Liontamer

I hear what's up with the arrangement, but still think it's melodically not interpretive enough, plus the overall execution and production's still too lacking. Not to sound snide, but I don't see how this is even a close call, let alone an easy one in its current state. The concept is good, but the polish isn't there.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Track 8 ("Bubble Man Stage") Not much to add to what the others covered. The melodic arrangement was too straight forward, plus the percussion writing during the verses was generally plodding and uncreative. The rinse-and-repeats from 1:04-1:55 and 2:09-2:49 put the nail in the coffin. Extremely weak compared to your other submissions, Fru. While most of them have been rejected, there's clearly a lot less effort here in terms of developing anything substantial. NO

Back in the day, if I'm guessing correctly, djpretzel just truncated the names like that to keep the filenames shorter. At that point, I'm sure some people did it themselves occasionally. Nowadays we don't do that on the actual display names of the mixes anymore, even though some of the filenames are done that way.

Yeah, that's currently one of the database limitations: when someone does a mix across several games with different composers, we can only assign one game, which is why you only see Robyn Miller credited. Definitely agreed with Mazedude and shadowolf on some of the various criticisms here. The second half of the arrangement definitely felt stronger than the first in terms of the execution, but I loved the overall package, as I mentioned in my judging decision. I think it goes to show what leeway is there on the arrangement side when things are really clicking well on that level, even if the sounds aren't so hot. In other words, the opposite of Compyfox's "Hollywood sounds" theory.

Shit, I never commented on this! One of my favorite memories of my VG Frequency radio show was actually not on the show, but getting dropped off by The Lady at WMRE one night and playing this song for her while we drove down. The fact that it was nighttime wasn't any sort of cosmic coincidence, but that was welcome too. Paige enjoyed it, one of the few tracks around OCR that she outright was feeling as she learned more directly about my hobby in VGM. This was one of the first tracks that really illustrated to her how something seemingly inaccessible like VGM could be interpreted and made to speak to others who weren't fans in the first place. Brandon debut mix always has a special place in my history here, as I had no idea who he was, and wouldn't truly realize just what kind of talent OCR had landed until his follow-up mix, "Live at the Springyard." Excellent stuff.

Nope. That's not a problem.

For daring to Cheetahmanz, he has made the panel - LT CheetahMetal - Cheetahmen II progressive rock/metal remix. Download link is here. My Info: ReMixer name: NeoAvenger real name: Ian Shedd website: www.soundclick.com/ianshedd member number: 22824 Game: Cheetahmen II Track name: um . . . 'Main Theme' I guess. I can't seem to find the track's real title. Platform: NES --------------------------------------------------------------- http://akumunsf.good-evil.net/C/Cheetah%20Men%202.nsf - Track 2 Well, the source tune is the greatest piece of music in creation, but that goes without saying. The guitar samples sounded pretty fake, but that's what you get with Slayer or whatever this was. The drum writing wasn't half bad, but the background needed something else going on to flesh that out. Right now, the arrangement relies too much on the grungyness of the rhythm guitars to fill out the space, and the textures sounded pretty flimsy as a result. Overall, the arrangement itself was pretty creative. I liked how the theme was given some measure of interpretation alongside the expansionist writing added to the familiar melodies, plus the dynamics were actually fairly solid. The first section of soloing (1:38-2:04) was a good concept, just not well executed. The second section of soloing (2:31-2:57) was a bad concept and not well executed either. The sequencing was too mechanical/choppy for these guitars, which need more finesse and realism. If you're gonna work with a guitar synth, you're gonna have to put more effort into making the performance sound more humanized. Keep learning more about your samples and how to use them more effectively; use the ReMixing forums for help if you aren't doing so already. NO (resubmit)

