Thursday, April 23, 2009

Jameson's Five Rules of Sonic Musical Quality

DISCLAIMER: These rules are not meant to be literally factual and are merely my opinions stated in a factual manner to perhaps be moderately amusing. Thank you.

I have noticed that one of the things that Sonic games usually to pretty well with is their music quality. And thus, I have put up a list of things to test a song or Sonic game soundtrack with to see if it sucks or not. If you happen to find any exceptions to this list, please inform me and I will add it to the list or shoot it down. One last thing: the list goes in order of priority, so if your song is already awesome by rule #1, it can't be shot down by rule #3. Get it? I'll put examples at the end.

RULE #1: If a song is by Bentley Jones then it is automatically awesome.

RULE #2: If a song is by Crush 40 then it is automatically awesome.

RULE #3: If a song is a love/romantic/*ahem* "special friend" song, then it automatically sucks. The exceptions to this rule are the love songs in a few games that are more peppy and happy than really "romantic", such as the ones in Sonic R and "Follow Me" from Sonic Heroes.

RULE #4: Any Sonic game developed by Sega or Sonic Team will have at least a decent soundtrack. No guarantees for other companies.

RULE #5: It is difficult, but possible, to make an already good Sonic song worse in a remix. While I can't think of any instances of a remix being worse, I will leave this one open juuuuuust in case.

And there you have it! Okay, now examples:
"Dreams of an Absolution" (SONIC the Hedgehog (2006)) could fall under Rule #3, but is saved by Rule #1 and thus is awesome.
"Dear My Friend" (Sonic Unleashed) fails and sucks due to Rule #3.
The soundtrack for Sonic Chronicles has no guarantee for quality due to Rule #4. Sure enough, it had probably the worst soundtrack of any Sonic game ever.