Leaderboard

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 3 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 3. Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey II The Last Soul Labyrinth IV - Petal Bridge [Dungeon: 16F-20F] Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey III Go Straight Labyrinth VI - Cyclopean Haunt Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey Shinobi Reverse Labyrinth V - Lost Shinjuku [Dungeon: 21F-25F]

Just chiming in to mention that I've sent a finished mix of Resident Evil 4's Save Room theme to VQ, so that's at least one track down for this project! Excited to hear what everyone else cooks up ☺️

Hello!!! Although I'm quite unfamiliar with this place, it is nice to meet people who enjoy remixing VGMs and OSTs! Although I usually make original tracks, I also make remixes. I met this place a few days ago, and I forgot introduce myself. I hope all is well!

Voting Guidelines Teams were tasked with writing three mashup arrangements of two songs each, one from a Streets of Rage game and the other from an Etrian Odyssey game. In order to make your vote, listen to the remixes and, for each pair, choose the remix that fulfills the following criteria (listed in order of importance): The remix arranges both source tunes in an interesting and identifiable way into one cohesive piece of music. The remix is well-produced within the conventions of the genre. The remix is enjoyable to listen to. Stream the remixes via Soundcloud or Download the Round 2 Remix Pack (MP3). For your reference, here are the source tunes for Round 2. Streets of Rage vs. Etrian Odyssey III My Little Baby Cityscape - Engrave Thy Name and Go Forth Streets of Rage 2 vs. Etrian Odyssey Alien Power Strife - Rapture [Normal Battle: Final Floor] Streets of Rage 3 vs. Etrian Odyssey II Ending Return of the Heroes [Ending 1]

Howdy! :) 🦇 Some of y'all know who I am, but in case ya don't: 'ello, 'ello--the name's VQ. Bit nervous writing this up, but here goes! Many here (including myself) have participated in (or know of) @Dyne & @The Coop's lovingly done, yearly [Unofficial] OCR Christmas Album, and I'd like to try and implement / propose something similar for ALL HALLOWS' EVE! 🧡 Out of every holiday in a year, Halloween has always been my all-time favorite, and it's a shame to have noticed not many artists or communities hold much weight for that time of the year--outside of any compos that chime-in for it as one-offs--and I'd like to give the opportunity for music inspired by Halloween, or that present "spooky vibes" to be freely envisioned and showcased for that special date! :D Here's the deets!

as someone who tried to do this yearly (and only managed for 3 years (3 eps of 3 songs for 3 halloweens does sound kinda cool though), i love this idea, i have a couple of songs i'd like to do, i just need to pick one. but count me in. also, if you need help with the website/hosting/whatever, let me know, i might be able to help.

I'm in, leaning towards something original instead of a remix but maybe that will change after i go through my game music archives. Maybe something along the lines of my old BABY SHARK remix could work, because there's nothing more horrifying than baby shark...

Oooooh.... me thinks this might be a great place for choirs / singers doing banshee / ghost / goblin etc vocals to have lots of fun. Teeeheeheee. Very interested in singing on and/or arranging vocals for a track on this:) - Bonnie Bogovich the weird lady who runs The Bwak Choir co-founder of Super Smash Opera https://blackcatbonifide.com

Hello all! CosmicBartender from Discord here; I'd love to participate if anyone has need/desire of drums/percussion. DMs and mentions are open - thank you for your time!

Thinking of joining this! I was originally thinking of making from scratch, but if possible, I'm planning to remix/re-arrange a touhou song and make it creepy, lol.

This is an amazing idea! I've got an old MNP that I've been tinkering with for... the last decade? Crap. But it might fit this album, so consider me signed up!

Such a fun song! This captures the zaniness when you play EarthBound. The remix plays tricks with your ears which is exactly Mr. Saturn's intentions when you see him and his village. 😄

Yeah it does! Thanks for the update. Gonna get working at some point this summer

Excellent! Well, feel free to work on it some more if you feel like (you have until the due date, which isn't until late October, to turn it in!) Otherwise, I just need it rendered to the specifics above, and a unique name for your remix. :) Can send it to me via Discord or by private message in the OCR forums > my profile page. :D It can be something that was published previously! :) One of mine I plan on doing is actually a 2-3 year old piece I first made for a NewGrounds Halloween contest, and I think that was back in 2022?? I'm revamping the thing from scratch, adding onto the melody and harmony and putting a new spice / hook to the piece, but it has been published before on NG. So I figure as long as the submitted tracks haven't been mixposted by OCR before, it's cool. :D But you can, however, submit it to the OCR Judges' Panel after subbing it for this album, or anywhere else! ♥ If it's a video game remix, I encourage it. But this album isn't restricted TO JUST VGM remixes. You can remix other sources from other media, and / or make your own original track. Hope that helps. :3

