“Soundtrack Showdown: a 20-week VGM event!”
3 min read
What is the greatest home console video game soundtrack ever?
Glad you asked. Introducing: Soundtrack Showdown!
What if somebody set up a tournament for such a question? An aural kombat of sorts?
What if anyone and everyone could nominate a video game soundtrack belonging to each console on a hand-picked list of consoles?
No biggie.
Starting next week, TWRM Radio is going to host the Soundtrack Showdown, an event that will span 20-weeks! Here’s how things will work in order to crown the greatest video game soundtrack ever for home consoles.
Rules
- Each Monday, I’ll put up a post announcing our console-of-the-week and invite anyone and everyone to nominate a soundtrack which they think is the best soundtrack on that console.
- Wednesday through Saturday, anyone and everyone will be invited to vote in a poll to decide the best soundtrack on that system from the pool of nominees.
- A winning soundtrack will be calculated at the end of Saturday and announced to the world on Sunday.
- After 19 weeks and 19 consoles, there will be one final poll to end all polls: the ultimate showdown pitting all 19 winning soundtracks from the previous 19 polls against each other to crown a single VGM OST GOAT.
Technicalities
a. We are excluding all handhelds, personal computers, arcade games, add-ons, and accessories from this event. Mostly for the sake of our sanity.
b. We are excluding most nominations for ports on a console removed from the original game by a significant period of time. In other words, you can’t nominate the soundtrack for Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo Switch or Mega Man Legends for the PS3. Those belong in their respective console categories. However, something much closer to the original release, like Earthworm Jim on Genesis/MD and SNES, will be accepted. Arcade and PC ports to home console will be treated on an individual basis. TWRM reserves the right to make the final call on nominations.
c. You can submit nominations in comments here on the site or on Twitter (just be sure to tag @thewellredmage and/or use #SoundtrackShowdown).
d. Voting will take place in polls on this site and nowhere else.
Consoles
If anything else needs clarification, just ask! I’ll see you audiophiles on Monday for our first week of the event, centered on the NES.
Red formerly ran The Well-Red Mage and now serves The Pixels as founder, writer, editor, and podcaster. He has undertaken a seemingly endless crusade to talk about the games themselves in the midst of a culture obsessed with the latest controversy, scandal, and news cycle about harassment, toxicity, and negativity. Pick out his feathered cap on Twitter @thewellredmage, Mage Cast, or Story Mode.
I mean… you gotta know what my pick’s gonna be.
This sounds (haha) great! Something I’m curious about is whether or not handhelds will ever get this treatment.
Handhelds are an interesting beast since there are so many. We couldn’t add them in this time as we felt it would complicate things too much. Maybe we’ll do a handhelds tourney eventually
I understand and agree that handhelds would raise the amount of devices to be too big. It’s good to hear that they may get a separate chance eventually though
What are the handhelds you’d like to say make the list in a tourney?
The only few I’ve used are Nintendo products, though I’m sure there are others that have games with great soundtracks as well.
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