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Personally I'm with Mirby on the statement that the involved artists should be asked about this. We had experiences with Brandon to varying degrees around the site, though like djp stated in the FF8 thread post it's best to remain professional and make OCR solely about the music. As I have a finished track on this album, I'd prefer to remain on the album regardless of who's running it or whether it would be an OC Remix album at all, though I can imagine for some that there'll be grief no matter what happens.

i'm just here for the musik.

it is really cool how you managed to combine a standard 4 beat with the original drums by dave wise. this makes your mix very intense together with the bass. one thing to critisize: the arrangement is quite repetitive (quite common disease when coping with lockjaws saga, though...). try some other phrases (original ones written by you, e.g. a square lead or analogon solo, to break up the repetitive atmosphere). you can also consider to put the melody on hold and repeat the intro (0:00 - about 0:37 as I assume). also consider a key change (did you leave it in c minor?) i really enjoyed listening to another good lockjaws saga version. this is one of my personal favourites from the dkc2 album.

@Chernabogue in your case I wouldn't really worry about it, because you recently updated your WIP and we already shared feedback on it. So you're good already for this check-in, just send us an update whenever you have them

I cannot guarantee a real update for Septemeber's deadline, as I'll start the recordings with various musicians soon (mah bois @Furilas and @AngelCityOutlaw, plus one/two people for the brass). I'll try to update as soon as there's something to tell/show, but since we have multiple tracks to reocrd/mix/finish, I don't know if a real WIP can happen by that time. Don't worry, I plan to finish this one before the end of the year

I'm with Rexy on this. I also have a finished track on this, and my loyalties lie mostly with the album so I'd like to see it released regardless of who leads it and where it gets released.

Is anyone doing a group registration, and has an open spot? Im still building my MAGplans, but I dont want to get my MAGhopes up

Okay folks, we're one month away from the second check-in deadline, so here's the obligatory reminder. We've been making good progress with the album, but you know what would be awesome? A new update from @Jorito, @GaMeBoX, @evktalo, @zykO, @Audiocolor, @Chernabogue, @DusK, @Lucasonic, @Tuberz McGee, @~Faseeh~, @generaloffensive, @Bowlerhat and @Unknown Alias! You know what would even be more awesomer? A WIP from @KingTiger, @WillRock, @wildfire and @jnWake! Eager to see what they come up with, I bet it's gonna be fab Me and Black Doom are happy to give you feedback on your tracks and help you remove any roadblocks. Since this is the last check-in before the final deadline on October 30, this check-in would be a good opportunity for you to catch up with your friendly album directors and make the album the best it can be! Oh... and we may or may not have some other progress to share with you in the near future

I may not be a part of this project, but looking at the tracklist, most of the album was done (22 tracks). It doesn't look like any of his tracks he claimed had been finished for the album, and those that were are mostly OCR regulars (such as Sixto, Chimp, and Flex, for example). I mean, yeah, if someone can get a hold of him to ask about this since this trilogy was his baby, that would probably be for the best, but his blog post did say he was gonna seek alternative avenues for his own music ("I am going to be seeking other avenues to release and promote my own content" were his specific words). And none of that appears to be on this unless it was unlisted as finished. I would suggest maybe asking the artists involved how they feel about remaining on this album without Brandon at the head in addition to trying to reach him? Or you can disregard this post entirely since, again, I'm not part of this album. Just wanted to give my assessment of the situation and a couple suggestions.