Up to you! If you feel like you can do more to work on them, by all means, either take the time to work on them more, or workshop them either here on the forums or via the OCR Discord server. :) Otherwise, if you feel they're ready to go, just send me: a WAV of your mix, in 44.1kHz, in Stereo, 16 or 24-bit, -6.0 dB, triangle dithered (if necessary). This is a pre-master, WITH NO HEAVY COMPRESSION OR A LIMITER ON THE MASTER BUS, except for any very soft compression and EQ, for warmth and tone and gluing the full track together. If that all sounds like gobbledygook, just sending me the thing at -6dB, unmastered, is cool. :D Can send it to me on here as an attachment or GDrive / Dropbox link through private messaging, or on Discord if you add me. There's some other submission criteria, but the TL;DR is -- as long as your mix doesn't have any weird glitches or artifacts that'll mess up mastering the track, and you give me the source name and game (or movie or whatever) you remixed it from, and give it a unique name (something that isn't the original name of the song), that's fine.

Hey friends :) I'm in! can i just submit my remixes or how is it working?

Hey all, I've updated our default theme to the new dark mode theme. This new theme reflects some of the style changes that have been made up front on the main site. If you notice any glaring issues with the new theme, please make a thread for the specific problem you notice in our Site Issues & Feedback forum so that I can address it specifically. Our old theme is still available in the theme selector at the bottom of the forum page if you prefer the light version. ENJOY! -- DarkeSword

Super Castlevania IV - Dracula's Theme Remix

Come join the fun, if you'd like!

Ok... Back in the saddle! Sorry for the delay in replies! Hey! Welcome! Nice to meet ya'. I'll try to note down people who are "up for collabing" soonish, when I go in to edit the front-posts, again, so people joining in known who they can turn to for advice or collaboration on their mixes if they want it! Got you and Bonnie down for drums/percs & vocals, respectively. :) Depending on things, might knock on your DMs myself! I gotcha covered. ;) Stay tuned! Is this your "claim", so to speak? :D Let me know, and I'll update the main post! Aww, that's sad. D: Albeit, doing like a mini-EP of those does sound very intriguing... :) Well, hopefully this'll last longer than 3 years, (fingers crossed!) But you're welcome to do any or ALL of the songs you have in mind. :D There's 0 limit on how many you can submit, just keep the number reasonable. x'D @colorado weeks also voiced helping out with website-making and hosting, and I'm sure between ya'll, we can get that done! I'll also ping @gravitygauntlet because I know he's done some CD label-esque artwork and formatting, and his GF does as well. So if ya'll wanna jump in on this, song sub or otherwise, count me in! Just DM me in the meantime, but I will also be in touch when I consolidate more ideas together!

Ghouls ’n Ghosts - Title Theme Remix

Hiya! Well, hope you can spare some time to this, and if you're struggling to think of another thing to do, can ask around but doing two Touhou-style arrangements isn't a bad thing! X'D Don't mind at all having multiple if they aren't covering the same sources. OOOOOoooo, a classic. I like it! Glad to get some FF representation here! ♡ Gotcha! I'll note it down! :D

Hi,yes you can of course,it's a share for the community so use them for whatever you want after,i know nothing about violations of copyright licenses so check all this stuff before selling your game yeah.

Actually, I'm thinking of doing Stage: Eerie Road from Miitopia. Seems spooky and silly :)

Put me down for the Caves of Narshe, from FF6. I have a perfect set of creepy sfx to go with the instrumentation I plan:)

I think this is a pretty cool idea. I'd like to participate but we'll see (I'm thinking of doing a couple other projects at this time). I like Halloween and am a horror fan. However somebody already suggested doing a spooky Touhou remix so I'll think of something else to do.

Welcome aboard, H36T! ♡ Nice to see you still at it. ^_^

Oh yeah, the track I'm remixing is Trick or Treat from Psycho Pinball. Should probably mention that, right? 😄

Hell yeah! Be sure to add it to the Events Calendar 🙌

2nd post updated :)

Not a whole lot on the CRAC server ATM, as that might pick up after some competition stuff passes and/or if I can get a channel & thread spinning personally for the album. I haven't advertised it on OCRs official server or Pixel Mixers or DoD. Unsure if I should really, as I don't wanna badger people or ping everywhere like mad. I'll try to muster up the courage to do so maybe over the weekend. :) And that's a fantastic idea! I'll update the second post later on today! I've had someone talk to me about it via DM on Disc, so maybe people seeing that he's got something in already will get others excited for it!

