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Artist Name: zykO Hello there. Back from the outer rim with offerings; it's been some time so let's cook. The source sorta fell randomly into my lap, the sort of serendipitous flurry of inspiration that spurred this whole video game remix thing for me all the way back in 1998; June Chikuma's Bomberman 93 Blossom Planet tune popped up on a YouTube playlist and I was running over myself to fire up the ol' furnace. I've been studying ancient Egyptian music for the past few years as an Egyptology grad student in Cairo and, as a part of my exploration into wonderful new things, I've also been studying the Arab musical tradition proper (leading to such experimentation as my most recent album, the Dune-inspired "Long Live the Fighters," for example). So stumbling upon Chikuma's masterclass in the form was well met. Around the same time, President Trump suggested that he intended to SimCity the Gaza Strip and "do a job with it." Political leanings aside, treating the Levante as if it were a map pack for Civ VI is bizarrely ambitious at best… even if most of us wish the world was more like a video game. In that sense, this tune is meant to serve as the spiritual successor to 2017's "The Long War," although the two songs deal with fundamentally different scenarios and contexts despite both describing geopolitical quagmires in the MENA region. Of course blowing shit up isn't exactly the solution for any of the Middle East's problems either and I did find it darkly ironic that the source tune comes from a Bomberman game. So I juxtaposed the whole thing by opening with a classic Egyptian folk tune by the famed late-19th century composer Sayed Darwish called "El Helwa Di" which some may recognize as Egypt's theme from Civ VI. It's a simple song about the sunrise and the good day to be had no matter one's circumstance. It's the sort of idealistic work song that is commonplace and deeply ingrained in the Egyptian cultural memory and a form that actually dates all the way back to the earliest days of dynastic Egypt. It's the sort of scene, I think, that reminds us that simpler, calmer times did and still do exist and they are the things worth fighting for when the bullies come knocking. The orchestration is fairly straightforward oriental fanfare: darabuka, daf, riq and shakers make up the percussion section while a ney and organ lead the way atop a bed of strings including an acoustic guitar. If I haven't lost you by the end, you'll catch the nod to Sonic 2's "Oil Ocean Zone" to close us out. Anyway, hope y'all enjoy. Dig it. Games & Sources Bomberman 93 just the first bit:

Artist Name: H36T Hey guys, another sub by me, this time with a tiiiiny tiny source of just about 14 seconds or so. Still, i wanted to challenge myself to take something that small and try and make it my own or at least create something expansive off of it. To be honest the arrangement wasn't that tough this time. A lot of it came in a few days. It was...everything else that pushed me and my skills to their limits. I think it is just outside of or the edge of my skill level to try and tackle a sound palate like this and make it sound good. Some aspects I'm quite confident with still much to learn and others....I still have a long ways to go haha. Also usually I come at composing and the like with a story first and then the music goes from there. Here it was the opposite. The story came along as I was writing and I might try more of that. I'm interested in how others approach writing in this regard! Welp, that's it for me. I hope you and others can enjoy Manoria Cathedral: Corruption! P.S. Them demons was wiln' in that cathedral Games & Sources

Artist Name: Michael Hudak I wanted this remix to be as if the listener were in the environment. It was an experiment in creating different lived-in spaces with a lot of different reverbs, some used as sends and others as inserts, often time layered into the same instrument or mix bus. Animal Well takes place in what's basically an enormous cave with dozens and dozens of rooms, so I thought it made sense to make it sound cave-like from a thematic standpoint (and even if it didn't, I guess that would be fine too, now that I think about it...doing a remix in this style from another type of game could be fun to try). Overall, it's similar to what I did on the GoldenEye mix I made, but here I took things a step further in terms of telling a story, because I tried to recreate moments from the Animal Well game itself, down to "defeating" the Manticore with fireworks, and inserting a lot of animal sounds (that aren't from the game - I recorded/made them) into the quieter rooms of the cave/well. The Flames/save room theme has some very close sounds (as do moments of the driving percussion earlier on) panned close to the ear, to kind of simulate moving through an area. I've used this kind of "technique" before on OCR, definitely on the Tiberian Sun mix, and a few others as well. I do 95% of my arranging and mixing with over-ear headphones; maybe my obsession with near and far sounds wouldn't be what it is if I had my old studio monitors and mixed in a treated room. Source usage: 0:26 - 1:43 and 1:54 - 2:19 in remix is from MANTICORE. The quieter middle sections use the same riff and chord progression, but in half-time. 2:26 - 3:00 in remix is from FLAMES. Thanks for listening, as always. P.S. I think there is an official soundtrack release coming out soon for Animal Well, so maybe a more accurate track-listing will become available then. Games & Sources The game is Animal Well, which I played on Switch. There actually isn't an official OST track list that I could find online, so I'm going off of what YouTube is calling the two tracks I remixed here: MANTICORE (essentially the final boss music) and FLAMES (essentially the rest area/save music).

