Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

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

Artist Name: Treyt The source, We've Got a Ship, is easily my favorite track from anything ever. For those that remember, this source was my first submitted remix, and my first and only NO (though Micro Mages definitely should've been a no.) I would love to argue this track is 100% source, and I think I will. Heavily influenced by Bossfight (I think I'm going to experiment with more stuff closer to his actual style in the future), and my fun but crappy older stuff from the 2010's. Hope it makes your day suck less! Uses voice clips from: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Star Trek Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Games & Sources Game: Golden Sun: The Lost Age Track: 21 - We've Got A Ship

Original Decision Artist Name: Worlder I really wish the Audio File upload would work for me Dx I am again submitting this Electronic/Rock remix of Team Rocket Hideout Theme from Pokemon Red. It has of course, been changed a lot, although it is not a total rehaul of the instrumentation or anything like that. As mentioned in the original upload, this was heavily breakbeat influenced and also some techno/electronic music composition techni9ues have been used as well. Building intensity on the stacatto-played guitar part that references the main melody of the original theme (0:00-0:20) was the key idea here. Way back when originally writing this there were ideas for more parts, but the resulting structure at 4 minutes length seems solid to me and so I did not want to add more parts to what I already had as I felt it would just waste time or be messy. The timbre of the synth that comes in at 3:23 is also meant to vaguely reference walking around with a poisoned Pokemon, which you could expect to happen in the game area that this tune plays. - - - This is a resubmission, and so I must thank the OCRemix staff for the feedback on my earlier upload of this track. It can't be overstated how helpful and yet succinct the feedback was. There was some clean advice, and some of it was so obvious that I can't say what I was thinking. I think there are some good use of pans in this song, but retroactively I am unable to explain why the "solo guitar" section was completely panned. It should be easy to avoid such mistakes in future submissions. There were other pans that I brought in to be less wide as well. Apart from changes that directly address Pan/Dryness/Kick Drum, some changes to guitar tone and reverb have come with decisions to welcome a bit of difference in feel. Most notably, the section from 0:38-0:58 previously was where the energy kicked in more but still did not have a full sound. I feel now that the sound is full, and now feels like it is a "restrained" - for lack of a better word - until the next section. The guitar is more clear yet it is also more distant from the listener, so it's a pretty different texture here. If anyone who saw the original was wondering why this resubmission took so long - I lost all my MIDIs and had to rebuild the library. It was only a tiny bit painful. Anyway, the arrangement breakdown here should cover what needs to be said. Arrangement Breakdown: (Referring to timestamps in the video uploaded above) 0:00-0:20 - Stacatto type version of the opening melody in th source tune with a kind of "Spy Movie" type thing going on in the bass. 0:20-0:38 - To me what is kind of old school techno technique, repeating a small portion of the melody as a build up. 0:38-0:58 - End of the "intro" - this is referencing the same part of the original theme, but the music has become more filled in. 0:58-1:14 - This is a direct reference to the section of the original theme that plays 0:23-0:28 in. Instead of playing the turnaround that normally ends the progression each repeat, it's been combined with notes referencing the opening melody. 1:14-1:17 - This is 0:31 to 0:35 of the original theme. 1:17-1:43 - Turns 0:35 to 0:42 from the original theme into a repeating groove. Dynamics are carried by the drums here, in fact alternations in the drum patterns would be the primary tool to keep dynamics fresh throughout the song. 1:43-1:56 - This is 0:31 to 0:35 of the original theme. 1:56-2:32 - Fulfills the same dynamic as the section from 0:42 to 0:57 of the original theme without directly referencing it. It is sparse in the same way and precedes the song building up its intensity again. My remix is supposed feature the same elements of the original themes structure while also utilizing building grooves so that you get a chance to dance, and this is fulfilled primarily in these ending sections 2:32-2:38 - This melody is the bass line that the original theme instates from 0:42 to 0:50. Continuing until 3:03, where a synth lead line is introduced, which is referencing the bass line of the source tunes opening melody (or at the end theme, before it repeats, it can be heard on its own) These instruments work together and continue to build until 3:35 3:35-4:17 Reprise of the stacatto-ified opening melody of the original theme. Tasty 7th chord, end. Thanks for listening Games & Sources Team Rocket Hideout theme from Pokemon Red Version A biting aggressive track from the original Pokemon games with some dynamic softer sections. Arrangement Breakdown: (Link to Original theme for timestamps)

Like we wouldn't have them... :-D https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kbxL0oM6xsneNMq5fwCkAqKWgI93IIz5/view?usp=sharing

Artist Name: Michael Hudak October 26th of this year will be 25 years since Majora’s Mask was released in the US, and I wanted to make something for that milestone. Astral Observatory has a beautiful chord progression that I figured could lend itself well to the post-rock/ambient/whatever experimentation I’ve been doing recently. A major influence here was the album “The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid” (which might be a good alternate title for this remix...) by Stars of the Lid. There are two halves that juxtapose each other in intensity and mood. I don't think one side would work without the other with how I mixed and arranged them. I worked to get Pt.1 to sound analog and not synth pad-y; there are pianos, trumpets, and strings run through several reverbs (Reason’s RV7000, Synapse’s DR-1, Valhalla Shimmer), with external LFOs slowly altering settings like diffusion rate and pre-delay time. I took only the wet signals and blended them and then processed them further. I needed the chords to do the carrying while I focused on timbre and texture. Pt. 2 is a second movement of sorts, and has the piano playing (and altering) the melody. The AO chords are played throughout the entire song, albeit very slowly, aside from a brief detour from 1:10 to 1:22, and then from 6:40 to the end. Long fade-out but I think it fits the tempo. Listening again, maybe I could’ve made this even slower… Hopefully the chord progression is noticeable enough to pass, but I will leave that up to the judges of course. Games & Sources The source is "Astral Observatory" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0krxH0dWhU by Koji Kondo. You may know of him.

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