Hot take: any cover of Final Take Off from Afterburner that just shoves the bass to the background has fundamentally misunderstood the song. Yes, this includes the FM Towns version.
Maybe I'm getting too technically here compared to how it was composed, but it seems symptomatic of how we've decided melody and accompaniment means melody and bass line. Like, the bass line is not just accompaniment in this song! It trades off with other instruments as part of the melody! So if a cover decides to focus the guitar in the opening where the bass is the actual melody, they've probably misunderstood the song.
Honestly, maybe it's just an issue of bring bass to the front that the particular arcade hardware didn't have issues with. But, yeah. The bass is very important and if I can barely find it under the other instruments, that's not good.
And I probably should say I can tell if a cover is "good". After all, many covers that screw this up are still good. They just don't do the song true justice IMO.
@auravulpes what about the sst cover?
@DarkWitchClaire The rest of the thread has probably answered the question, but yes. This line of criticism does extend to the SST cover.
I can literally tell if a cover is good within a few seconds because of how the opening works.