I have a spooky vibe remix that I was already going to do, I'll have to remember this.

I would like to "throw my hat into the ring", so they say, on this idea:)

Found myself with a hankering to listen to some of that cool, mellow guitar goodness from Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core. But rather than listening to the soundtrack on Youtube, I figured I would look it up on here and see what people have made. I didn't find a single song. Like, I'm doing the search thing correctly, right? There are ZERO Crisis Core remixes listed here? Right? Weird, man. Weird. Alan

These are just going to be first impressions from voting, so take this all with a huge grain of salt! The City Is a Warm, Dead Waste: I love the variety here! It reminds me of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin in some ways, it doesn't surprise me to see a few Team Whip alumni on this one! Guitars are kickass here, and there's a monster amount of synth variety too. There's a solid amount of cohesion with the sounds chosen here, though I'm somewhat less sold on the arrangement itself - lots of great ideas but I think it'll take me some time to grasp where the arrangement is actually taking me. I think there's some reverb fine-tuning to do here, a lot of the elements feel overly boomy, which takes away some of the bite from elements like the drums. Other than drums/guitar, I actually surprisingly can't pinpoint individual elements contributed by each artist - there's a lot of sounds that feel like they could have come from anyone, which is pretty neat! 🏆Duel of the Shifting Sands: Ooohhh, 8-bit plus! I'm not surprised at all by that, but I'm not used to hearing it with all the extra bits and bobs, and I gotta say... I dig it! A lot. I think there's untapped potential to process the chiptune elements a little more dynamically, but overall, the blend works pretty damn well. 3:02, hell yeah! This is a great way to drive this home. I was on the fence about which track would get my vote, but this section really clinched it for me. Overall, I saw a huge amount of potential and TONS of great ideas thrown out from both entries in this duel, but this track feels like like it has the edge in terms of focus and cohesion. 🏆Seven Fists Under the Sakura Tree: Motherfucker, you guys are not playing around. This hits IMMEDIATELY off the rip. That fill at 1:06, excuuuuse me? I think this has a bit of the same "washiness" that I noted in "Warm, Dead Waste" where there's just a little bit less clarity to the mix than I would like, but I don't think the track suffers too much as a result. Ok, and now we go into something completely different at the end that somehow also works? I was trying to write out my highlights as I went along, and I just couldn't keep up. The sound choices, writing, production... y'all are crazy for this one. This is going directly onto my Smash Bros. playlist. This is going to be hard to beat. Sakura Wa Karenai: Ok, so that's how you're gonna play this. The production on here is IMMACULATE right off the jump, I can hear some strong DJ Mokram influence on the world instruments, then some psytrance beats come in and I immediately know who's at the helm. The production on here feels a little tighter, but I'm waiting for the moments like Team Rage had in their entry that REALLY knocked me off my feet. Oh, there's 2:06 - that's more like what I'm talking about, but it still feels like you're holding back on the energy levels. We've still got time to go though, so we'll see where this goes. 2:42 really jumped out at me in a completely different way, but it was a powerful moment with the entrance of vocals and that beautiful FM piano. The sound design in this section is off the hook. OH BABY SHUFFLE RHYTHMS now we're cooking. Ahhh, this matchup is TOUGH. There's so many brilliant ideas here and there's actually quite a bit of connective tissue to bridge them all together, but will say that the energy management falls just a little short of my hopes. The mix is incredibly clean, from the instrumentation to the mixing/mastering, but it feels like there was room to push the intensity further. I still loved this a ton, and you gave the other track a serious run for their money, but Seven Fists takes the crown in this matchup for me. 🏆Only Trust Your Mix, Techniques Will Never Help You: this title sounds like something I would hear in an incomprehensible Youtube Short production tutorial, I'm curious what the title alludes to! This starts off with some pretty straightforward but catchy, bright rock that reminds me of old Sonic Adventure music, the lead performances are top-notch. I don't feel like this track was as ambitious as the other ones from Team Rage in terms of ideas, but it feels like perhaps the most cohesively-executed of the three, and just because it's more focused, doesn't mean that it's any less impactful. The seagulls are a nice touch too, reminds me even more of Sonic Adventure when we hit that part. Crazy breakdown at the end, this was really good! You Make the Sun Shine (In My Heart): Aww, so cute! This is definitely the hardest matchup so far just by virtue of the fact that each entry were clearly going for different things. The other two matchups, although executed very differently, ended up going for relatively similar energy, but this is the kind of diametrically-opposed matchup I love to see from GSM. The lead vocals are confident and fit the bill really nicely - some slightly awkward moments where the lyrics and the melodic phrasing don't perfectly sync up, but that's to be expected on a short timeline when you have to add your own lyrics to the equation. Across the board, I'm hearing brilliant synth riffs and excellent sound choices. I love the vocal harmonies that I assume colorado weeks contributed? 3:25 onward to the end of the song is when everything really clicked for me <3 The area where this struggles for me is the mixdown - it doesn't feel like it's quite baked yet, specifically in terms of relative volume levels. The lead doesn't always feel like the lead, and there's certain elements (like the synth bass at 2:40-ish, for example) that feel inexplicably louder than everything else. There's also several elements that don't quite feel glued together with appropriate level of bus compression or reverb to really give this a sense of place. When both tracks are full of great ideas but in totally different ways, I need to fall back to execution, and in this case, I have to trust the mix from Team Rage. There's no dead air this round, every team brought the heat in terms of concepts and energy! Execution was a little more of a mixed bag, ultimately I feel like any of these matchups could have been swayed with different levels of polish on the execution, which means that you all hit the mark in terms of blending the sources well. I am well familiar with the time crunch element of GSM, and it does tend to play out tougher for more ambitious, multi-genre concepts that will always take longer to polish. Even though I ended up generally voting for the tracks that felt tighter and maybe took a few less stylistic risks, it's not for lack of enjoyment of the more ambitious ones! If you didn't get my vote here, it just means that I thought the song needed a little more time in the oven - everyone did excellent work and I enjoyed it a lot!