@HeavenWraith, @Chernabogue, @Tuberz McGee, @Chris Porter Music, @Wiesty, @Sagnewshreds, @Manji, @RiverSound, @Ivan Hakštok, @XPRTNovice, @Gario, @Geoffrey Taucer, @DjjD, @jnWake, @shadowpsyc, @bluelighter, @Larsec, @fxsnowy, @DusK, @Jackson Alexander Parodi, @Jorito, @theshaggyfreak, @audio fidelity, @zykO, @Jivemaster, @Cyril the Wolf, @Hat, @Hipnotyk, @Amphibious, @Jason Covenant Bad news... Unfortunately, due to recent events, Brandon Strader has been permanently banned from these forums. In the interest of full disclosure, if you have not already read through them, the relevant threads are linked below. We have always tried to keep both the submission evaluation & album direction processes about the music, and not about the politics, personalities, or drama surrounding anyone participating, and for sixteen years we've been able to do a pretty good job with that, but a line is crossed when there's libel involved and when someone consistently spreads unfounded accusations and bad faith rumors about this site and its staff. I'd like to apologize to all artists contributing to this project who have been doing an excellent job; one thing I'll certainly say is that Brandon DOES know how to run an album project, as he has shown. In a perfect world, we would never dream of interfering with or jeopardizing the successful completion of what should be an amazing album, but alas, our world is not perfect. In spite of the risk to projects Brandon has underway, we feel that his threats, accusations, and general attitude towards the site do not make him an appropriate director of a community album, or an acceptable presence on these forums. But wait, the show isn't over... I've spoken with @JJT & @zircon and between the three of us, we feel that we can direct this album and continue on the path laid out, towards a successful release. This is absolutely dependent on whether you, the contributing artists, are okay with this change of leadership. We will completely understand if this leaves a bad taste in your mouth, if you are more loyal to him specifically than to OCR and wish to contact him and resume work via another avenue, or if the whole thing is now dead to you and you want to crawl in a hole somewhere and drink cocoa, however, we HOPE that you will choose to keep trekkin' and see this thing through as an OCR release, and the three of us are going to do our best to make that happen. To that end, we have set up a poll in the FF8 project forum - please vote ASAP so we know where things stand! If you're on the album but can't access the above link, let me know. Absolutely no hard feelings if you wish to continue working with Brandon elsewhere - it won't be an OCR album anymore, and we hope to continue this effort here regardless, but it'll probably be pretty good, based on his track record. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1304971649533011/permalink/1345644188799090/

Ella, no idea if you're still on the fringes of this community, but I just wanna say thanks again for submitting this piece. It's one of the few I remember from my time on the judges panel, because it was really, really important to me that it got passed. I wanted challenging, experimental music to have a place in this community, and this mix was such a breath of fresh air, that had an influence on my later work. All these years later, I still love it.

This is something that needs to be addressed now that OCR has taken the plunge into monetizing the work of remixers on YouTube. This is the latest stop on the slippery slope of monetization that has been taking place on OCR. As far as I know, nobody was made aware that this change was going to be implemented. In short, it would be nice to know when this started and why.