Remixer Name: M2S7N Remix name: Your Friendly Neighborhood Hospital Dub Forum ID: 21302 Name of game: Earthbound Name of tracks: Friendly Neighbors, Hospital Link: I made this track this past summer after buying a delay pedal, which will become obvious shortly into the song. I'd like to think that the style of music I was going for, however, calls for the excessive delaying and panning. Arrangement wise this will probably be considered too close to the original for you judges' liking, but I wasnt going to go unnecessarily reharmonizing the bassline or adding original counterpoint in a dub track. I think the cycling in/out of instruments and instrumentation was all the "rearrangement" necessary, but we'll see... this probably has a long shot at making it anyway so I'm not too hung up about that, I just want to see what comments I get about production. I feel the bass could be deeper, and the brass sample is way cheap (but heavily processed, so I dont think its a song-breaker), so any suggestions to improve these would be killer. I plan on making original dub tracks, this so this track was kind of a test run, but constructive criticism would be nice. In case you wonder, the bass, guitar, and sax are real, the drums are a cheap drum machine (I havent had the patience to try to find better samples or program patterns thru software programs, though I will, sometime...), and keyboard is a yamaha, I think. delay provided by the boss dd-6. ---------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mo2 - "Friendly Neighbors" (mo2-022.spc) & "Hospital" (mo2-027.spc) Yep, I can tell you like that delay. And yeah, I'd probably call it excessive, but at least you did it on purpose. Honestly, just seemed like a souped up cover of the originals. Little in the way of melodic or structural interpretation. So while I enjoy this for what it is, we've got interpretation standards to uphold. Short and sweet. NO

Original Decision: http://www.ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=11671 remixer alius: Hoboka real name: Alex J. Shtokalko source: Super Metroid, Lower Maridia (Rockey area or w/e, you'll know when you hear it ) remix title: The Aquatic Abyss Remix: Heya girls, I gotz you a new resub to convulse - er I mean, dance to It's my super metroid remix - TOTALLY different concept now...kinda DnB-ish/alternate whatever the fuck you wanna call it. I worked real, real, real hard on this, and I expect at least SOME degree of appreciation for this song, lol. Eh, fat chance knowing you guys, but what the hell, I know I've made a half decent song, so love it or I'll have to shoot you!! Well, not really, but okay I'll stop blabbering away now before your head implodes from the idiodicy of it all. Enjoy! -------------------------------------------------------------- Hahaha, I've gotta steal "idiodicy" some time. http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=sm - "Maridia Rocky Underwater Area" (sm-24.spc) I mean, I like some of the concepts here, but the package was very uncohesive. Loads of the synths and samples sounded low-quality, IMO, and the track lacked a lot of high end presence. The track sounding so lossy almost compensated in some way for the apparent lack of any bassline. The drum transition at :54 felt totally arbitrary, plus the gratuitous cymbal shots at 1:00 & 1:09 were completely out of place. The piano from 1:20-1:47 was very mechanically sequenced and not melodious at all. The vox for that section was very fake and rigidly sequenced as well. The track was all over the place with no real sense of direction and little in the way of dynamics. Harsh. Wrong on the first point about the opening synth, but from that point on, Jon was throwing bullseyes. When I noted that I was placing this on the panel, I was legitimately surprised by how well Jon predicted the track's general structure despite not even having any way to listen to it yet. Clearly, he shouldn't have been able to do that, yet here we are. This was an improvement over the previous version due to the composition having more complexity, but there's not nearly enough finesse or direction with the execution here. Gotta walk before you can run. :'-( NO