TIL I'm responsible for sharing all good music in the scene. :-D

😇 Rest In Peace, Val Kilmer. 🫡

Well, look at all the nice stuff Morgan said, it warms a middle-aged man’s heart! We’re glad to have you too. :-) This was definitely a trip on the USS Weirdshit, and I’m here for it. Boy, this gets pretty grimey, and props to Chimpa for her post-production efforts as well; just like the Mario 64 piece that she also mastered, everything sounds awesome on my car stereo, which can’t be taken for granted. (I’ve heard pro tracks that don’t come out sounding full and clean on car stereo, to be sure.) Just voted on mooooooooo.ooorgan’s Super Mario 64 piece before this, which I believe was the second or third track of his that I’ve judged. That said, the dude’s got me trained now: expect a journey and expect to be impressed. YES

Man, most votes on a track ever? More likely than you think! So the good: this does a very nice job blending the sources, and it uses both in ample amounts (mostly using the C64 source as texture), and I like the soundscape. The production values are decent, as are the instruments used. However, the mixing is dense, and sometimes is easy to lose track of what people should be listening to in the arrangement, with the lead often being no louder than the accompaniment. This leads to a larger issue of the arrangement sounding like it's meandering aimlessly - there's little for the listener to grab as important so the overall arrangement sounds like a bunch of textures and ideas put into one package rather than an arrangement. After the 2:41 there is a melodic hook that's easier to follow which helps the song close off strong, and there's some material from 0:30 - 1:00 that could be used to grab the listener's ear if it wasn't so washed in reverb and mixed to match the levels of the rest of the texture. There are a lot of good ideas here, but I don't hear enough to keep the listener's attention over the textures, and there's too much going on to consider this minimalist or atmospheric music. I *hear* elements that could be used as leads in various points of the arrangement, but they need to blend less with the rest of the texture and not be washed out with reverb as well as be mixed more in the lead to work as such. I hear an arrangement in this, but it needs to be mixed better so that the listeners can hear it, too. I like it, but it needs more focus. Better mixing and cleaning up the likely intentional leads so they don't wash out so much would bring this the focus it needs. NO

There are a few weak spots but overall I really like the texture of this entire track. The hard-panned synth is a problem but it's not present for the entire song so I can get past it. It's transformative, and the contrast of industrial sounding percussion with a dreamier, synthy-er sound on top is nice. YES