Have to include some new stuff from Brandon that continues to assume the worst about how OCR is run, including the belief that mixes from popular games were posted in order to maximize YouTube revenue (ignoring all the less popular games we posted mixes from). I want to be sure people can see these accusations. My responses below: Most of you probably don’t know that recently, OC ReMix attempted to monetize videos to get revenue on YouTube. They started doing this on June 14th, 2016 but recently were forced by public response to take it off until such a time that their ducks are in a row. The monetization had been active for 2 months without any of the artists being informed or asked permission, and none of the remixes were legally licensed so that revenue made would be shared with the publisher or rights holders of the music. There were a lot of issues with this taking place, but the most glaring issue is that they did this without asking or informing anyone. They did it in a really shady manner, and tried to justify having done it by saying “nobody noticed for 2 months”. When confronted with this betrayal and questions of legality and ethics, some staff shared their opinions, while others — such as site owner djpretzel — became very defensive, and ultimately brushed concerns aside. At the end of the short discussion, I was blamed for “misrepresenting” the situation, or making OCR “toxic” by airing my concerns, speculation, and grievances. My biggest problem from the start was that they had gone behind our backs — we, the artists, who essentially provide all of the content for OCR — and did this without asking and without permission. Then, when confronted about it, they justified generating revenue on this platform outside of OCR (YouTube) by saying it’s “the same as advertisements on the OCR website.” I personally don’t see it that way. YouTube is a free service, and “remixes” need to be legally licensed so that the rights holders get their fair share of the revenue. If the YouTube aspect had been in the agreement to begin with, or if we had simply been asked if it was alright, this probably wouldn’t have been such a big deal. Site owner djpretzel has stated that the Content Policy will rightfully be updated to reflect changing technologies, as the original policy had been written in 2007. The second thing that bothered me about the situation is that rather than apologize, and simply state that they’re going to try to work harder to appear ethical and work more diligently to adhere to legality as much as possible, I was demonized and scapegoated by site owner djpretzel. I was, more or less, accused of “poisoning the well” as he brushed aside the negative concerns surrounding the situation. I have often, for multiple years, been critical of OC ReMix’s lack of accountability and transparency. Going forward, I will probably also be critical of their lack of trust and good will. As someone who provides content for the website, and essentially a customer (if you would consider OCR to be acompany), I am in no position to be scapegoated any more than any other customer would be for asking questions. That’s unprofessional, and demonizing me over the situation is embarrassing and shows a lack of character, something that has been coming more to the forefront with how OCR conducts its business. As a result of this whole disrespectful display, and waste of mytime, I am ready to remove all of my personal content that I produced alone from OC ReMix. However, I decided to do what OCR was not capable of and leave this decision up to the fans. Only 8 people voted in the poll I pinned on Twitter, sadly, which is hardly a sample size worthy of note. But in an age where people don’t really care that much to begin with, this is probably the best I can do outside of running the poll for a month and publicizing the situation in other ways. So in brief: I’m not going to request my content removed from OC ReMix. However, as a result of this petty, inept nonsense, I am going to be seeking other avenues to release and promote my own content — legally, and in a manner that I can’t be exploited in some way. This may mean many less submissions to OCR, and more legally licensed, high quality projects released through Loudr, available on iTunes and Spotify, in addition to original music released through similar platforms. (ed: I forgot to mention YouTube. I will still put all my new mixes on YouTube unless they’re made for a project.) I have no intention to end any of my current projects. The only difference you might see is less fresh content going towards OC ReMix from me personally, yet the projects that are currently active (FF3, FF8, others) should ultimately not be affected. I can only hope that the revenue generated by upcoming projects allows the staff to look past their grudges, as the artists involved deserve to have their content heard if they agree to release their content through OC Remix. Thank you for reading, Brandon E. Strader Sagnewshreds, on 15 Aug 2016 - 01:46 AM, said: Need to be clear that Brandon wasn't blamed for "misrepresenting" the situation, as if it were just a difference of opinion. Despite pages of discussion and details, he's continued with over-the-top conspiracy theories, fake claims of evidence, and conclusions in bad faith that were literally libel. We believe the Content Policy gives OCR the permission to republish the mixes on other sites and present advertising in the context of the submitted materials, that fair use allows us to do this without licensing the music, with the revenue going to OC ReMix as an organization and that all revenue is disallowed from being used for profit. He doesn't agree with that point of view, and that should have been the focus of his issues. But negative concerns weren't brushed aside as he claims, and Brandon wasn't the only person who shared them. He also claims there were no apologies and that no commitment was made to transparency and legality. People can read through this thread and see all of the back-and-forth. Everything brought up was addressed. I will say that Brandon is very good at projection, since demonizing people, being disrespectful, and displaying a lack of trust & goodwill are things he was great at in this discussion. One thing not mentioned before is that enabling YouTube ads increases the search ranking of the content, the same way that enabling ratings does. Back when we started the YT channel, we actually disabled ratings for everything to match how we didn't do polling or ratings of the mixes. It turned out that disabling ratings made YouTube reduce the visibility of the videos. But enabling those things makes YouTube increase their visibility, so we're trying to get the mixes heard by more people. That may explain why the SM64 mix, which was the first one with monetization turned on, received greater views; YouTube actually gives more weight in discoverability to content that's monetized and allows ratings. That said, I'm the sole person that decides mixpost order these days (because I'm tagging them up and staging them), and claiming that we were just posting popular mixes to maximize YouTube revenue is silly and needlessly overthinking things. Sagnewshreds called your suspicions "tinfoilly," and he's right. For posting your Chrono Cross mix out of cycle, sometimes I do that. I just noticed you hadn't had a mix posted in about a month and didn't know you had anything else waiting besides some tracks on the FF9 project that were going to be posted on 9/9. We can't state enough how we're not actually motivated by money and don't profit, but in any case, in the 2 month period where ads were enabled on 43 out of 3,000+ videos, we also had mixes from Gradius Gaiden, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, Yoshi Touch & Go, Skylanders, ilomilo, To the Moon (yours), Global Gladiators, Lufia II, Rollerball, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Tyrian, Vectorman, After Burner, and R-Type for the C64. Have to say this over and over again: we don't care what game something is from. At all. It doesn't change how we evaluate anything. If the submission is creative and interpretive enough with the arrangement, and produced well enough, we'll post it. We don't post stuff from certain games to boost ad revenue or social media metrics or whatever. Also, all ads were off since the 14th, including when that Chrono Trigger album trailer went up (plus we had already decided not to monetize trailers (which is why you yourself noticed the Esther's Dreams trailer wasn't monetized). Brandon's also saying that even BEFORE YouTube monetization, we were ALREADY strategically weighting mixposts to heavily popular games. This is despite publishing an album from him for the super-obscure game Teen Agent. As I've said many times, we don't pick what games are mixed, the ReMixers do. And it almost goes without saying that Chrono Trigger or Mega Man 2 or Final Fantasy VII is more of a nostalgia and popularity draw among the ReMixers themselves, which is why they arrange those games more than others. We don't control that or try to steer anything in that direction. If OCR could have 1,000+ more Tim Follin arrangements, that would be awesome. The last thing I'd say is that I don't know why Brandon put up a poll on keeping his mixes up on OCR. It's very obvious that he assumes the worst about the staff, thinks we're pocketing the ad revenue, maybe buying cars or comics or anything & everything non-OCR related with it, that it's some money-making cabal, that all the staff are complicit in said cabal, and that we'd love to illegally and unethically generate YouTube revenue in the shadows and willingly anger hordes of artists. Since he's convinced it's run like that and unethical like he claims, why would a poll convince him to keep his ReMixes up? Like I said before, no amount of transparency or actions can make Brandon believe that OCR is run honestly, ethically, above board, and without a profit motive. Weighing that, I can't imagine why or how he'd convince himself not to request removal of his mixes. Due to his overly suspicious, paranoid, and imaginative nature about all of this, I think that's inevitable.

