EOFF Summer 2011 Census!

[Slothy]

Hello everyone. My name is Vivi22, but you may call me the Professor. Why? Because once more we've come to the end of our little course, you're papers have been graded and most of you have passed with flying colours.

That's right folks, it's results time as we go into glorious detail about each and every one of your responses to our questions about things only we nerds give a crap about and argue until we're all blue in the face and wondering why girls don't like us while we cry ourselves to sleep.

But before we begin I should clarify one thing: considering the metric for success in this case was whether or not you all lived up to my expectations and disappointed me completely, when I say you all passed with flying colours I mean you succeeded in being utterly and objectively wrong and making me hate every last one of you.

That said, I can at least say I'm pleased that many took the time to vote this time around. Numbers were low for a bit, but once I started threatening people the turn out ended up being around the same as last time I believe.

We had 29 entries, 25 of them being from the menfolk, and 4 being from the gender that wishes they were menfolk. A special shout out to Shlupquack for not voting at all, even after I sent her a message via mognet. I think my mistake was assuming she was literate and not including enough pretty pictures to catch her interest.

But enough about that, it's time to get down to business. Up first were the music categories, beginning with:

Favourite Character Theme:
Now this may surprise you all to hear, but this category actually didn't totally disappoint me, and as it turns out, the top three voted songs are all actually good. In first place we had Aerith's theme with five votes, followed by the objectively superior Terra's theme with 4 votes (but I'll let this one slide since I'm in a good mood), and a tie for third between Loss of Me/Rose of May (Beatrix's theme) and Cid Highwind Theme, each with three votes. As always, I'll just post the full voting results at the bottom of the post.

Special mention goes to AngelWing's who voted for One Winged Angel, knowing full well it was a boss theme and not a character theme but voting for it anyway. Such a rebel. I'll let it slide though because she's one of the few people around here I can stand, and having boob's doesn't hurt her case either. Now onto what some of you had to say about your choices. As usual, if you wanted to stay anonymous then you participated in the wrong forum event.

- Favourite character theme
Julia ~ What's better then the piano version of eyes on me? Nothing. Her theme is so sweet and romantic, it even feels a bit nostalgic now.

What could be better than that? Well, a kick in the nuts for starters, but at least it's still more enjoyable than playing FFXIII.

Favourite character theme
Fang's

Jessweeee♪, Jessweeee♪, Jessweeee♪.
Jessweeee♪.
Do we need to have an intervention? It's ok to admit you have a problem. And if you ever want to talk about how wrong you are I'm always here for you from 8am to 5pm Atlantic time.

Anyway, moving on to the next category because many of you do not say enough for me to simply skate through this with mass quotes, we have:

Favorite Normal Battle Theme:

Or at least we would have that, but looking at the results I need to confer with Wolf who did all of the vote tallying to determine if one of them is a typo, so instead we'll skip on over to:

Favourite Overworld Map Theme:
Kicking things off in first place we have the Main Theme of FFVII with 9 votes. Now if this were a poll about story or gameplay and any of you voted for anything FFVII related, even if you had a valid argument for it, you'd all be wrong. But you know what, if FFVII got one thing right it would be the sound track, and this was actually my pick for best overworld theme. It just captures the mood of the game and the world perfectly, not to mention being quite long for an overworld theme at the time.

In second we continue the trend of very close top three's with Over the Hill, the overworld theme for FFIX with 8 votes. Not high on my list of favourites, but it isn't completely awful, and a vote for FFIX is a vote against FFVIII and FFXIII, so at the very least I can say that 8 of you didn't totally smurf up. Third place is snatched up by the always wonderful Terra's Theme with 6 votes.

You know, maybe I should start looking at these entries before I declare that all of you are failures from now on. It seems as though there may not be anything wrong with your ears, even if your brains are suspect.

- Favourite overworld theme
Final Fantasy VI overworld ~ Epic, perfect for the overworld. It feels tragic and sad, but somehow gives off the feeling that you will stand up to them. It's also called Terra's theme. Sums up her story pretty well.

I hate to quote you again so soon Remon, but seriously, you were one of only a few that actually said anything about their choice (I'm guessing most of you are only slightly more literate than Shlup). The fact that you're making a good point about on of the best songs in the entire series doesn't hurt either.

