Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Artist Name: The Vodoú Queen Finally, a Zelda arrangement in my grasp! MWAHAHAHA!!! Ahem, *evil C H A O S-filled cackles* aside, welcome to my take on Dragon Roost Island! Done for Pixel Mixers' upcoming Wind Waker: Songs of the Great Sea album, it was an absolute blast, pleasure, and I feel very lucky and grateful to have been able to snag the opportunity at such a popular track. It's definitely one of my top 10 favorite in the entire Zelda franchise / library, starting all the way from Gen 1 - the NES, and I certainly did not hesitate to put my all forth on this one. I still remember to this day the wondrous joy I got out of encroaching upon the land of Dragon Roost for the first time as a teen playing Wind Waker on release (damn, I feel old, lol.) Those castanets...that Spanish flamenco guitar, that Calypso-island, con brio beat. For years and to this day, no matter the medium, the context, or the remix this track has undergone, it still fills me with that excited whimsy and odd...happy-sensation of FINALLY finding land after aimlessly sailing across the vast Great Ocean for hours on end, and getting to explore! I don't know why this song in particular hit me like it did (most of the WW OST did, TBH, with how flavorful, colorful, rich and full of expression all the tracks were), but I seriously got hooked when--about 9 years after Wind Waker's release--I stumbled onto an outstanding EDM artist called Ephixa, who did a couple of dubstep Zelda remixes , and those songs were a BIG influence and impetus on me wanting to tackle some of the same iconic Zelda tracks, years later. I'm not entirely sure HOW to describe the process and making of this remix, as it all kinda came through in a blur; (I've been on an incredibly weird high and tizzy with a veritable hill of VG remixes for albums to conquer, lately, and with all that comes a lot of emotional peaks and valleys and moments of doubt and procrastination and banging my head against the proverbial wall to "make it before I break it [me]"...so. . . it's kinda hard ATM to string a coherent thought on that said process, when it's a lot more about feeling it sometimes than strategic planning--even though every mix I do has a fair share of plotting-things-out, as well.) As an old, not-born-in, but-raised-in Floridian resident myself, it's like being in a hurricane on the beach-front (and it's a WILD experience, let me tell you!) Not being fully musically-trained in the theoretical sense makes...writing it all down, laced in the jargon and the gear and the FX and the programming - for those music science nerd-out-types - all the more difficult and a struggle, haha. But, the major thing I was assured of in making this remix was that I wanted to strengthen my EDM-game. The only clear voice in my head the whole time was: "make your mark on this, sweetheart ♥." And I hope I did, as I do with all my mixes to-date. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the wide variety of artist takes on DRI, both on here in OCR, and in the wider realms on Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, etc. I know most of them seem to take the form of Orchestral / Acoustic, or EDM, but I tried my best to make this one a unique and different spin. Is it Jungle? Maybe a lil', mostly Drum n' Bass-centric. . . Is it Tropical House? Well, it's got a very Polynesian-infused sauce, with various garnishes and spices borrowed from House, Dubstep and Trance. . . I don't know...but I'm sure Mr. Hemo or Mr. Liontamer will label this one another host to the 'experimental'... ;) Once again, I don't know what to call my work, or what to label it as, or how to espouse on 'how I did it all' with the fancy words and theory techniques and the music sheets, but its roots run deep, and I hope people listening to it find it to be that same, equal, captivating and explorative feel (and a banger), with that same level of wonder and awe I felt back in 2003 upon reaching the shores of the place that is known as Dragon Roost Island. :) Games & Sources THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE WIND WAKER OST; Disc 1, Track 38 - Dragon Roost Island; Artist(s): Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi and Koji Kondo; Release Date: 2003; Label: Scitron Digital Content & Nintendo