One thing I've learned in organizing several platforms with volunteers: including money changes things. Sure, the people in staff now are not doing it for extra money, but that could be an incentive for people to push for being a staff member. You don't want that line of thought. It also spawns a lot more conspiracy-theories, something you also want to avoid when you're reliant on contributions of others (some if the theories are even going around now that the staff isn't even getting paid). Last but not least: you have to divide the money. Does everyone get an equal share? Or should you get more if you get involved more? Those can be toxic discussions as well. My experience is that these things always get out if hand, no matter how good the intentions see. Compensation for expenses on the other hand works quite well usually (fully compensated travels to conventions and such)

Anybody want to go to Magnolia Festival? http://magfest.com

What did I think? I thought it was awesome. The atmosphere of this one is just crunchy and dark, breathing life into a depressing song. I may still be hungry, but this is music to feed your SOUL, maaaan.

Ok since this is public, I'll say this publicly. I have offered repeatedly to take on this role and we have discussed it. I have an MBA in Finance and a ton of accounting experience; this is what I do. I did a budget template and financial statement templates and invited you to the Google sheets, I hope you've looked at them. It's time to revisit these budgeting templates in a big way. We need to have some serious conversations about budgeting. Tom has just started back to school (yesterday), so my time is more available now to work on this with you. I totally understand everyone's feelings about YouTube ads, and I share these feelings. It has a totally different perception than website ads, and it feels more like a personal "fuck you" when you're on YouTube and an ad pops in your face. I fear that YouTube ads may have a negative impact overall. But I totally understand your feelings about the different types of ads and your explanations are great. Let's budget it out to see if it makes sense to continue them, or maybe there are other options we haven't explored yet.

Good question & points. At this point in time we have a "budget surplus", but we do anticipate that filing for the 501c3 could be costly - I spoke with Nick from MAGFest, and they had actual counsel, and it took a good long while & cost five figures. I'm hoping we can do something faster & more streamlined and thus (hopefully much!) cheaper, but it's those types of things that are "operational" but only come up once in awhile. Beyond keeping the site functional, we really want to improve it AND the videos themselves, and we've been working on both, so our definition of "operational" includes improvements & striving towards goals, not JUST keeping the wheels turning. The ads on the website ARE attached to the music in the sense that Google has the power to personalize them based on page content, which is exactly what they do with videos as well, but I hear you... it's a subjective thing, I don't think it's inherent, I think it's perceptual, but I see where you're coming from. This might be the biggest problem - the perception that YouTube ads are somehow functionally different in terms of how the revenue would be utilized. I don't know... it's not accurate, but I agree that this perception might exist.

I'm alright with it, provided the advertisements are going specifically to keep the site functioning, and if you are getting more than that, what's the plan for dealing with the rest of the revenue? As for how its different... 1.) It inherently feels more personal. The ads on the website are simply that, they aren't really attached to the music, but the website as a whole. Youtube ads on the otherhand.... 2.) The perception of Youtube Ad Revenue is one of pure profit. People think banner ads help sites function, people think youtube ads are for making money.