I should be studying for my exam retakes, but since I'm too stressed out to think about anythnig at the moment, I think I'll humor you, Mr. Veevs

This has nothing to do with an overworld theme obviously, but Fynn didn't explain his choice. I just wanted to point out that this guy was risking failing at something that actually mattered so he could have the chance to fail in the census. What's Shlup's excuse?

Favourite overworld theme: Final Fantasy VII Main Theme

This was his actual answer though. Hopefully you were as successful on your exams as you were with this question. Actually, he seems to be more successful than most, since he also voted Terra's Theme as best character theme, and he listed Mystic Quest as his first FF that he ever played. In fact, I'm so proud of his answers that I'm willing to overlook the fact that he almost voted FFXIII best soundtrack. Just this once...

So that's going to be it for now. So far you guys are actually disappointing me at disappointing me, but I'm sure that'll change. Also, if anyone wants to make this more interesting for themselves you can either:
A) Have a drink every time I take a shot at Shlup,
B) Place bets on how long these shots can continue until my recognized member status is revoked and my body is found floating down river, or
C) All of the above.

Here's the full results for each question. More to come soon as we continue the results roll out.

Favorite Character Theme
Aerith's Theme (5 votes)
Terra's Theme (4 votes)
Loss of Me/Rose of May ~Beatrix's theme (3 votes)
Cid Highwind Theme (3 votes)
Clash on the Big Bridge ~ Gilgamesh's theme (2 votes)
One Winged Angel*
Fang's Theme
Eiko's theme
Setzer's Theme
Ex-Death's Theme
Julia
Celes' Theme
Vivi's Theme
Shadow's Theme

Favourite Overworld Theme
FFVII Main Theme (9 votes)
Over the Hill (8 Votes)
Terra's Theme (6 votes)
Blue Fields
Searching for Friends

[Remon]

Poor Shlup.

[Slothy]

If Shlup didn't want me making fun of her then she should have sent me a picture of her boobs. Because god knows actually voting wouldn't have stopped me.

[MJN SEIFER]

I voted for "Searching For Friends" - damn, looks like you didn't get my votes after all

[Wolf Kanno]

Searching for Friends is up there so we got your votes, though I would like to bring up the fact that most of you were incredibly vague and obviously don't know much about some of the soundtracks. Some of you simply said which numbered FF you liked and didn't notice that some games actually have multiple battle themes or map themes. I have a feeling Searching For Friends would actually be higher but a few people simply said WoR map theme, the issue is, there are two of them... Searching For Friends and Dark World, not to mention the Veldt has its own theme, but that wasn't much of an issue. While I was able to get some people to redo their votes, I couldn't get to everyone.

The Favorite Cutscene Section also had issues but oddly enough, its the opposite, some were too specific, only liking a simple part of a larger scene, and others listed scenes that technically don't count (it was suppose to be favorite FMV but some of you kept listing pre-VII stuff) but we decided to keep them anyway for this round.

[MJN SEIFER]

Oh I see. I saw it up there but it didn't say how many votes it had, so I assumed that you didn't get my votes, and assumed no one voted for it.

[Jiro]

If it doesn't have the number of votes beside it, then it only got one vote!

I thought I had done a good job of not completely disappointing you this census, Professor! Oh well, better luck next time.

PS Shlup is a slacker, no excuse! NONE AT ALL.

[Del Murder]

I thought a cutscene is any length of the game you aren't actually playing. Why wouldn't pre-FFVII count?

[Slothy]

I thought a cutscene is any length of the game you aren't actually playing. Why wouldn't pre-FFVII count?

The question did fall under the category of best visuals. There wasn't much pre-FFVI that wasn't done using the game engine even when there was a cutscene, so I think when we made the question list we just had the unintentional assumption that when we said cutscene we were talking about the sort of pre-rendered FMV's the series is rather famous for now. But since we weren't really clear we let it slide since that was obviously a mistake in our wording.

Yep, we even manage to disappoint me from time to time.

[Jessweeee♪]

Hey, Fang's Theme is cool.