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Artist Name: Unknown Pseudoartist feat. jnWake, minusworld, Pixels & Paradiddles BASIC INFO Game: Tales of Phantasia Composer(s): Motoi Sakuraba, Shinji Tamura, Ryota Furuya Link to the original source version: Not very relevant, but here's also a link to a piece of game footage showing the voice clip (from the PSX port) used in the end of my arrangement (and the title). Just though that nonsense was too funny lol https://unknownpseudoartist.com/tmp/imgonnadousedhaos.mp4 CREDITS: jnWake: lead keys minusworld: guitars and mixing paradiddlesjosh: drums pixelseph: bass Unknown Pseudoartist: arrangement, base programming, ideas, etc (aka everything else lol) ---- STORY / BORING DETAILED NOTES: Well, here we are again, 1 year or so after my first attempt of submission getting rejected. And yeah, not gonna lie: the main reason why I now decided to try with this one is because it's a funny coincidence that 3 artists involved happens to be recently joining the OCR Judges team. Not that this would have any impact on its (dis)approval, but it was just too funny not to try. This particular one is not as important (in a personal/emotional level) as the one I submitted the first time, tho, plus I got help on the mix from someone else, so it won't affect that hard if this gets rejected again. I think it is good enough, but of course I though the same about the other one yet... Anyways, for what is worth... this track was that typical scenario of: "this source is sooo cool... I can't understand why no one else arranged/covered/remixed/whatever it before! so I'll just try something myself!". I had some ideas on my head for very long for a mostly djent style arrangement, full of crunchy guitars and virtuosistic synths and a very dark atmosphere. Oh, and, believe it or not, but for the intro the initial idea was to be more like a weird mix of "surf rock" and some goth/dark vibe before moving to metal. I don't think that worked as expected, but for the rest... I think all went really well and just as expected. Also as a curious fact, the basic arrangement was done sometime in mid/late 2022 as a silly shitpost alt track for Dwelling of Duels. It's hard to explain for anyone not familiar with my past on music, but let's say it had a decent but 100% MIDI base and leads were performed by a... let's say unusual instrument lol. The basic cool ideas were already there, tho, and I was personally proud of my work even though it hadn't a proper shape. So the real action started sometime around mid/late 2024. I had a bunch of diverse Tales of Phantasia arrangements, both new and old and not-so-new ones. Tales of Phantasia is a game I simply LOVE dearly and it has one of the best VGM soundtracks ever made, in my opinion also Sakuraba's greatest work ever. And it always saddened me a bit how "Fighting of the Spirit" is pretty much the only source that gets enough love by VGM artists all around the world, while the rest of the soundtrack gets largely ignored despite so full of cool stuff too. And yeah, I know of OCR's own "Summoning of Spirits" and that's also why I appreciate Kyle's work organizing that album (also, Sixto's version of "Second Act" is still among my all-time favorite Tales of Phantasia covers). So my plan was to reunite all these arrangements, improving the old to sound as best as I could do, recruiting real instrument performers for the arrangements that were still 100% programmed, etc and release everything as a full album, and eventually also upload videos for each individual track. I'm still pending more than half of the videos, but the actual album was already released at December 16th and it's all free in Bandcamp: https://unknownpseudoartist.bandcamp.com/album/songs-of-phantasia-a-metal-tribute-to-tales-of-phantasia When it was the time to go more serious with this particular track I'm submitting to OCR now, I had pretty clear the team I wanted for it. jnWake and minusworld are frequently teaming and collaborating for each other's works and both fits incredibly well on the style and ideas. Couldn't think of more proper keyboardist and guitarist, seriously. I also talked with Seph about joining as a bassist because his bass tone is just perfect for what is mostly a low-tuned, deep and heavy as heck track. Josh was the latest incorporation and it was somewhat close to the album's release, but it marked a huge difference for better. Before that, the arrangement had my own keydrummed improvisations that were sloppy as heck. Josh took the base and elevated the whole track to the infinitely superior level with his drumming work. So that's how both recurrent teams joined together in an arrangement initially made by a pseudoartist lol. And now the result is what you see (or rather hear). That kind of "cover I wanted to hear for long but nobody else did, so just had to start it myself". The original source is prog and complex as heck, and it was a pain to deal with, especially because the unusual time signature, and I'd expect performers to have a real pain with it also because the fast, proggy leads and rhythms and stuff. But of course, counting with such talented artists, one can only expect a cool result of this. I had a hard time trying to get the mix to sound decent enough, tho... so that's when minusworld offered to help. In just a short time he already got a mix that sounds a lot better than what I struggled so hard for weeks. The original source is the "penultimate boss theme". You know, that typical boss theme for the main antagonist when they are not in their actual final form yet. It's not uncommon for such penultimate boss battle themes to be arguably more interesting than the actual final battle. Final Fantasy V is a good example of that, and although this might sound like a controversial opinion, I think the same about Final Fantasy VII despite so many people loving One Winged Angel so much. There's a very annoying moment that happens often in such battles against "the bad guy", Dhaos. And it's when he goes past your main protagonist (Cless) and starts attacking the rest of your party. That's a moment when you feel like "ok, now i'm gone". He'll throw his signature laser and your whole party might be dead in a matter of few seconds. This frustration and desperate moment is exactly what I wanted to express throughout the music mood around 2:04 - 2:20. After the blast beats and chaotic stuff, at 2:36 you are practically dead. But still, at 2:42, your mate Chester brings the comic role in an unexpected role pretending to still beat Dhaos (the japanese voice acting says: "I'm gonna douse Dhaos!". That's taken from the conversations in the skits in the PSX port and I just though that nonsensical sentence was too funny to use as a title and outro). You can think of this last thing like Vegeta in the last battle against Majin Buu in Dragon Ball Z, still bratting about going to kill him even though he's that weak and wounded. Then finishing the track with a ba-dum-tss because the bad joke. I know this kind of irrelevant shitpost details and references are not everyone's cup of tea but that being such a short part I wouldn't expect to hurt anyone. Other relevant timestamps to talk about... while the arrangement is mostly kinda conservative regarding the notes (not the structure, tho, which is pretty differently organized), there's a few original stuff after 1:35, first on guitars (mostly divebomdbs and whammy stuff) and later (1:50) on synths. The later was my own improvisations on keyboard, although obvious jnWake played all the other synths (the really complicated ones) by his own. Then there's the intro, initially planned as some kind of "dark surf rock" or "post punk" vibe or whatever, but accidentally coming to a somewhat different direction but still dark as heck, just like how I like it. I'm not that happy with the backing strings + choir there, but I think in general all fits the mood well. The next section, between 0:32 - 1:02 is the most conservative but still trying to keep it interesting (ie: doubling the leads the second time). More of the same with the later couple of sections. It's not my most liberal arrangement ever, but I think it goes past the usually demanded "ammount of originality" in OCR. Even more so since it's arranged in a style that is not exactly like the original source, the structure is generally different enough and there's still place for some totally original ideas here and there. And so far probably the only existent remix of this source (unless we count Sakuraba's live band medleys, which he used at least once in his shows). Anyways, that's all, I guess. Whether this gets finally approval or not, I hope you like. For any fellow fans of this fantastic game and its wonderful soundtrack, and without any pretension to spam my work, I'd totally recommend checking my album, Songs of Phantasia. It's full of cool stuff beyond the iconic "Fighting of the Spirit" (great track but so much of good stuff in the rest of the OST too!), and while mostly relying on metal as a base there's plenty of variety and interesting ideas there. My mixing skills still needs a lot to improve but I think all sounds overall good and totally listenable. Okay, cutting the wall of text, now for real! Games & Sources Game: Tales of Phantasia Original source title: Conclusion Link to the original source version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEnu4hlQPIc