Artist Name: Audio Mocha, AnimeVivi, EndlessRepeat For a while, I had Snake Eater in my head but as a funky kind of tune. I've been more active on TikTok the past few months with performing little snippets of game music and I thought to finally do Snake Eater. I whipped up a backing track for it in Band In A Box and put out a little video, not thinking much about it. Little did I expect that it ended up being my biggest video ever by a massive shot and ended up getting tons of requests to make a full version, which was something I was more than happy to do since I absolutely love Metal Gear Solid 3! The one funny part that I didn't expect but then came to realize is how much people would associate my take on Snake Eater with Persona 5. Even though I love Persona, I had never made the connection with my version of Snake Eater so when I recorded it, all I thought was "this is what MGS3 would sound like if it was a Blaxploitation movie like Shaft". When everyone online started drawing parallels to Persona, I started to see it and then started getting images in my head of a young Solid Snake infiltrating Big Boss' Palace and this being the music that played in the dungeon. These visions are what finally got me to realize the perfect title for this remix, since before, my project name for it was just Funky Snake Eater so in a huge way, the community helped me get a clearer vision of my track. With the pressure of releasing something soon and with a few VGM gigs coming, particularly VGMCon 2025, I thought to myself "I've never done a live song release before, let's try that out". It especially helped that since I've gotten into the habit of running my live VGM shows out of my laptop and lightly managing the sound from there so every performance actually ends up recorded anyway. What made it specially fun is that I'd be performing with two friends of mine, AnimeVivi and EndlessRepeat so I fleshed out a more comprehensive arrangement of Snake Eater to include more of the calls and responses from the original song for them to perform with me. We had a great time during the gig and despite a few hiccups, I ended up with a pretty good set of both audio stems and MIDI play data to work with. After doing a bit of cleanup and feedback from GameGrooves (since by pure luck, they were having the Summer Of Sony for 2025 and Snake Eater was eligible for it), I finally have our recording of our live performance of The Snake Eater's Palace, Outer Heaven! Hope you enjoy! Games & Sources Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - Norihiko Hibino

Artist Name: TheManPF Additional artists: Zach Chapman Randomly felt like submitting something today I originally submitted this to Dwelling of Duels back in November for David Wise month, I wasn't planning on submitting cuz I was out of ideas, and a week before deadline the inspiration hit to make a pop punk banger because I felt like it. Krook's March is my favorite song from one of my favorite soundtracks from one of my favorite games, but if you know me at all, I usually don't like making straight covers, it's just not interesting or fulfilling to me, I have to slap some weird shit on it because I can't help myself, so instead of amplifying the darkness and drama of the original, I went full 180° and turned this into a happy hopeful pop punk anthem, I don't have any particular influences for it but I was listening to a bunch of Blink-182 and Good Charlotte at the time, so that might have done it. I gave Zach a loose concept for the lyrics and he wrote the words over a weekend, the point is that this song plays in "Toxic Tower", a very infamous level, since I took the song in the opposite direction, I figured I would do that with the lyrics as well, this is about detoxifying, cutting out toxic relationships, and practicing self care, the first half is a cliche story about sticking together through hard times, but the second half is about recognizing the red flags and letting go of those relationships that hurt you for your own sake. I arranged this in a rush in like 3 days, had the lyrics done during the weekend, and recorded/mixed it in the remaining 2 days before deadline, I originally was gonna have another person sing it because I'm not great with pop, but naturally couldn't find a singer due to the tight deadline. I'll probably update it at some point, but for now, I think this is good enough. This placed 20th out of 34 tracks, I guess my voice is a little bit divisive, whoops, Wise gave it a like on Bluesky though, I don't know if he actually listened to it, but the acknowledgement is nice Lyrics: I've climbed so long, so high Muscles burned inside Ripped myself apart on this odyssey If I could just Rise above the hate, I could Pull us from this pool of toxicity Left of us We'll do this One last time This could be so different All those times we said the same Promised to not leave you there Let's do this together Through the pain I'll keep my word Keep your heart (This is all I'm worth) Despite my own (Never mind the hurt) Climbed so long, I don't Know what else is left here When you were in my arms When was I submerged in this Pain and blame you flow with Here and now won't stand for more Stop this poison in my soul I deserve so much more For myself or no one at all For my soul I'll break my word Break your heart (Set myself free) For my own (Show love to me) Games & Sources Game: Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest Songs arranged: Krook's March (https://youtu.be/lw7Dv00zaao) Original composer: David Wise System: SNES Year: 1995

Artist Name: Gaspode Recently I played the little open-world-indie-game »A Short Hike« and immediately fell in love with its great soundtrack. The song I remixed is full of great little uplifting melodies. I tried to incorporate most of them, but I changed their order or used them as background elements. I can provide a source-breakdown if you want, but maybe you want to explore my interpretation for yourself beforehand. ;o) Games & Sources Game: A Short Hike Track: See You At The Top Composed by: Mark Sparling