[RERUN] C2E8: "Our Four Favorites" [Masters of VGM] - orig rel. 06/30/2022 (see 2025 show note addendum!)

[2025 Addendum….sorry for the ultra long-winded] Normally, we only share one rerun a month at Nerd Noise Radio. But due to the confluence of a) our having missed the May rerun completely, b) our not getting a June rerun out until the very end of the month, and c) a very important thematic connection to an event currently happening in the VGM podcast scene this month, I’m releasing…..not one……not two……not four…..but THREE reruns in July! From 2022 through 2024, the greater VGM podcast community participated in a glorious group experiment called “Masters of VGM” (or “MoVGM” for short - I think I might’ve even been the one to coin the shorthand…..maybe), where a master theme was decided upon by the community, and then every participating podcast would do an episode, or a handful of episodes in keeping with the crowdsourced theme. Nerd Noise Radio participated all three years - with a Channel 2 in 2022, a Channel 1 in 2024, and in 2023, with a whopping FOUR installments where we had a Channel 1, a Channel 2, and two Channel Fs. Channel F, for the new faces in the crowd is our mechanism for betas, and bonuses, and things which just don’t fit the mold for a regular episode. Channel F is “format agnostic” and does not have any sort of regular release cadence whatsoever. So, “F-isodes” as I call them (and am probably WAY too proud of myself for that), can be just whatever, and come out just whenever. The people who devised and oversaw MoVGM have largely significantly reduced their presence in the podcast scene over the past couple years, and so had elected to not continue MoVGM into 2025. However, a handful of us, Alex “The Messenger” Messenger of “A VGM Journey” (https://terraplayer.com/shows/a-vgm-journey), Professor Tom from “Shujin Academy VGM Club” (https://terraplayer.com/shows/shujin-academy-vgm-club), and myself have decided that, while not formally reviving MoVGM, we were going to do something of our own, in that same spirit. While the name hasn’t been officially finalized as of this writing on July 2nd, and could still change, the “working title” (that will very likely become the final title), which was proposed by Professor Tom is “VGM Hall of Fame” I’ll go ahead and dub it “HoF” for short. Naturally, we’re trying to also inspire other podcasters to join us so that it is not just we three, but at the very, very least, there will be an HoF episode from all of us on the theme of “a soundtrack that belongs in a theoretical “VGM Hall of Fame” (hence the name). Nerd Noise Radio’s contribution to this will be a Channel 1 featuring the Super Metroid soundtrack (C1E97). If I have the time, and the mental energy, I might also supplement this with an F-isode on a much more obscure soundtrack that begs to enjoy greater awareness and celebration (Lucid 9, if it ends up happening). One other major difference between HoF and MoVGM is that MoVGM occurred in June (2023 was so big that it extended into July) where HoF will occur in July. We all wanted to do this in June, but we were all too deep into production of our respective June content at the time that we all agreed to just push it back to July instead. Anyway, over the river and through the woods, to the point I *FINALLY* get: in a bid to not only help draw extra attention to HoF and hopefully drum up a little excitement for it, among both listeners as well as other podcasters, especially prospective participants, as well as to simply celebrate some of the glory that was this remarkable moment in time for a community, this month, I will rerun our 2022 MoVGM contribution, our 2023 Channel 2 contribution, which was a sort of “spiritual sequel” to our 2022 outing (with links to our other 2023 contributions in that rerun’s show notes), and finally, to our 2024 offering. And naturally, we’ll start with 2022. The theme of 2022 was “which composers would you put on your ‘VGM Mount Rushmore’”? So everyone was to pick four composers. Since Ch 2 was Hugues and I, rather than picking just two, we each picked four for a grand total, of course, of eight, and then did a thing where we each picked one track from each of the eight composers (one each for our own composers, as well as one each for the other guys’ composers). With this being a 2022 production, all the usual caveats about production quality differences and deficiencies. Between a lesser mic and less fully developed production techniques, the sound quality will not be up to the standards of a 2025 episode (I also hadn’t started editing out the “umms” yet….apologies for that!). But it’s still pretty decent. Certainly decent enough that it doesn’t really feel like a barrier to enjoyment like, say, a 2018, or especially 2017 episode would be. And so, without further ado: our first of three reruns this month, the first of three to celebrate the memory of MoVGM as well