I see walls of paragraphs all above me, so there's probably no chance I'm getting through this one with a clean vote... not sure how I missed voting on this during the judge test myself! I love the foundational elements of this piece, juxtaposing a deep 808 synth with some very grimy, industrial percussion drenched in reverb and some plectral instruments that feel like they could have been pulled straight from Castlevania. On a conceptual level, we're hitting the right marks here. The end result is washy and messy, but in a way that feels appropriate - the leads don't necessarily cut through, but do they need to? I'd argue that this works perfectly well as more of a vibes-focused track where the melodies are sidelined. The 808 feels rather tame though, like it wants to be a commanding presence that grounds the rest of the ambient elements in something more concrete, but it doesn't really feel that way in the mix. This is common when you have a bass that has tremendous sub presence but little upper harmonics, and can usually be rectified by either adding some subtle saturation to the bass (preferably using multiband saturation so you don't introduce issues with the sub frequencies) and/or by cleaning up competing frequencies in the low mids from your other elements. I would imagine that the industrial/orchestral percussion layers probably have a lot of low-frequency content that doesn't need to be there. Make sure you're low-cutting your reverbs too! Low freqs can build up there and dull the presence of your bass and kick. The muddiness is the only thing that I feel actively detracts from the listening experience - the rest feels like it can be chalked up to a stylistic decision, so I personally side with the YES votes that this does enough stuff right that the bass mixing shortcomings can be a "learn from this next time" rather than a dealbreaker on this piece! YES

Hey just so you know, this whole "they don't care about privacy anymore" is 100% fucking nonsense. Mozilla does not say that they can use your data however they want. This is also part of the terms of literally any site you upload anything to; the service needs to say "you grant us the right to do things with your work so that our service can actually function." For example: uploading a picture to Bluesky? Bluesky asserts the right to transform your work so that they can generate a thumbnail of the picture you uploaded. That's what these terms always mean. It's never about a service or a piece of software asserting ownership of your data. It's about you granting them a baseline level of permissions so that they can actually do the things you need them to do with the data you give them. This type of "company is stealing your work" scaremongering makes the rounds every few months in art communities and every single time someone has to clarify that companies are not stealing your work. Mozilla is not claiming ownership of your work. Mozilla is not throwing privacy to the winds. Instead of watching a clickbait video that perpetuates the same stupid misunderstandings, maybe go directly to the source and actually read what Mozilla has to say about it? Also, Brave is the second-to-last browser you should be using (behind Chrome). Brave has engaged with scummy shit such as: Replacing ads on pages with its own ads and taking a cut Putting their own affiliate links in search suggestions Installing a VPN on Windows without notifying users Numerous partnerships with cryptocurrency firms If you want a reliable browser that's not Firefox, there are plenty of options like Orion, Waterfox, Ungoogled Chromium, Arc, etc. Brave is not it. EDIT: But also just keep using Firefox.

First-time listener here as well! There’s no question that all 3 sources are represented in this remix. Opening (:00-:1:32~) arp is from Ghost Castle over the bass movement from Aquaduct, melody is from Title Screen. Dominant melody seems to change hands when the sections change (1:33, 2:08, 2:41, 3:12, 3:41) which helps keep all three sources tied together rather than getting into medley-itis. Outro blends the Aquaduct arp under the Ghost Castle melody; percs hint at the Ghost Castle ambient chip noises. Melodically, Knight ‘N’ Grail feels more dominant than Ninja Gaiden here, though structurally the arrangement and style are more Ninja Gaiden. I’m leaning more KnG here as far as dominant track, specifically Ghost Castle as its arp and melodic sequence feature most prominently across the runtime. The remix opens with the synth arp which has the focus for the first 30 seconds until the plucked synth comes in with the melody. Starts in 6/8 until around :14, when everything swaps to 7/4. 7/4 can be a tough meter to grok with a perceived lack of backbeat - the clap on 2 and 6 helps alleviate this, giving it a 2+3+2 feel. Title Screen melody over the top of the 7/4 around :30 was done by displacing the pick-up in the melody by a beat; love the ostinato line at the end, though the delay masks the playing more than it enhances. This also is where the panned-lead issue the other Js brought up begins. Counterpanning the delay from the pluck to the left channel is one way to address this, though centering the pluck and ping-ponging the delay right-to-left also works. Aqueduct shines through around 1:16; plucked synth takes the Aquaduct arp and a pad takes the two-note lead line movement. The percussion brings us to a 4/4 feel, building the claps to move to syncopated hits and a backbeat snare after 1:41. Energy picks up here thanks to the percussion and bass at 1:50. Section at 2:08 drops the bass for a round before coming back in around 2:23 an octave up. Filter synth has the Ghost Castle melody, the pluck enters with the bass for a countermelody. We get a fake-out drop at 2:38, swapping back to 7/4 but with a 2+2+3 feel this time. New warbly piano seems to have the melody here while the pluck takes a deserved breather. Bass maintains its upper octave work throughout. 3:12 seems to be the climax of the piece, pluck returns with the filter synth halfway through. When the outro arrives at 3:41, percussion and bass settle down to land the plane. This is a clever arrangement and a lot of attention has been paid to balancing out the sources. I am in the same boat with Hemo, Chimpa, and Proph, however - the panning on the leads is not helping this piece. Having a melodic phrase front and center gives the audience something to focus on, and especially when you've got a tricky odd-time rhythm underneath, it's all the more important. Bringing whichever instrument you want the audience to focus on back to the center while keeping the counter-melodic voices and FX to the sides gets this over the bar for me. NO (resubmit)

