Our final round came down to the wire, with only a single vote separating the two. But in the end it was Ms. Pac-Man’s “Intermission Music” that took home the crown. A perfect combination of iconic status and actually being listenable. Dig Dug’s “Theme” takes 2nd off a similar mix. But it’s our 3rd and 4th place songs that are more interesting to me, because I had never heard of either before this tournament. But in these super early days any game that successfully executes a full song is way ahead of the pack, and both tunes bring the funk (relatively speaking).

On the other end of the spectrum, poor Mr. Do! takes our bottom three slots, including “Death/Game Over” going completely winless. I’d imagine it was the game’s extraordinarily tinny sound quality that did it in. It’s hard to be too mad though; everyone was just figuring things out back in those days.

And so we turn to the future. Our next tournament will be sometime in the fall, after the final round of the Best Video Game tournament. We’ll be moving ahead in eras, which will probably open the floodgates for nominations. I’m thinking 1983-1988, inclusive, which will include most of the 8-bit era. In retrospect I probably should have included 83 and 84 in this tournament, which leaves this next one spanning two eras, but I don’t want to spend a second tournament getting to the fireworks factory. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Or thoughts about this tournament as a whole? It’s my first of the series, feedback is very welcome.