I think perhaps some people draw a strong line between web ads & YouTube ads, but I'm waiting to hear why that is - it definitely deserves to be talked about, and I'm going to apologize in advance to any artists who feel we should have informed them first BEFORE even testing the waters. We see these ads as equivalent to the existing web ads, as being preferable to them, and as not representing a change in our existing policy, and we wanted a "dry run" & to measure their impact as scientifically as possible. I'm interested in where this thread goes, and eager to answer any questions. Depending on the outcome, an official announcement will be made & sent out to artists in case folks don't monitor the forums. Some quick points: @Brandon Strader's right in that we started testing this on June 13th of this year Since that date, $130.99 in ad revenue was generated from ALL YouTube ads combined, a portion of which goes to our channel network This is considerably less than what web ads USED to make, but ever since we tweaked them to get rid of obnoxious & irrelevant content, web ads have tanked... so this is more than they ARE making at present. It's worth noting that it took two months for anyone to really notice... in my mind this is a successful experiment JUST in terms of gauging the impact to the average viewer/listener. Ads have NOT yet been enabled for the 3000+ video back catalog - we are waiting to do that based on the outcome of this conversation and after an official announcement. At that point the ad $$$ would obviously be more, but it won't be one video, or even one artist's videos, making a huge contribution to that - it's the aggregate. We were also hoping to time that announcement with a parallel announcement of filing for 501c3 status and debuting new artist pages which do a better job of promoting the artist than our current layout. So, why would we do this at all when the Patreon is completely covering the site's operating costs, with SURPLUS? An extremely fair question. To be honest, I hate managing the money side of OCR, I didn't sign up for this, and it's not something I derive joy in even contemplating. For the 501c3 I'm hoping someone on staff can take on the role of treasurer so I can free myself of it. Nevertheless, answers to the above question: I'm an IT guy. I have backups for my backups. I don't like having a single point of failure, and without a meaningful form of ad revenue, the site's existence would rest solely with Patreon. Membership in a YT network has other benefits... increased reach, an extra level of protection from content matches, etc. Mainly, at least for me, I saw that our web ads completely tanked after we tweaked them to exclude annoying/irrelevant content. I don't think Google's ad model for websites is as good as their model for videos. I'd love to remove most if not all Google ads from this site, and only feature completely relevant stuff like Super Audio Cart, OverClocked Records, and also use that space to promote our existing/upcoming albums. It absolutely is; our content policy still applies, and always will. For the 501c3 filing, there would be additional clarity required surrounding what specifically counts as an operational or promotional cost, tying our hands a bit further, in addition to more specific IRS documentation requirements.

I have no objections. It's no different than advertisements on the site going to help pay for the site. I'm kind of baffled that it's provoked such a negative reaction

We were testing the waters, getting an idea of how it would work, the different settings involved, how obtrusive it would be, etc. We did legitimately want to see whether people would notice, and when. The community definitely deserves to know and provide input, and if a majority (or potentially a plurality) of artists are uncomfortable with it, we can reassess, but I'll lay out the general thinking below and you can see what you think. We can use this thread to discuss; just need to keep things civil & productive. This is not civil or productive; I'm confused why you're still registered and taking the time to chime in, if you're so convinced that the music is mediocre, which is kind of an insult to all artists contributing to this thread, either way... So this is surprising to me, because the way we see it, ads on videos are not materially different from ads on the website, all of which go directly towards funding the site. Nothing has changed, policy-wise. From http://ocremix.org/info/Content_Policy This remains 100% true; the only difference is that the ads are on YouTube instead of the website. We'd like to minimize or even eliminate ads on the website in favor of YouTube, primarily because they're more annoying, less relevant, affect layout/usability, and don't accomplish much. Based on @bLiNd's reaction, and perhaps others, it seems like people are drawing a major distinction between YouTube ads and ads on this website, and that's what this conversation needs to focus on, because from a policy perspective, again, nothing has changed - any $$$ goes towards operation & promotion, and the net effect is just that ads are offloaded from the site and onto videos, where we feel they make a bit more sense. No unskippable ads, FYI. There are other benefits to being a partner channel, including enhanced reach and protection from instant takedowns, that seem to make this a smart move for us, but nothing is concrete - let's talk it through, but let's focus on the core question: how is this different from the status quo?

Maybe we could wait on @djpretzel/any staff member's answer before taking this too far?