Artist Name: Matt's Keys This remix is inspired by synthwave and rock music styles. I tried to remain faithful to the source material while adding some new elements, including a keyboard solo and additional guitar melodies. Games & Sources Source tune: "Under the Stars" from Final Fantasy Tactics. Original soundtrack composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata. YouTube link:

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Artist Name: 8055 LEVEL Since I was a kid, I always wanted to hear a more aggressive dance version of the music from the encounter with Benny and Clyde in River City Ransom. That music always got me pumped up and made me want to shake my ass. I tried to lean into that feeling when writing $3.50 x 2... I avoided using too many SFX from the game in my remix, or doing a whole lot of post-production to tweak effects, with the exception of the coin sounds at the end. Otherwise, this was all produced on my Yahama RM1x. Hope you like it! Games & Sources River City Ransom on NES.

I’ve only listened to the new version with the “proper” ending. Loved it, loved it! Was jamming to this in my car and appreciating the textural twists and turns here. Nice work varying up the tone of the guitar and the drum patterns to keep things from getting stale. Wonderful sonic expansion of the source. Dense and intense, this is strong stuff, PANJ! Definitely send along some more, we’d love to see it! :-) A BIG welcome aboard! \m/ YES EDIT (9/12): Not so fast! :-D SInce I judged this one in the car, I didn't hear the fuzziness of some of the instruments or see the spectrum analyzer image of this being hard limited like many A.I. tracks are. The drums are in the uncanny valley and seem to be the most A.I.-like aspect of this, where none of the cymbals in particular sound clean, everything has a fuzzyness to it, but it stands out more when there are quieter, more isolated parts of the track. Plugging this into an A.I. detection tool says it's likely generated AI, and the user's music on YouTube and Suno indicates the same. A lot like the slew of genAI city pop arranged VGM, there's some catchy stuff in there, so it's a shame it's not human-made. AFter seeing their genAI music on their YouTube, I asked the artist about this track and got no response, though I know they saw my question. :-P I don't consider AI-generated music to be arranged by the submitter, so to me it always fails OCR's ownership test. We need to add big honking text on the submission form itself saying we don't accept A.I.-created music. Human-made (i.e. human-sequenced and/or human-performed) music, please. NO