Nutritious Justin Medford NutritiousMultimedia@gmail.com 16520 Final Fantasy IV Into The Darkness I've always enjoyed the Final Fantasy IV soundtrack; as a matter of fact, it's basically what got me into music in the first place. I'd never heard songs like this in a game before (or anywhere, really), and they've stuck with me for years. This song specifically was one of my favorites from the game. It plays during the first "dungeon" level and really sets a mysterious tone for the area. I had that same idea in mind as I was rearranging this. With this song, as in my previous Mario 64 submission (which may or may not be posted first, depending if this is accepted of course), I tried to go for a cinematic orchestral feel. I wanted them to sound like they could be part of a movie score or soundtrack. You may notice the extra reverb applied in the first 30 seconds or so - I was trying to get a wide open sound like it was played in the mist cave that the OST pertains to. Hopefully, I achieved the epic, sweeping feel I was going for with this song. As with all of my orchestral and strings stuff up until this point, this was made using freely available samples and soundfonts. I hope that it shows how much can be done on a tight remixing budget. ----------------------------------------------------------------- http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ff4 - "Into the Darkness" (ff4-12.spc) Not gonna say too much. The original theme is one of the more memorable tracks from FF4, though not really my style. Justin did a decent job here of retaining a similar style to the original (due to the string lead and 3/4 time), while giving this a different bent with the arrangement into orchestral. The buildup ultimately leading into the melody arriving at :40 was a bit flat, though I realize how difficult it is to make effective dynamic changes from soft to loud without risking some clipping. I don't want to sound like a hater, and there could be some differing opinions, but I wasn't overly impressed at least in terms of the sound quality (brass!). It's serviceable to me, but I don't think it's pulled off quite as well as with the Super Mario 64 mix. I'd appreciate some possible crits from other Js on how to improve the realism here with the existing samples. In terms of the sequencing, I felt that was pretty solid. The composition felt a little bit meandering on my first listen, but ultimately I really enjoyed the arrangement, sophisticated with the writing in much the same way that the Super Mario 64 one was. The substance was there, and the sounds were solid, though I'd really like to see some growth on that level as you continue to improve. I'm willing to give this the nod. Good luck with the rest of the vote! YES

Cool source tune choice. Never really heard much of the Pilotwings 64 soundtrack besides "Birdman", so this source was a welcome change of pace. The original here is a pretty nice composition. http://www.zophar.net/usf/pw64usf.rar - "Hang Glider" Not too much to add to what Vigilante and zyko have criticized. Some sort of pop at :41. This was a pretty basic 4-on-the-floor genre adaptation, showing how well this theme works in this setting IMO. I didn't mind the rigid sequencing much; as zyko said, par for the course in this genre. Beyond the genre adaptation though, not too much going on with the interpretation, with most of the meaningful variations coming not from the lead or the beats, but from the supporting instrumentation sprinkled in the background. Still, this had some observable dynamic changes; nothing very pronounced though. I did enjoy the dropoff at 2:46. The rebuilding into the barebones groove at 3:14 was something slightly different, but a pretty limited idea for the closing section, and didn't feel very different from the previous sections that included the melody and some other sounds. The vox sequencing from 3:42-4:01 to end this was ultra-fake. This would have been gold maybe 3-4 years ago, but the standards have risen. Part of the reason this lacks nowadays as far as the standards go is because these textures are relatively simplistic; there really could be more going on here, not just in the evolution of the composition/arrangement, but also more textural density and complexity. This was definitely in the right direction in terms of changing the feel of the source, but didn't maximize the potential of what can be done in this genre. Definitely could use some more ideas to spice this up. An enjoyable first sub, Remco; keep working on it and see where else you can take this. NO (resubmit)

Ormgas is tre sexy.

Lemme hold of on this until after MAGFest. Not that I'm lazy on it, but I wanna give this my full attention, and think the possibilities through. We might actually be able to incorporate a collapse-able deal to allow extended bios on the same pages as the regular bios, BUT that stuff has only been programmed on Wikipedia proper and may require templates that we can't simply cut-and-paste into MediaWiki in order to have work on our side. In terms of pages redirecting to extended bios via the mascot #s, I don't think we would offhand, but again, lemme figure out how we're gonna approach this. If I can get the collapse-able stuff working, it would be a moot point. As for a sort of group/main page for the DarkStalkers, that sounds fine to me, but we may be able to just do that as a Category page rather manually creating a new page, so don't move forward with any of that yet.

Absolutely. It's all in the shadows! But yes, this project's going to be going strong and finishing up. I've got plenty of people to nag, including hopefully Mazedude. I'll see if he's come up with anything. But don't worry; we'll have a project, even if it's only 10-12 pieces, which is still very solid! Thanks for tugging on my arm, Martin, it's appreciated!

Yeah, clearly all desktop musicians have to do is "press buttons." This comments only shows there are still ignorant listeners out there who don't know anything about what makes good music.