[Bolivar]

Awesome! Want more commentary though! Looking forward to hearing about the rest of it.

[Fynn]

Hey, Fang's Theme is cool.

I agree! Don't let him get to you

Didn't expect to hear such praise, though. I... I think I got something in my eye...

[Jiro]

You're a trooper son

[Slothy]

Hello once again folks. We return with more revelations and pontifications on your voting in this census. Will you all continue to disappoint me? Will you amaze us all and spontaneously develop good taste? We'll have to see.

Before we get down to it though, some recently discovered video explains why Shlup failed to vote in the census.

Cat typing - YouTube

Or at least I like to imagine that's why she didn't vote. It beats having the image of her being a lazy slob who can't type out a few words on the keyboard. Actually, if I had asked that cat to vote we might have gotten more of an entry out of them.

Now then, on to the next category:
Favorite Normal Battle Theme

It's just as well that I delayed this since it flows well with the theme of the day. That theme being songs to kick ass to. It will also go well with kicking all of your asses when you all inevitably pick the wrong songs.

Coming in first we had Man With the Machine Gun with 7 votes. I'm not overly pleased to see FFVIII win anything, but at least if you guys had to vote for it you voted for one of the two songs on the soundtrack that doesn't completely suck. I'l give you all the benefit of the doubt that that could indicate some amount of hearing ability on your parts and that it was not simply random chance, since the odds of each of you picking one of those two songs at random are only 1/37, and frankly I don't think anyone here is that lucky, as evidenced by the fact that you're all still here.

In second place we had Fighting from FFVII with 5 votes. Now this I can live with. FFVII's soundtrack was utterly smurfing amazing throughout, even if playing the damn thing is as much fun as having the condom break during casual sex with your ex. But most people never really seem to give it the credit it deserves because it was made with blatantly midi sounds which are "inferior" in some way to the better (but honestly, still tit) samples used in later soundtracks. But you know what I say to those people? Go back to flinging your own poo at eachother, picking the lice out of eachothers hair, and voting for Man With the Machine Gun. The rest of us are trying to have a civilization here.

Rounding out third place we have Don't Be Afraid (FFVIII) and the FFIV Battle Theme with 4 votes each. FFIV is certainly cool so 4 of you will be welcome in my survival shelter when the zombie and/or robot apocalypse comes. To those of you who voted for Don't Be Afraid, I've heard worse songs, but you still voted for FFVIII. You're still welcome to come, but if we need meat shields or food, we're going to remember how you voted.

Now what did you all have to say about your choices?

- Favourite normal battle theme
Man with machine gun ~ I like this theme for it's upbeat nature. It makes me want to grab a machine gun and go fight werewolves in a forest.

I may not care for anyone voting for FFVIII, but you know what? When anyone's reaction to a song is wanting to grab a machine gun and go shoot some werewolves there's really only one thing that can be said: smurf yeah!

Favourite normal battle theme: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest!

One person voted for Mystic Quest. Shame on all of you. Shame on me too, but mostly on all of you, and MOSTLY on Fynn. Your first FF was Mystic Quest and you forgot to vote for it's awesome battle theme? I'm starting to wonder if Shlup really is the biggest failure around here...

Nope, she definitely is. There's really no competition there.

We'll have to end it there for now. I thought I'd have time to get through two this morning but damn it takes a long time to type these out. Maybe I could get Shlup to not write one or two and save me some time?

I should be able to carve out enough time later on to finish off today's battle theme with best boss theme, and best final boss theme. So until then, listen to Dancing Mad on repeat. Because if you voted anything else for favourite final boss theme then you may not want to show your face around here anymore.

Here are the full results for battle theme, bracketed comments are always Wolf's though I may share his sentiment on occasion:
Favorite Normal Battle Theme
Man With the Machine Gun (7 votes)
Fighting (5 votes)
Don't Be Afraid (4 votes)
FFIV Battle Theme (4 votes)
Battle 1 ~ IX Battle Theme (3 votes)
FFVI Battle Theme (2 votes)
FFI
FFX (wtf?!)
Mystic Quest

[Jiro]

I should really go play some FFMQ, it sounds like it'll save my life.

1/37 isn't so bad. I'd take those odds!