the real deal quite easily). It's too late to change things up now, alas...

I'll keep it in mind if I get around to do another one of these down the road anyhow, thank you for your input!

オンバット~ ♥

~~I'm not participating because you didn't even look at the contest when I did it, you baka. Also needs more Falcom.~~

Pretty decent stuff here, though. I at least recognize one of them so far....

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here.

I have received answers from three people already, thanks for your participation! \o\
A fairly even distribution of scores so far, but that's sure to change as single-guesser bonuses are broken and new ones are unearthed. It really still is anybody's game~

Originally posted by imamelia

~~I'm not participating because you didn't even look at the contest when I did it, you baka.~~

Oh I LOOKED/LISTENED alright, but let's just say I felt too demotivated by lack of certainly recognized tracks (not counting "I know this, where's it from argh) that I decided to stay low and reclusive as usual. After looking through the list when results were posted, I reckon I could have gotten 'round 6.5 points. Whoops.
Just 'cuz I try to crank out a lot of songs for my own gigs (this time excluded) doesn't necessarily mean I'm very well-acquainted with a wide variety of VG-music, it seems! It usually comes down to overlapping tastes in the end, shucks... ;w;

オンバット~ ♥

I have about 8 of them pegged for sure. 27 and 30 were some really interesting choices. Can't say I ever expected a track from 27 to pop up in one of these, even though it has an incredible OST.

Originally posted by Tokiko

Some tracks may also suffer from poor audio quality, but they should still be recognizable.

Could you please fix this or at least indicate which tracks are bad rips? In your last contest it was frustrating because there were cases where I couldn't tell if a song sounded like shit cuz the samples were compressed cuz it was a DS game or something, or if it sounded like shit because it was a bad rip. It's artificial difficulty.

Originally posted by ergazoobi

Could you please fix this or at least indicate which tracks are bad rips?

Sure thing, I can at least make an earnest attempt! Most of these tracks I threw together into a collection in a hurry back in late 2015 so I'm not sure what sources I had to work with for most of them, but I listened through and attempted to find better sources for certain tracks I myself deemed a bit icky. This change is reflected both in the downloadable archives and the playlist thingy.
This concerns the following tracks: #002, #017, #023, #026, #027 and #040.

Also of note is that I've switched track #004 out with something else entirely, but still from the same game as the original track. The original had poor quality and wasn't in the better-sounding soundtrack I got for some reason, so there's that.

If there are other tracks that sound seriously bad/off, feel free to point them out to me and I will be happy to try to remedy the issue. My ears aren't as quality-sensitive as most's, unfortunately.

オンバット~ ♥

Are there any that are computer games or are all of them from video games that are from console systems or can you not say? I don't know if I am missing something, but like I said in my PM if this is too hard, please do not count that as me not having any guesses. I'm not sure if I will submit any until I somehow discover some more of them.

There were some PC-only games, and some that were on both PC and consoles, buuut mostly console-only I'd say. Sorry for the (too) late answer, I've been too scatterbrained this time around... $#ab{x_x}$

But that doesn't mean I forgot the contest ended today or anything, so with no further ado, here are the results!

Place	Username	Points	Solo-guesses	Game guesses	Franchise guesses
1st	Blue Leaf	34,75pts	7☆	31◎	1◇
2nd	Vic Rattlehead	17pts	1☆	16◎	2◇
3rd	Gloomier	15,75pts	2☆	14◎	3◇
4th	Halzyn	15,5pts	4☆	13◎	1◇
5th	K.T.B.	10,75pts	0☆	10◎	3◇
6th	trackftv	8,75pts	1☆	8◎	1◇
7th	cloudyboy	7,75pts	0☆	7◎	3◇
8th	Amos Defamos	7pts	0☆	6◎	4◇
9th	SMW green man	6pts	0☆	5◎	4◇
10th	GaoGaoTaiga	5,25pts	0☆	5◎	1◇
11th	Sinc-X	4,5pts	0☆	3◎	6◇
12th	imamelia	3,25pts	0☆	3◎	1◇

Blue Leaf was the last person to submit their guesses, and good is it that they did too. Truly stealing the thunder of the show, bravo! And most certainly a mighty hooray for the other winners as well - Vic Rattlehead and Gloomier. \o/
A honorary mention goes out to Halzyn who was as close to tying with 3rd place as could've been the case without actually doing so. :'3

For a grand overview of what tracks came from what games, who got what right (or semi-right) and whatnot, have a looksie over here!

