Welcome once again to a community event designed to bring together the good folks of KNGI.

Welcome to the second edition of NGI Game Duels!

Game Duels was inspired by the "Versus Month" episodes of Nitro Game Injection, where Kyle & team used to pit iconic characters against one another in a VGM battle-royale. People then voted for their favorite after the show, which led to several winners. These winners became the "themes" to be used by musicians in their Game Duels remixes.


People having expressed interest so far:
-Dj Mokram (duh!)
-Chernabogue
-evktalo

What is the concept?
1-Select two characters/themes from the winner's list (ex: Demons and Plants)
2-Choose two games featuring those characters/themes (ex: Ghouls'n Ghosts and Plants vs Zombie)
3-Pick one song from each game and mix them together in a single arrangement

What are the themes?
The winners are: DEMONS, ROBOTS and PLANTS.
Combine any two of them to form a matchup/mashup of your choice.

The Demon can be from any game featuring evil/demonic creatures.
The Robot can be from any game with mechas or sentient machines.
The Plants can be from any game featuring plants as character/theme.

To help everyone pick more easily, I've compiled a list of suitable games. Grab it here.

How does it work?
If a plot point, character or game mechanic fits the theme, then the soundtrack is eligible.
If it's just a background element in a game otherwise unrelated to the theme, then it's not.
If it's a character fitting the theme(s), you should pick that character's song specifically.

What are the rules?
-Claiming is first come, first served with a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8 tracks total.
-There are no genre restrictions nor creative limitations. Have fun, experiment, collab. The sky's the limit!
-Everyone can join, so long as they are signed up on KNGI, motivated and able to make decent music.
-There's a limit of 2~3 slots per character-combo, to avoid ending up with only one kind of combination.
-Remixers can modify their picks within the limits of reason, but preferably before the mixing begins.
-For the sake of making things manageable, remixes shouldn't exceed 5 minutes in length.
-While creative freedom is encouraged, the sources should still be recognizable to a degree.

What's the plan?
The goal is to create an EP, released and promoted through the NGI network as a community project.
We're doing this for the second time, but everyone's thoughts and suggestions are still welcome.



Let the duels continue!

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Website | Youtube | NGI Game Duels

YEAH, here we go again!

I think I'll really try the "Loonboon" (PvZ) & "Demon Seed" (CV3) combo. I already have an idea for it.

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Tweeted and Facebook'd this. We need more involvement this time! I'm contemplating posting about this on the OCR forums as well, unless you want to handle that, Mokram.

YESSS! GD#1 was super fun, Mokram did great directing - gave generous and encouraging feedback, which contributes to how I by now I feel really happy with the track (working on it some more for OCR submission) - plus of course, getting in touch with Knight 'n' Grail composer was pretty sweet too. Anyway, the whole concept itself is fun all by itself. I was thinking of trying to get the two themes to actually "duel" within the piece, but we'll see how that works out.

I've been obsessing about thinking plant themes. I'm repasting from the previous thread:

Machinarium vs. Botanicula would be a fun concept. Also, Star Control 2 has a plant species, Supox, but the music is kind of sucky. It has good parts though, and the Precursors remix for Ur-Quan Masters takes them and makes the whole track amazingly good.

Another plant-themed game that popped into my mind is Eufloria.

Would level themes from forest/jungle/swamp -style levels be acceptable? Or ones inside trees/plants? Here's what came to mind (and some overremixed stuff which I won't bother to find links for): Jungle theme from Master System's Sonic, Enchanted Forest from Master System's Castle of Illusion and Cavern of Madera from Zeliard. Perhaps the plantness of such themes is too vague - the "plant" theme doesn't really go through the gameplay or level/enemy design fully, it's more of a backdrop (and forest/jungle levels usually have animal enemies rather than plant enemies).

One more; Okami is so full of plantsy flowery goodness that I can't even make a pick.

--Eino

I don't see why not. That's one of the criteria I used when choosing songs for the original episodes' playlist. Of course the other criteria I used was plant-related titles of themes that had nothing to do with plants (like Dr. Manhattans "Somebody Ate My Fruit Salad"), so maybe I should just defer to Mokram on this one.

