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I'm gonna have to sit out on this one. I've been rushing the last couple out so I'm gonna take some time to finish up other work and hopefully I'll be able to make something real good next time! I'll still vote this round though, no doubt about that.

Clearly you have never played any games that had to be loaded from cassette tape.

Sorry for holding this up. Like I explained to Weston directly, typically, it would take maybe a few months to go through the judges panel, depending on when judges got to it vs. everything else, and then some time to wait before posting, but stuff with unique issues can get held up. It's part of the issues of doing this in downtime and not as a job, you tend to make time as needed, and anything that's not super easy to deal with can get put into a corner, which I'm guilty of here and in a lot of other cases. Thanks a lot to EAR for his extreme patience and understanding. Thanks also to djp for chatting with me about the potential for the extensive sampled lyrics being a Standards violation on incorporating non-VGM music. Basically, he's been OK with vocal sampling of this nature, because it's raps and spoken word stuff that isn't pulling in any sort of non-VGM melodies or composition to be arranged. That many of the lines were from sample packs rather than mainstream music releases was noted thanks to Weston's info, but djp ultimately wasn't concerned about the source of the lyrical sampling, if you check his comments above. Just restating my POV on the potential direct audio sampling of the source tunes, I wasn't hearing that here at all and it wasn't a concern. The other Js say the source tune was "all over this," but no one bothered to break it down, so I think they conflated a lot of the house/rave style of the writing with the parts arranging/referencing the various "Metallic Madness" segments. The music part of the track was 4:27-long, so I needed to identify the source tunes being used for at least 133.5 seconds of the arrangement. :20.5-:22.25 (Past - 1:01-1:03), :38.5-1:43.5 (mostly Past, some Present), 2:22.25-2:47 (Bad Future), 2:47-3:01.25 (Present), 3:27-3:54.25 (Bad Future), 4:19-4:25 (Past - 1:01-1:03) = 139 seconds or 52.05% overt source usage There were a lot of things that had a soundalike feel to "Metallic Madness" but sounded more stylistically influenced by 2 Unlimited's "Twilight Zone" (e.g. that similar sampled shout at :23) or even the Mortal Kombat movie theme, The Immortals' "Techno Syndrome," due to the numerous orch stabs, like 1:56's little jingle. There were also plenty of extended sections with no direct connection to Sonic CD that I could ID, so I came up just barely over half as far as the source usage being dominant in the arrangement, which made it closer to me than the other judges believed, provided I'm not overlooking something major. I'm sure Weston can clarify after the fact. Anyway, Gario and Sir_NutS had fair production points about crowding and piercing highs that I agreed with, but on the whole, this was produced reasonably well and felt very authentic as a long-lost 90s club hit, and I didn't hear any dealbreaking issues for the production. All of the SFX & sampled lyric usage added up to a lot, but sounded reasonable in the big picture, as far as not feeling invasive and integrating well into the track. Good to go! YES

Here's my discussion with djpretzel last week (5/17/2017) on the possible Standards issue of the heavy vocal sampling in this mix (edited for clarity, with removal of some non sequitur talk)

After reading all of the replies I have to say that I'm on the same boat as Neblix. I'm really curious why so many people are jumping ship, when it sounds like they simply tried new methods that may or may not work for some people. If it doesn't stick with 11. If it does go to 12. That's part of the beauty of FL Studio's pricing anyways: one time fee, do what you like. So far the changes I've heard don't seem to justify such a harsh reaction. I think it's just proving that point I learned long ago that almost any change will be quickly met with backlash, until people get over it for whatever reason. Like when Jon left Game Grumps and now Danny is the second host. Everybody complained, even me, but now no one can imagine Game Grumps without Danny. Oh! Or like when they change Doctors in Doctor Who. I'm also with Neblix in being baffled by why this is getting so personal for a lot of people. I really just want everyone to chill out and discuss effectively why they do or don't like FL Studio 12. That's why I came in the first place.