...much like last time, I am still pretty human-ish, so I may have made mistakes in dealing out marks (and thus the Excel-formulas breaking pointage), so feel free to throw corrections my way if any errors are spotted.

Congratulations to the winners! I'll be contacting them by PM by the end of the day to sort out prizes, and really now, thanks to all twelve of you participants for joining in the spectacle. It's been a pleasure reading your guesses/answers, and watching the upset in placements as time went on.

Best wishes to all, have a great week~!

オンバット~ ♥

while it's tough to accept a loss like this, there's not much else to really do 'bout it -- with that said, congratulations to the winners! y'all deserved it. :]

Darn, I actually briefly considered checking MK8's OST, but I sort of assumed that you wouldn't use songs from the same game twice after the last one. A lot of these songs totally surprise me too, these are totally not the kinds of songs I would think are from these franchises, so no wonder I couldn't figure a lot of them out.

5th place is the highest I've scored so far in one of these though, so I'm happy about that.

Out of curiosity, what was the specfic song you had originally for #4?

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Originally posted by K.T.B.

Darn, I actually briefly considered checking MK8's OST, but I sort of assumed that you wouldn't use songs from the same game twice after the last one.

Fufuh, I know I probably should have gone for a lot more new titles rather than just picking new things from old ones, bu-u-ut to be honest I was seriously running out of fresh suggestions. Were it not for that, this would probably have been another 100+ track mish-mash... Ah well, next time'll be different perhaps.

Originally posted by K.T.B.

Out of curiosity, what was the specfic song you had originally for #4?

It was supposed to be "Rumba of Love". Hmmph, when I searched earlier, I couldn't (easily) find a decent-quality version to replace the ruddy original with, yet now I find one as first Google-result. Ah well, I'm happier with the replacement tune personally. $#ab{¬_¬}$

オンバット~ ♥

I didn't submit anything because I got too few guesses this time, but I actually had a text file with my guesses. Might as well post this just for fun.

Code

3: Zelda? (0,5)
9: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (1)
11: Mario Kart 8? (0)
12: NES Remix? (1 maybe? O.o)
39: Zelda: Skyward Sword (1)
41: Animal Crossing? (0)
42: NEW Super Mario Bros. (1)
44: To The Moon? (1 I'm proud of myself for remembering this one)
45: Kirby: Mass Attack? (1)

6,5

Hey, I actually got most of those random guesses right. I was still right thinking that I wouldn't have won. Oh well. It was fun? Can I say that even if I didn't submit anything? Because it was fun.

Yay! Good thing I actually decided to go with the franchise guesses I had in mind. Kinda pissed at the NSMB one though, because I actually checked its OST on YT for this contest and iirc that song didn't show up there. :V

Totally gonna use this prize for the VGM contest I'll be hosting soon. \:D/

Only thing I want to complain about is that Pokemon was actually in my answer for #47 so I should have got the partial points for that one; not that it changes anything but I feel the need to point it out.

I'm kind of ashamed for missing 1, 2, 11, 23, 24, 38 and 48, as I know those games quite well, but to be fair I also only submitted my immediate guesses from a quick skim through the songs so I suppose it was to be expected.

soundcloud / bandcamp / twitter / buy/stream my EP / buy my touhou music / buy my NEW album!!!

Oh yes, right you are! I've edited that into the results now, sorry about that. Guess I was so occupied with giggling all over the place when reading through your answers, that legitimate mention flew straight past me somehow.
Thanks for pointing it out!

オンバット~ ♥

VGM Guessing Contest - May edition

Rules

Prizes

Music list