Thanks for moving this to 'announcements' again Kyle.

The Bogue is BACK! Awesome. Thanks for being a part of this once more.

Not sure that we do since it's the same track count. Unless perhaps you want us to aim for an album instead of an EP?
Don't forget that the more people, the more "directing" will befall me, and I'm already hard at work on Gunstar Heroes.
Not to mention the whole 'recovery' thing going on as well behind the scenes.

Well, I'm not sure how comfortable I feel about going to OCR specifically to ask people to come sign in on KNGI.
And while 'the more the merrier' is true is most cases, it's the same as above: it falls down on me ~ crippled man.

Wow, thanks Eino. Not sure I did this good, but I'm glad it made you feel that way.

Here's the thing: if there's is a character, plot point or mechanic revolving around or involving plants, I'm cool with it. If it's just background art in a game's level that's otherwise unrelated to plants in any meaningful way, then no.
Okami is a great exemple for the 'Plants' theme, with all the sprouting, growing and rejuvenating vegetation being an active game mechanic, rather than just stuff in the background. Now if someone were thinking about Contra because of the jungle setting, then no. However, Probotector (the EU version of Contra) would totally fit the 'Robot' theme.

Please ask away if there's anything else to clarify regarding one of the themes.

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Website | Youtube | NGI Game Duels

OP updated with a list of games to help everyone pick their sources.
I'll add more games as we go, but for now, grab the list right here.

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Website | Youtube | NGI Game Duels

Yes, this clarifies it perfectly. Thanks!

Good list too! Iji is a great pick - I think at least the final boss, Tor qualifies (robot suit) and the music is just amazing. Another highly robotically themed game from Daniel Remar, also with great music, is Hero Core - all the enemies are machines. Now that I think of it, the enemies in Hyper Princess Pitch, inluding the last boss Mecha Santa, are robots as well. And once again, good music. (All from different artists as well.)

--Eino

Iji is technically a Cyborg herself, due to nanotech enhancements. Which leads me to this important question:
Should we consider Cyborgs as (or in the same category as) Robot for the sake of this project?
If so, then we can add games/series whose protagonist uses cybernetics augmentations, like Deus Ex.

Yeah, I listed a few such cases in there, but overall I'm gonna be lenient on that.
If you can prove the association: theme->game/character->music, it's cool.
That should make for a more open, less-limiting decision process.

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Website | Youtube | NGI Game Duels

Yeah, I think so. You could argue that reploids from Mega Man X are cyborgs, and I don't think anyone would argue with remixing them for this.

That's true, I was excluding cyborgs in my head, but a wider selection of available tracks isn't bad at all. (And more Iji music!)

One more robot game it'd be great to see more mixes from: One Must Fall. Speaking of OMF music, I just came across this - Kenny Chow's own recentish remix of the title theme! (And done with Renoise, no less!)

--Eino

Unfortunatly, medical issues are preventing me from joining this. But good luck guys!

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I had no idea this started up again xD

It's actually so much harder to find themes that match the same franchise, especially considering the broader scope of the source material. Potentially, I can see a combo coming up from across the Sonic series, and I know for sure one source I'd hope to fit in would be Sonic CD [JP]'s Stardust Speedway Bad Future (for its association with the race against Metal Sonic; further proven with his fights in Generations and Sonic 4 Episode 2).

But if demons are to count, are there specifics as to what counts as a 'demon'? Is it just a monster, or does it have to go beyond physical appearance? I know that Mephiles (Sonic '06) is the most demonic by a landslide, but what about other monsters that appeared throughout the franchise? Chaos? Biolizard? Iblis? Solaris? Dark Gaia? The Time Eater? Think I could do with some clarification with this one

Well, the dictionary definition of demon is "an evil spirit", which is pretty broad. I generally stuck with the traditional, more religious definition of demons when putting together the playlist: http://kngi.org/p=3993

So I guess in terms of Sonic villains, that narrows it down to Solaris/Mephiles and Dark Gaia, both of them being demonic gods. Note that I left out Iblis mostly because it's just a moving mass of raw energy.
In fact, if this does go on ahead, I've probably got a better chance at mixing Metal Sonic up with Dark Gaia for being more melodic.