In case you do not know, two cover section entries have been removed and there remains 67 entries. Both of them are multitrack NSFs, and one of them is the Space Manbow soundtrack.
By the way, when will there be a sync-listen party for the cover section?
Voting starts on the 5th, midnight JST (4th, 8am PST)... I think 2a03 and expansion need to be different contests. It makes sense, because the interest in expansion is way more than it used to be, and 2a03 songs can't really compete on a purely technical level...
Voting is delayed to 9th Sept. 00:00 JST (which should be GMT +9:00, correct me if I am wrong).
Also, there was once a FamiCompo mini Classical, if you want some pure 2A03 madness.
It makes sense, because the interest in expansion is way more than it used to be, and 2a03 songs can't really compete on a purely technical level...
actually, if there's one thing i've learned from hanging in #mod_shrine (where many of the votes come from), most people are just interested in hearing good music, thus tend to vote on the ends rather than the means. so a well-composed and creatively technical plain-2a03 song (like entry 23 for example) is likely to fare as well if not better than a song that uses expansions (even one like 66 which uses them in a highly creative way.)
that and i guess most people listening to famicompo are interested in NES music primarily, so there's a chance people will downvote expansion songs on principle. in some ways, using expansions is a disadvantage competitively, because of that.
ultimately it's swings and roundabouts, therefore i don't think they really need to be separate contests. having said that i'd love to see another famicompo classical.
Well for me it's kinda like comparing 2a03 to Impulse Tracker. Maybe the songs are just as good and/or creative, but in many cases they sound different enough that to have them in a single contest seems weird. The "Action 52" songs for instance (which I like alot) sound way closer to "real" electronic music than 2a03.
That aside, I think having 2 contests is just a logical way to spread out things. Who knows....maybe it would encourage people who normally do expansion stuff to write 2a03 stuff, and vice-versa.
I guess an alternate idea would be to limit the overall submissions. 50 per category sounds pretty good.