Mixing-wise, this could be adjusted so that there are more obvious leads; sometimes, there were areas where two elements were working in tandem, but neither felt like they were leading the way, which made the track feel less focused than it should have. That said, this was still well-produced with a ton of heft, and I really enjoyed how well Mike personalized his sound compared to Mendelson’s already awesome original. It was a treat as the track went along hearing how Mike interpreted so many distinct sections of the source. Good stuff! :-) YES

I’m with it, although the beat pattern quickly plodded, so I would have loved more variety with that part of the writing. Not as fluid and developed as many of Wake past works, but that’s a much higher bar than OCR’s; otherwise, this was solid, and a nice squeezing of juice out of such a quick cue. :-) YES

Grandiose is the word. :-) Epic work, bros! YES

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Just following up on this, the song was only referenced for 2 bars sung by the Pikmin in Pikmin 2 as an Easter egg, but the full song was used verbatim as a stage theme for SSBB, so we'll actually associate this with Brawl. :-)

Diggin' the piano at 2:36, and then we get bwomp chicka sweetness along with added string synths at 2:44; fun little detour before going back to rocking out. Hitting the melody with the synth lead for the finish was the perfect nostalgia cap on this one. Just a fun treatment throughout with Jabo and Ivan adding tons of textural depth, and all the requisite Wake synth spices that bring forth life. :-D YES

Artist Name: Tony Dickinson, Joe Newman, Eli Bishop, Dom Palombi Hello OCR, it has been quite a while since I have submitted something to the website, but recently I did a Fire Emblem arrangement that I thought would fit! Most of the time I do heavy metal remixes but every so often I get a jazz or funk itch that I need to scratch. It recently won the GMRA 2025 "Best Jazz" remix which I wasn't expecting, but am very grateful for, especially considering the caliber of musicians that tend to be in that category. I became a massive Fire Emblem fan after playing Three Houses. The soundtrack on that game still blows my mind when I listen to it. So when Fire Emblem: Engage came out years later I was anticipating another fully banger soundtrack. Aaaaaaand... nope. It did not hit nearly to the same degree as Three Houses did. Don't get me wrong, Engage has plenty of really good tracks, but they're a little more hidden, and mostly only occur when it switches from the tamer "planning" version to the "attack" version, for like 6 seconds at best. One more thing I should probably mention about the title: One of the biggest criticisms of "Engage" was its character design and somewhat childish writing, at least compared to the more adult war themes of Three Houses. A lot of people weren't super fond of the extremely brightly colored character designs and thought they all looked like Vtuber designs. And of course "Enrage" being the feeling that it made people feel expecting a Three Houses follow up and receiving some Saturday morning anime instead. But, the sources "Bright Sandstorm" and "Bright, Bold Sandstorm" kinda came out of nowhere in the middle of the game and captured me as soon as I heard them. No surprise, it is written by one of the three incredible composers who put together the Three Houses soundtrack. The sense of harmony and melody blew me away with all of its cheesy Japanese glory. This arrangement was also a fun exercise in trying to start with an incredibly small ensemble, and gradually add more and more instruments as the song goes on. I.e. starting with a string quartet and rhythm section and then by the end it becomes an entire orchestra with jazz brass. For the nerds, I wrote the string arrangement with LA Scoring Strings which has multiple sizes of string ensembles, so as the song went on I would keep increasing the size, like Violin 1 would go from 3 violins, to 6, to 9, to finally 12. But I didn't use just string samples, Eli Bishop recorded the solo violins as well as layering many passes of violin 1, violin 2 and viola to make the strings sound more realistic, so mostly what we hear is Eli's fingers. Definitely took the song to the next level. The saxophones were recorded by Joe Newman and drums by Dom Palombi. A lot of talent in this group of musicians and I was super stoked to have them be a part of it! (P.S. I talked to Larry at VGMCon and I'm wanting to phase out "Prince uf Darkness" in favor of just using my regular name) Games & Sources Game: Fire Emblem: Engage Song: Bright, Bold Sandstorm (there are four versions of this song in the soundtrack, I drew from all of them)