You can use [[OCR Mascot xxx|Character Name]]

Indeed, using the redirection pages to link to other characters is how we should do it.

With MAGFest (1/3-1/6) so close, we're going to have to handle the final calls on everything shortly after the convention is over. Sorry for the delay, y'all.

Responsible parties, get in touch with me regarding the status/release of ze album. Good times!

at OCR, there's a PayPal donation button right on the top of the sidebar on the left. Trenthian's website has a donate button at the bottom left side, with a symbol of two interlinked stars.

A lotta slow: http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR00022/ You meant to say "Ocarina Boogie", but I forgive you.

This mix is awesome! Tre bien.

Joe Pleiman, most know around here as half of The Rabbit Joint (LoZ "Rabbit Joint Cover") and a member of The Black Lodge (Z64:OoT "Ocarina Boogie", since removed) was part of a band called Hip Tanaka, named after the composer and another side project of Pleiman's. The band even owned HipTanaka.com at one point, but the band/project died off. Nothing listed at archive.org works after the 2003 stuff. AFAIK, the band did originals despite their name, not game arrangements, just to clarify. Last but not least, they were based in the Boston area. With the contact info at the Rabbit Joint artist page here, you can contact Joe and (hopefully) ask him whatever you want about Hip Tanaka. Who knows, maybe he has some leftover stickers. They also have some material possibly still available from CD Baby. Hope that helps!

For any of those, SNES or N64, you could have them loop for a long time on Winamp with the appropriate video game music format plug-in, then output a WAV or MP3 file and make an extended version that way.

Remix link : ReMixer name : Scaredsim Real name : Simon Sternis Email address : scaredsim@hotmail.com Website : http://ssternis.free.fr Userid : 20011 Name of the remix : Daily Training Name of game ReMixed : Crusader of Centy Name of individual song(s) ReMixed : Rafflesia Training Grounds, Place of Peace Original soundtrack : http://project2612.org/download.php?id=16 Composer : Motokazu Shinoda Publisher : Atlus, 1994 System : Sega Genesis Here's a pop arrangement from Crusader of Centy, two songs : Rafflesia Training Grounds & Place of Peace. I recently played this game again, and each time I love listening this awesome soundtrack. I just can't believe it has never been arranged before (as far as I know). So, I tried. And hope you like it. Thanks, - Simon. -------------------------------------------------------------- http://project2612.org/download.php?id=16 - 07 "Rafflesia Training Grounds" & 21 "Place of Peace" Soft opening with the piano, following by some bowed strings. The strings didn't sound particularly realistic. Neither did the drums brought in at :21; that snare almost never sounds right in any given track, but it's serviceable. I would have softened the snare sound more, as I felt it was too loud/punchy compared to the leads during the whole track, undermining some of the dynamic contrast you were going for with the composition. OK, so none of the organic instrument samples sound particularly realistic, but they were decent enough, while the arrangement itself was strong enough to carry things. The dynamics were there, though not as pronounced as I thought they should have been given the writing, as I alluded to before. Good idea to layer the clavient (?) and woodwind for the melody at :39, creating some good synergy there. I was definitely enjoying the e-piano/organ/wuteva (1:31) and bassline action going on as well. The source material was on the bland side and the sample quality did drag this down a bit. The arrangement could use a bit more effective dynamic contrast, and some textures felt on the sparse side in the background, which could probably be tweaked. I'll admit I'm not wow'ed compared to say Simon's Brain Lord/Illusion of Gaia combo mix "Will is the Lord." What was here was decent, but I have the feeling Simon could make this twice as effective in a couple of years with more experience. I would just refine this by pulling back the snare shots so they aren't so much louder than the leads and perhaps beefing up one of the supporting sounds to fill out the background more during the verses (e.g. :39-1:30), which felt spartan in a negative way. The rest of the panel might feel I'm being too picky, but I'm just feeling like this is 80% of the way there, but needs some refinement to nudge this over the top. Hopefully another J can better articulate what I'm getting at. Good luck on the rest of the vote, Simon. I look forward to your future material, both here and at DoD! NO (refine/resubmit)