Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-3005395-20150613210206/@comment-104190-20150925010944

I know we all took a break from this and everything, which is fine--the anniversary comes first--but I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I have a general outlining suggestion as to the rules this tourney could follow in order to maximize efficiency and prevent it from stretching out too far or too long:

1. All tournament entries should be based on Official (physical disc/digital download) Licensed Album Release, i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2 Soundtrack or ''Planetary Pieces. Games that DON'T have albums, i.e. Sonic 3 & Knuckles or Sonic Triple Trouble'' can be collected through Gamerips or anything closely resembling an official release.

2. Tournament entries should be entered by chronological order of game release, then by track order(Official) or level order(Unofficial).

3. No jingles, sound effects or cutscene score.

4. It personally pains me to say this, but menus are also out.

5. Songs/Stages With Multiple Acts--Classic games; i.e. Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic 3D Blast can be consolidated into one song/act.I'm on the fence with the 3D and Modern games, because stage acts often have enormous differences between the two, and shouldn't(at least in my opinion) be combined. We'll have to have a discussion about that together.

7. Hub/Free Roam Themes--while I don't agree with it(especially considering how beautiful some of the songs are), Hub Themes and Free-Roam Area themes must be excluded: They only appear in 2 or 3 games, which would encourage biased leverage, and by indirect extension, could be considered menu themes.

8. I think it's safe to say we can exclude all 8-bit versions of the main game series (Sonic 1 & 2, for example).

9. In order to save time, demo/unfinished/rough draft versions of songs, i.e. the entirety of the Sonic 1 & 2 Soundtrack 2nd disc, or extras from soundtracks, should be excluded, UNLESS the finished/final product was never created.

10. Sonic CD--This one is going to be VERY difficult to amend without entering some highly emotional debates. We have seven stages with eight separate songs for each one--ALL of them vastly different from both their default(Present) counterparts AND their region(US/JP) counterparts. Before anyone says it--no, we will not exclude the US version from the tournament. Spencer Neilsen and crew worked very hard to create a whole new soundtrack entirely separate from Hataya's arrangements. Regardless of anyone's opinion of the US music, it's still vital to the game, the character and the series as a whole. Without them, Sonic CD(at least in America) wouldn't even have music. This is a huge obstacle we must face, considering that all the stages, versions, and time settings combined, with Opening/Ending themes and Special stages, it's literally got enough tracks to hold it's own tournament. We can all discuss this amongst each other in the forum as well.

11. Special Stages--obviously, that's a yes.

12. Compilation GAMES--To be honest, the only compilation games I've personally played on were Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing, Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed, and ''Super Smash.Bros. Brawl and 4''. I don't know what songs the others have, but I move that only NEW, Sonic-related content (previously unreleased) should be considered for tournament entry.

13. Compilation ALBUMS--I think the same rules should apply; only new content like remixes should be entered.

14. Remixes--Which leads us to this. I think we should be somewhat selective with our remix choices. I've got like...eight different official mixes of "Open Your Heart". And some mixes are exact copies of the original--I truly can't(and never have) tell the difference between the original and the '07 mixes of ANY of the songs that Crush 40 did. So, my proposal is this--1 of the original, 1 Official remix, and/or the Generations remix(es). Which would lead up to a possibility of up to four versions. Anything else is overkill.

15. Sonic Boom(2014)--I don't know about the others, but unfortunately the Sonic Boom game has a sound test option, but it doesn't have a single track name on them. They literally all say 'Track01', 'Track02' and so forth. As crappy a game as it was, I'll refer you to my Sonic CD argument--it's still a game, thus it still counts. I doubt anyone(including myself) will have the patience to name the songs based on appearances, so (if we can find a veritable source), we'll just go with Track 1, 2, etc. Sorry.

That's all I can think of(yes, I know it's a lot) for now. Once we discuss and share our solutions for the critical thinking points, we can get to collecting, filtering and organizing!

We can do this, everyone--we just need to keep a clear head, remain informed and civilized, work together, stay on track....

....and don't look back.....

..just feel the pace....

come on now, race!

...sorry. I'll go sit in the corner.