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Hi guys, I'll start by saying that a recent remix made me cry. What? How? Let me tell you a short story. Fact: I have been a huge fan of this website and community since my first days on the internet. The first remix I downloaded was La Samba de Agua back in 2001, when I was around 10, and since then I have been following the website, the remixes and everything you guys do. For example, in 2012 I assisted the OCRemix panel at PAX East 2012, and it was great to see some of the people responsible of bringing you so much happiness and good music. These are some of the ugly pictures I took. So, a couple of days ago, after being absent from the website for like 2 months (busy life is not fun), I downloaded newly released remixes I haven't checked out yet. To my big surprise, one of them was from Pokemon (huge Pokemon fan here),- Gotta Catch a Wave and a Memory - so I went for it first. And guys, around the minute 3 I started to get all emotional. Some reason the song made me remember all those days of zero worries in your head, the days when you believed everything was perfect, the time when the hardest thing was a silly math exam, or trying to get a shiny Pokemon. Bottom line, I took a trip down memory lane and it was a mix of great and happy memories and some sadness at the same time. So, I cried. After the song end, I went to the song's page to see what the author wrote about it. This is an excerpt of what he wrote To that I have to say that I agree with you a 100% Von Nebo. These days and good, and fun, and full of adventures and challenges. However, nothing will beat those old days, those Pokemon Sapphire days. Thanks for the remix Von Nebo, and thanks to every single of you for keeping this community alive and full of great music. - a big fan.

You're not alone, @oldfan. I have a very long history of gaming - got myself hooked on my friend's copies of the first Zelda game, Mario 2, Mario 3, Contra, and the original TMNT. I've been a gamer for 30 years now and as other posts have described, I'm becoming a bit philosophical about it all now. A similar experience brought me to remixes in general. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of the Black Mages, but their song Distant Worlds did the very same thing to me. This song helped me realize, in a time of my life when I was very insecure about my gaming, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with having a great love and appreciation for video games. It's funny how music can not only bring back the images, but also the sounds, the situations, the feelings - this track literally brought the WHOLE experience back for me, which is one of the initial contacts I had with OCR. I'd like to voice my support of Von Nebo's statement and say that these times are good, but nothing will beat those old days trying to figure out how to trash Metal Man with just a P-Buster, an E-Tank (if you didn't lose all your lives trying to get it), and a whole lot of determination. Thank you, OCR, for giving us a place to give these memories a new life through the songs we create - and hopefully we share of little of the joy we had making these memories with the rest of the world through music. "If music be the food of love, play on..." ~William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Official status has been granted, @Darkflamewolf - good job on initial organization, let us know how we can help, and keep at it!

On this one, I'm gonna have to say no. First of all, because you already have a claim on this track in the regular album and you've already made a bonus track of Corneria; second of all because your sound design here is way too close to the WIP you have sent me for your regular claim. If you are looking to start on something else for the album, there are still 4 unclaimed tracks on the current tracklist (including the Boss Roll ) and boss and character themes are still open. Plus, I'm still hoping to get that Andross collaboration going and I need that intro to start things off, if you're still interested in doing that. All that being said, I liked what I heard - your fill-work is really coming along. I love to hear that creativity!

hope you don't forget me for dragon god cause i'll have a WIP that doesn't sound badly sampled/short sometime this week

That was disgusting This is MnP 69. I believe I sent you the link to the week's theme? Apparently in FB's on this day a friend said I had 69 friends 4 years ago...

I've been considering claiming Fear of the Heavens for the last week since it became available... I think I'll take the plunge and officially commit. I'm starting to have ideas about how to approach it, so I'll regret it if I don't!

EVAL Well, this was a pretty full of energy! You got some nice, meaty drums, the side chaining to really back them up, and the glitchy, something-step sound overall does the source wonders. I think the main thing that I will comment on is that your lead has a bit too much portamento to it. When it's really juiced up on the portamento the notes often just sound flat rather than sliding to them properly. As a rule of thumb, if the note spent more time sliding than it did on the note, it's not going to be recognized as that note, so tone it down when it's supposed to be landing on the notes (like at 1:36 - it sounds pretty rough there). I will also note that it would be nice to hear at least one other instrument used as a lead from time to time, as that lead starts to wear on you after nearly five minutes. Otherwise, I think you have something worth submitting, here. It'd be a borderline case even as is, but if you take Starphoenix and my word for the lead and switch it out once or twice for something else, and tweak the portamento where it makes the lead sound too swanky I think you'll have a pretty solid chance at getting posted.

Okay. I think it's time to go through Evaluation, because I want it done, and I am really proud of where I am in term of mix and composition. Here we go!

What became commonly misinterpreted as "OCR doesn't allow chiptunes!" really just boiled down to our looking for a level of complexity in ALL submissions - including chiptune-oriented mixes - that goes beyond what are commonly referred to as "demakes" - where a 16-bit or newer song is converted almost verbatim to chip textures. In addition to not passing arrangement muster, these types of conversions often (not always!) don't really employ the full range of capabilities of the chip(s) being utilized, and defer a lot of decisions about panning, modulation, texture, DSP, etc. to default values. We need submissions to illustrate creativity AND decision-making in arrangement AND production, more or less. The latter is entirely possible within a primarily chiptune paradigm, as previous featured mixes have illustrated and as this mix illustrates as well. No issues.

I'll go counter to the first two votes and say I was feeling this. I liked the delicate intro, leading into the heavier rock stuff. The transition worked and I thought the production was solid and the partwriting good. I liked hearing fills and bass flourishes here and there. Sometimes there could have been another part added to fill in some blank spaces, but there was enough there for me to enjoy the groove. I also thought the transition between the sources was fine. Maybe more of a transition could be added, but there was no key change or anything really egregiously bad. I would agree with the production critiques about the bass drum and reverb, but that wasn't enough for me to say no to this. YES