OCR01445 - *YES* Shadow of the Ninja 'Two Shadows Appear'

[djpretzel]

Need to look at arr. but this is pretty damn rockin' - djp


User Name: BrainCells
Real Name: Marcos Pascoli
Game Covered: Shadow of the Ninja (NES)
Song Name: Two Shadows Appear

I always loved Shadow of the Ninja. The fast paced and so full of energy songs always were in my "arrange it" list. I had this arrangement almost ready when my studio was robbed a few months ago, so I had to redo everything from scratch when I put my equipment to work in a small room at the place I'm living right now.
I chose to post this song on OCR rather than some of my previous material exactly because it's a very under represented game. I think it would be a good oportunity for the users around to go back and check this real hidden treasure for the NES!

This is a heavy, guitar based arrangement, with some slow and some fast paced sections. Some synth leads were added to bring some variation to the mix (OMG the Dream Theater influence everywhere :P), and I even ended up doing a guitar/synth lead duet in the end that is my favorite section.

I was thinking in a way of hosting it somewhere retagged as the OCR rules ask, but I ended up linking it from the VGMix collection with Liontamer's permission, hope it's ok.

Anyway, thank you guys for taking some time with the song, hope you all like it!

Marcos

[Liontamer]

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/kage.zip - Tracks 7 & 4

On man, this soundtrack is sweet. These guys wrote the Shatterhand soundtrack later on as well. I keep saying, I LOVE the '90s NES stuff that really took advantage of the system's capabilites to produce some very polished chiptunes with a lot of layers and density. This soundtrack joins the ranks of other gold like Treasure Master, Shatterhand, and Megaman VI.

Played this on VGF65 (http://oc.ormgas.com/forum_viewtopic.php?18.12395) when I had the lady, ThatPaige, as my guest host. She hates rock & metal, so I made sure to turn this up in the studio for some extra beefy ear assault. That'll teach her, you know what I'm sayin'?

Good expansive cover-style arrangement with tons of personal flair and expansion. I'm generally pretty short on words with Marcos's stuff, because he never leaves any doubt as to whether there's creativity and interpretation brought to the table. Great power, great energy.

If you like it loud...

YES

[The Orichalcon]

Nothing wrong with sound quality here. Everything's clear and precise. The lead guitar could perhaps be a little louder compared to the grunge rhythm.

Had a quick listen to the originals. Another case similar to Sixto's Wicked Six mix, where the guitar is covering the original. However since this involves two themes being melded together with some creative grunge guitarwork holding it all intact.. no qualms there from me.

Not much else to say, can't tell a master how to do his work. This sounds fine and doesn't break any guidelines, so YES

[DarkeSword]

Awesome clean sound. I love the emphasis on the bass; the mastering is just right throughout the track.

Guitar playing is solid and gets the job done. Nice work there. Some of the parts sound a bit sparse, but the bass does a good job of filling things in so it doesn't sound bad.

This sounds like something you would hear in Quake III, except a lot lot lot lot better. I could totally frag people to this. Awesome.

So yeah, the energy is there, the production is there, and as far as the arrangement goes, even though it's a bit conservative, there's some interpretation genrewise and the two songs fit together nicely.

YES

[GrayLightning]

Quality production through and through. That's the highlight of the mix. The arrangement I thought was most of the time borderline. Larry defined the term properly - expansive arrangement. Personally I want to hear more liberalism and personal approach taken. This is probably the borderline of my prerequisite where I might pass, personally. The additions and ornamentation on the performance and additions front saves it for me, and of course the top notch production. I think this mix could have benefited from some instruments that range in the middle frequencies though. At times there feels like there's a void between the guitar, bass, drums. Good work overall.

YES