I honestly don't recall listening to this, I'm sorry but I just don't remember it. Ghost Castle's arp immediately cuts through and is recognizable. The melody from Ghost Castle that appears later on 0:45-1:00 is barely audible. During that part, I find that the right-panned synth pluck sound is overwhelming my focus and is distracting. I suspect this is for a few reasons: one being that it's panned (not hard right, but might as well be), and the second being it's frequency range is in that mid to high-mid range (~1.8k-2k kHz) that cuts through. I question if the synth pluck was supposed to be the melodic focus or not. It also helps when the melodic focus is center panned or close to center. And if you drive our ear to a melodic focus better, it would help alleviate the "wandering" sound that prophetik and Chimpazilla pointed out. No concerns an amount of source used here, adequate but not necessarily the smoothest listen with the time changes. There's a large lack of dynamic changes through the track that is making it tough to sit through. Yes, there are textural changes that help propel the piece forward with parts dropping out and being re-added or changed as it goes along. However, some softer or louder parts would help greatly. This by itself is not a dealbreaker and does not need to happen, but would improve it should you choose to revisit it. I feel like this one is close, but would need another go to pass. At a minimum I want to see a mix that let's us know what to focus on as a listener, and less distracting panning. NO

I didn't vote on the previous version so I'm coming to this fresh. From 2012-2025... that's a loooooong time to work on one arrangement! I am a huge fan of unique and varied time signatures. In this arrangement there are many changes in time sig which leaves me unable to find the beat consistently, leaving me feeling disoriented. There isn't a kick in some of the drum track, and in some sections there is only a top loop. At 1:33, a trap-like drum groove begins, with the kicks and claps each playing a busy and inconsistent pattern, and I am more rhythmically confused. None of this is "wrong" technically of course, but for me it means I cannot connect with this arrangement rhythmically at all, it's more of a random-sounding mishmash of instruments and drum sounds. Just trying to get a grip on the time signature changes, I hear 6/4 from 0:00-0:14, 7/4 from 0:14-1:00, 4/4 from 1:00-2:07 (at 1:33 there is one beat dropped, again at 2:07, giving one measure of 7/4 each time), 7/4 from 2:07-4:16 (outro). That is a lot of time signature change and most of it is not signaled at all, nor is it supported well by the drum groove. I agree with prophetik that lack of melodic/motivic content is hurting this arrangement, it makes the ideas harder to follow. Combined with the changing time signatures and busy/random drum track, the lack of a lead melody to focus on makes this even more nebulous for me. When there is a lead instrument such as at 0:30, it is hard-panned to the right. I'm not a fan of hard-panned leads, especially when there is not a countermelody or something to balance it on the opposite channel. The arrangement feels repetitive as it moves along, as the soundscape and instrumentation stay roughly the same throughout the piece. The drum sounds and writing stay the same during most of the arrangement. I don't feel like the trap kick, snare and clap fit well with the rest of the instrumentation which is more dreamy and whimsical. The drums are mixed very quietly with only the snare sounding audible enough to me. I really like the transition at 1:16 and the chords and arps that follow until 1:33. That section is beautiful and mysterious and feels cohesive to me. The delicate simple pattern in the background is keeping the rhythm for me and I can follow well in that section. The mixing isn't too bad overall, other than the kick, clap, percs and bass being too quiet in the mix, and again I'm not a fan of the hard-panning of the prominent plucky elements. There are many good ideas in this arrangement and solid synth choices, and I like the combination of these three themes, but the arrangement doesn't feel fully realized to me yet. I'd like to hear some more variation in the soundscape, even some unexpected ear candy or filter effects would help break it up. I'd like it if the drum sounds and writing made a bit more sense with the rest of the writing and instrumentation, and I'd really like to hear the drum groove support the time signatures rather than make them harder to follow. Some better transitions into and out of the various time signatures would help. The drum elements and bass should be brought up louder in the mix too. NO