Artist Name: RHYTH_TWISTED Sonic The Hedgehog and Jet Set Radio's OSTs are huge influences on how I make music, so I hope that shines through with this! Games & Sources Mario Kart 7 Song: Wario Shipyard / Wario's Galleon Composers: Kenta Nagata & Satomi Terui Year: 2011

Artist Name: Gaspode Last year I played this nice indiegame called »Crypt Custodian«, about a cat with a broom as a weapon, which has to clean up the afterlife. One important part of the game is its charming soundtrack, which I immediately fell in love with. The original pieces are rather slow and mallow, but my version developed over time to something much faster and energetic. Source Breakdown 00:13 – 00:38, 25 sec., Morning Haze (00:52 – 01:17, 25 sec., Based on Morning Haze 01:18 – 01:43, 25 sec., Morning Haze (0:16) 01:43 – 02:08, 25 sec., Sculptors Peak (0:27) 02:08 – 02:32, 24 sec., Morning Haze 03:13 – 04:04, 51 sec., Sculptors Peak 04:10 – 04:36, 26 sec., Morning Haze 00:00 – 04:50, 290 sec., Whole remix 25 + 25 + 25 + 24 + 51 + 26 = 176 sec. => 60,7 % Games & Sources Crypt Custodian – Morning Haze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S5L8DkB4Ms Original Score by Eric Thompson Crypt Custodian – Sculptors Peak (0:27) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_FNcozxM5Q Original Score by Eric Thompson

Artist Name: Gaspode I always wanted to remix the classic title theme from »Metroid« in all its glory. As with many of my remixes I incorporated another theme to keep things interesting, and after i realized that the title screen from »Metroid« shows a planet surface, i chose the main melody from the »Tallon Overworld«-theme from »Metroid Prime«, because thats another planet-overworld-theme. And it fitted the style very well. Games & Sources Metroid – Title Theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-U3sVX2G3w Original Score by Hirokazu Tanaka Metroid Prime – Tallon Overworld Depths (1:12) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgwGYmAH0BA Original Score by Kenji Yamamoto and Kouichi Kyuma

Artist Name: Eltwish This whole track came about all because of the silly title. I've long been a fan of the Japanese jazz-rock trio Fox Capture Plan. Some five or so years ago it happened to occur to me that Star Fox Capture Plan would be a great name for Star Fox music arranged in the style of a Fox Capture Plan tune. This year I decided I still really liked the idea and it was time to finally try it. 疾走する閃光 and Acceleration are a couple songs from FCP that might give a good sense of what I was going for. It was tricky to arrange a characteristically melodic, narratively unfolding Kondo piece in their style, which tends to feature repeated arpeggio-centric grooves and somewhat minimal melodic material. I started with a simple reharmonization of the main theme from the credits (comes in at 0:27 in the linked source video), and used that harmony as the basis for some arpeggiated riffing and a solo section. Of course, I soon realized that using a reharm as the main structural element meant I often didn't really have any of the source present, so in addition to the sections where the right hand quotes the theme, I added a couple sections drawing on the source more explicitly. The first is the more mellow synth melody at 0:54, which echoes the light piccolo-lead part at 0:41 in the source. The other is the spacey section at 1:56, where the bass comes in playing the oboe (?) theme from source 1:25. Much like the source, this then drifts into a more downtempo open section which gradually builds back into the theme restatement and energetic conclusion, in part by way of the main Star Fox theme (used in the credits at 2:53). So the whole arrangement roughly follows the structure of the original, if not very transparently. I've wanted to make something for OC Remix since I first found the site over 20 years ago. I took a stab at it every few years since then, but only in the last year or so have I started focusing more seriously on music and finally put together something I feel good about submitting. Whatever the result, I'm sure it won't be my last submission. I'd like to extend my gratitutde to 744 and Josh Winiberg, who gave me feedback on a draft on the Discord channel. This project was a big challenge for me in terms of drum programming and mixing, both areas where I've felt I have little clue what I'm doing. Their encouragement convinced me to submit my work, and their mixing advice was indispensable for getting this to sound more like FCP and less like the piano was underwater. Games & Sources The material for this remix comes from the ending credits theme from Star Fox 64. The intro fanfare is based on "All Clear", the completion theme of the last level, which in-game leads right into the credits. Both were composed by Koji Kondo.

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Sounds like we need listening parties for both soundtracks... :-)

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