No matter how you slice it, it just doesn't look good when a site that has always been there to deliver free vgm mixes to peoples' ears, despite having had trouble in the past with Square-Enix and has a thread explaining why the mixes cannot be on Spotify due to licensing...it still has monetized mixes on YouTube. As was suggested, it could be that it auto-monetizes them, but that still doesn't make me feel better about it. If you want to put money into the site to keep online, it should be purely voluntary via buying a T-Shirt or straight-up donating.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if OCR were to monetize the channel, wouldn't all of the videos have ads?

Maybe it is due to a new update in YouTube's bot, design, or something else, as Ivan suggested. My association got a video monetized (due to the use of a copyrighted song) although our monetization is deactivated. I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation (and there's no need to jump to OCR's throat without their explanation).

they still get 20% after the publisher gets their 80

This probably has nothing to do with ocremix. Same thing happened on the Dwelling of Duels youtube channel, and the thing is simple - if youtube recognizes the vgm source, even for a small part, it automatically monetizes the video.

I don't like it. Don't get me wrong. Ocremix has brought me a lot of opportunity and fans but the focus should be on the artist more than the entity of ocremix. You guys have basically taken the liberty to make money off of music you didn't make and that's unfair

Talk about spoilers. Thanks for ruining Tetris for me...

Back on topic: Not any of the Mega Man series. It's either robots blowing up the world, or a world where humans are long dead. Oh, spoilers. Another bad one would be anything with "shock" in it's title. Underwater cities filled with murderous citizens, sky cities with racist nationalists (who are also murderous), some damn computer system in space (again, murderous)... the whole "something shock" thing is not people-friendly. Tetris would be a terrible world, mainly because there isn't one. Not by human standards. A narrow chasm there is no escaping, but then it starts to fill up until it it reaches an invisible barrier at the top, crushing everything in it. Sometimes the ground that is building up falls away, but that is only a momentary reprieve from the sky falling and the earth raising. Fuck that.

And while you're at it, ask for a copy of sun and moon for me. But seriously, the pokemon world has some impressive places.

Oh, Surge killed them with his bare hands or with a knife. He states that his pokémon " zapped my enemies into paralysis " ... letting him finish them off. And since there is never any sign of any kind of weapons aside from medieval-level swords and shields.. I'm thinking strangulation or vivisection. Or he used a parachute cord as a garrote. Team Rocket's main modus operandi is to steal pokémon from non-trainers (who would be more capable of defending themselves) and then using them as either power sources (think about the Electrodes powering the Radio Transmitter in the secret base under Mahogany Town) or selling for money (the game center in Celedon City, for instance). Hell, their plan at Lake of Rage to force pathetic Magikarp into mighty Gyarados is so they can catch them for profit. Turns out Team Rocket is less mafia and more unethical business. But hey, it's just a theory. A game-specific, backed up with known instances and easily verifiable facts, based upon quick research to fill in any gaps from personal memory, but still accurate, theory. Thanks for reading!

Yeah, most game worlds are absolutely filled with violent death looming around every corner. Even gorgeous worlds like Wind Waker have monsters just everywhere. And most of them are either a medieval setting, which means no plumbing, no basic hygiene, not much entertainment (although healthcare would vary widely based on potions and whatnot) or dystopian sci-fi (with its own forms of scarcity). Pokemon would be a pretty decent choice. It's based on the modern day, with internet and all, just with pokemon. On the other hand, while there don't appear to be any conventional weapons, so no fear of mass shootings or bombings per se, some pokemon have some awfully destructive attacks. Unleash a Hyper Beam or even a Surf in a crowded area and you'd have a lot of deaths on your hands, and there doesn't appear to be any kind of regulation. It must be very Wild West behind the scenes, with the "good guy with a gun" mentality being the default. Splatoon seems like it would be pretty good. There's some conflict, but not many individuals are involved in it, and no one actually dies. On the other hand, it's basically like the real world, so not much incentive to visit it.

Join the Koopa Troopa army.

Legen of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. It looks amazing! It is huge, there seems to be a lot of fun stuff, and you can beat moblins up with a skeleton hand. Or pokemon (The whole series) You can travel between cities in about 5 minutes (Walking!). Just watch out for all the death dealing monsters.