opens with some wide synths. the kick rhythm is a little confusing as there's no beat here to hang your hat on, so it's not clear where the down beat is initially. the melody comes in at 0:24, and you're right, it is questionable. polytonality is a technique i recognize, but it really doesn't work here - it just sounds off-key outright. 0:49 is where the track seems to be more settled. there's a recap of the beginning with some low synth blurbs at 1:13, and those synths kind of step on each other since they're all in the same freq range. the beat picks up at 1:38 and this has a pretty neat vibe once it gets trucking. i'll admit i don't really hear the original in this section. 2:27's lead synth doesn't really make a ton of sense to the rest of what's going on around this section, and it's so highly embellished i definitely wouldn't have caught that it's a reference to the opening without calling it out. right after the main riff here, the track just continues hammering that one note for a pretty long time without significant adds. the melody comes back finally - again, pretty heavily ornamented - and then gets some weird notes around the 3:28 point before the track is suddenly done. so right off the bat - i think that the arrangement has legs. you've got some really creative concept work behind each part of the track (to be honest, probably too much - if a book is needed to understand a 4-minute piece, you're not doing enough as the arranger). there's a lot of padding that can be trimmed, and you need to work on transitions and the opening sections so that they're approachable and understandable. that said, the instrumentation isn't close to being there. if this is supposed to be using some retro sound chip, ok, but evaluating this as a pickup piece of music, the audio quality isn't up to par. there's buckets of free stuff that's better across the board out there, and separately there's a lot of mixology you can do to get better sounds out of the instruments you're choosing. i think that some serious time in the workshop discord would help a ton on this, and i think that some time spent finding ways to get better sound quality from all of your instruments is helpful too. you can do nostalgic with real synths and make it sound like a modern song still. NO

when this came up ~18 months ago, i voted on this with primary criticisms being the balancing, frequency overload in the low mids, and the arrangement feeling meandering due to lack of dynamics. opens with the ghost castle arp and a ton of really fun sfx work. some very industrial stuff is going on pretty far away, and the title screen's surprisingly chromatic melodic line comes in at 0:29. it's neat how well that works among a very spare background. the riff at 0:47 goes on for a long time and gets a little tiresome fairly quickly (that synth's delay effect was cool in small doses but is irritating with longer lines, especially since it's in one ear hard). percussion drops a bit going into the textural shift at 1:16 - there's some new drums here as well, which are pretty hard to hear (especially the kick). the aquaduct arpeggio with the delay effect is back in the right ear and it's way louder than everything else. it gets toned back later which is good. this continues to wander around with the aquaduct theme in the front for a while. i found this section to be lacking in direction still. there's a simplification at 2:07 alongside a time signature shift, and we're back to just the kitchen sink effects alongside the ghost castle theme for a bit. this section is neat with some of the counterpoint between the melody and counterpoint, but it feels underbaked both because of how thin it is here as compared to the drums chiming merrily along, as well as because it's the same synths as most of the rest of the song at roughly the same volume. it's hard to pull out that this is more or less important than other sections. i still find the transition at 2:37 confusing as well - it really sounds like the song suddenly ends, and there's no real prep or anything set up to come out of it either. the synth work immediately following that break featured a few shifts that i found made it easier to pick out what was the most important. the texture here also feels more fleshed out. i didn't like that the lead instruments for this section were mostly in the right ear instead of centered. there's some fun stutter effects on the leads later on also that i liked. i don't think my opinion on this has changed yet. i still don't like the weird cut at 2:37, i still think the middle third drags, and i still think the lack of dynamics is a negative throughout. i don't remember the panned lead instruments before, but i find that to be irritating as well (i found myself turning my head regularly to the right to 'hear' the lead better) - in fact i think the piece is over-panned throughout. from an arrangement standpoint, i think that you would be well-served by being more intentional bringing out the melodic lines you're trying to have us trace. you've got three sources, and tbh i think they work really well next to each other, but with that comes an imperative to be very intentional about how you emphasize and define what's where without losing the general song-form structure that you're using. the story here isn't as clear as it should be, and a big part of that is that the natural ebb and flow of a track isn't here due to there being little dynamics. i'm fine with a track that doesn't have a clear melody, but what is melody should be cohesive and readily apparent, and that's not happening here right now. i do think you've fixed the mix a lot - i remember before the bass being totally overwhelming above everything else, and then all your instruments were very tightly mashed against each other. i think the bass is probably a bit overcorrected, but overall i found the mix to be passable aside from the panning stuff. my concerns are mainly with the song form and arrangement elements. i have a lot to say here and it probably sounds like i hate it. i don't! i think there's some really neat concepts here, and a lot of overlapping back-and-forth stuff that reminds me a lot of old-school remixes that i loved. i just...i got done with the full listen a few times and just didn't remember a thing that happened in the middle of the piece outside of that panned synth being so annoying. that's not a good thing given the interconnected nature of this remix. the track doesn't go anywhere for an extended period of time. i actually think this is a fairly straightforward fix - just cutting some cruft out of the middle and emphasizing your melody more via non-delayed leads is probably enough. NO