@Wiesty Very psyched, of course. I haven't been chiming in lately because my second daughter is going to be born like, tomorrow, and things have been pretty crazy. Please make sure we discuss logistics & schedule before any release date is announced. And if we've got some sort of short trailer, or just a quick audio demo we can play, for the upcoming MAGFest panel.... let's do it

I just wanted to let everyone know that the music is complete and will be sent off for mastering sometime this week or next! Art is almost all in as well! Release date soon!

Just wanted something noticeable. Probably overkill, but ya know.

I...... i...... no moar projects...... NO MORE YOU SON OF Aalright I can probably do an orchestral piece for this, but catch me early next year for it.

So perhaps some context for this might be good. (Yes, this is AB. Like the name/sex change?) This was originally intended to be for an Earthbound project that was never finished. A few other mixes that were supposed to be for it made it here on OCR, I can't remember exactly which ones. Anyway, by the time I did this one I had just got to college and felt kind of like I was done with the community there was no reason for me to be doing remixes anymore for various reasons. But I had some left over WIPs and decided to finish this one up because the original tune is one of my favorite pieces of videogame music. I was pretty sure this was gonna be my last remix, so I decided to try some things that I wouldn't normally try. I intentionally made some sounds ugly and clash with other sounds, and there are a couple of places where there are two different things going on at once in different keys/time signatures, that kind of stuff. I was really into Captain Beefheart at the time, so that was part of it. Part of it was also wanting to do justice to the Earthbound soundtrack. It was fun to do all that stuff because I felt like I was really pushing myself into more unexplored territory, and I felt that it paid off for me. I came up with something that sounded unique, that I felt like no one else could have done. I didn't know if this would get rejected by the panel or not, but I decided that I had nothing to lose anyway so I submitted it and was happy to see it get on the site. ============================== Anyway, the point is this: my hope was that someone would hear this and be inspired to do something out there or experimental, in the mold of Shnabubula's early remixes or something like that. Or maybe not even that, maybe just get someone to think about trying a new approach. And I'm not talking about crazy time signatures or putting a whole lot of distortion on everything. Those are just ideas, and on the surface they don't add up to anything. I'm talking about creating a world. Different combinations of different ideas helps bring people into a different world. What I mean here is that my intention was never to show off compositionally. The point wasn't "hey guyz listen to my drumz". I was just trying something different. Trying to blur things together until all you can see is the overall picture, maybe even have some sort of emotional experience come out of it, rather than just see it as just a bunch of a little elements someone entered into a sequencer. I wasn't doing all this consciously. I don't think I realized what this and the kirby and donkey kong remixes on were about until way afterwards. I guess the point in the end was that I hoped to make something that existed in a world of its own: outside of me, outside of my sequencer, outside of my computer, and hopefully people would react to it in that way. So anyway...I think people are gonna like what they're gonna like. A lot of people don't like a lot of the choices made, so they're not gonna like this mix, simple as that. But I'm most proud of this one because I felt like I really did reach something this time. It's not perfect certainly, but I do feel proud that there is a mix like this on OCR...I just wish that more people were willing to try stuff like this. BTW, the ending is supposed to be a more optimistic epilogue to the darkness and disorientation of the mix. It's kind of an inverse of the kirby mix which was mostly happy but then ended with this kind of mysterious section that fades out at the end. I did think it was gonna be my last thing on OCR, after all, so I wanted to end it on a happier note. And it's Earthbound, fer godsakes. I don't really know how many people out there really try to think deeply about videogame remixes. I think a vast majority of remixers just do it for fun, and most listeners don't try to think that hard about why they like something, they just know what they like. Sometimes I think there's something wrong with me when I try to deconstruct stuff like this and give it a higher purpose. In the end I guess I really don't know what purpose remixes have beyond entertainment or nostalgia. My best guess is that maybe both games and game remixes (and by extension electronic music) are about creating worlds that have their own self-sustaining ecosystems. Earthbound certainly had its own unmistakable and strange little world. And with electronic music, maybe like Brian Eno did with Another Green World, though I never heard that album until a year or so ago. There are an infinite number of possibilities of sound that we will only ever barely scratch the surface of, so my view is that we might as well put them to some interesting use.

Hyrule dance mix. Not good, but not bad enough for the rejection letter. Where does it go? Where else? The panel!!! This is listenable on some level, but completely mediocre. NO

Case closed - this submission is notated too similarly to the source midi found. A tracklist I found mentioned a professionally arranged track with nearly the same title and time as this one. If that happened to be authored by the submitter: sorry, we're looking for rearrangements. NO

BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN: So, YES