as always, thank you for a clear source breakdown. opening starts with the title theme with a variety of transitional sweeps layered in. we start to get a beat at 0:36 and it picks up from there. this entire opening section feels pretty dull with the instrument choices - there's not much sparkle in any of them for them all being EP-like, and the kick is kind of blah - but we get some pop at 0:54 when the melody comes in. i love the time signature goofiness - the 7/8 section is absolutely the right choice there. 1:27 tones it back down again. there's a surprising amount of sustains that kind of just sit there (really expected to hear some blurbs to keep it moving through that), and the overall texture is still pretty dull outside of the sweeps. i felt like that past the 2 minute mark until about 2:10 when we started getting more percussive elements coming in and more brighter synths, and then again was in a happy place at 2:25 with the melodic material back in. this trucks through the melody of both tracks, and then it's done. the ending is a little abrupt but fits the style. this track does a fantastic job of saying "wait just a bit longer for the part you want", and then it's there and it's great, and then the track's done and i'm putting it on again. this is a great compositional technique - always repeat one less time rather than one extra time! - and when the track pops, it really pops. i think you do a great job taking a track that's kind of already in your style and making it unique and yours without copying what made it good originally. nice work. YES

VGMLs dGecko made a video version of Phils Game/Pop music similarities blog. Thanks a lot Gecko! It features comparison between classic video game tunes and pop music that may have influenced it. First Video features Mario, Sonic, Final Fantasy and Mega Man Songs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpaqjE3rq4Q

On Crunchyroll? I've got a few that might be appropriate(italicized descriptions paraphrased from Wikipedia): 1) Time of Eve In the not-too-distant future, androids have come into common usage. Rikuo Sakisaka, who has taken robots for granted for his entire life, one day discovers that Sammy, his home android, has been acting independently and coming and going on her own. He finds a strange phrase recorded in her activity log, "Are you enjoying the Time of Eve?". He, along with his friend Masakazu Masaki, trace Sammy's movements and finds an unusual cafe, "The Time of Eve". The series focuses on the strained relationships between man and machine and usually involves the characters interacting with various androids at home(where they are obedient and treated as slaves) and at "The Time of Eve", where they speak can freely and are treated as individuals. It's very story driven and light on action. It's very short, having only 6 episodes, and should be appropriate for all ages. 2) Eden of the East On Monday, November 22, 2010, ten missiles strike Japan, but cause no casualties. This apparent terrorist act is referred to as "Careless Monday" and is eventually forgotten by the populace. The series begins three months later when Saki Morimi, a senior at university, visits Washington D.C. as part of her graduation trip. When she gets into trouble, a mysterious young Japanese man appears completely naked except for a gun and a cell phone, and rescues her. The man has lost his memory, but learns that he has a bunch of fake passports at his apartment; he chooses the Japanese one which names him Akira Takizawa. While he and Saki return to Japan, they learn that a new missile has hit. Akira discovers that his phone carries ¥8.2 billion in digital money, and that he is part of a game, where twelve individuals are given ¥10 billion to "save" Japan in some way. Again, this one is somewhat story driven but has a lot more action/drama added to the mix. Mostly focuses on the main character trying to regain his memories, with themes regarding what is really "right". It has 11 episodes total(which cover most of the plot and are all available on Crunchyroll) and two movies(not available on Crunchyroll). Aside from a few moments(the censored nudity at the start) and the general violence, it's relatively safe. Aside from those, there's also Ouran High School Host Club or Love Hina, both of which are on Crunchyroll. Both are pretty good(and I'd consider Love Hina a classic and must-watch in most situations) but they're also more along romantic comedies, though they tend to either be extremely comedic or extremely dramatic, not both at once. Not sure how big of a niche there is for that genre in your locale. Love Hina might push the age requirement just a bit with its perverse moments, though it's almost always played out for comedy. It may not be suitable if you have a lot of younger members. Ouran has a greater focus on comedy and should be safe for most age groups.