Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, I know about those. I'm just saying, when are WE gonna get some to post!

Really glad to see Dan & Chris's "Let's Attack Aggressively" from the recent DoD on this project. Hopefully no one falters on this, because I'd love to see it get finished. "Let's Attack Aggressively" is practically a built-in album title. Given a certain quality level, there's no reason I can think of that any arrangement project wouldn't be approved here. When "Dirge for the Follin" eventually wraps up, that's an example of a broader community project hosted here, involving DoD and Remix.Kwed.Org regulars as well as some OC ReMix people. As for this project being hosted on OCR, it's too early to suggest anything like that, and that's ultimately up to Andy as the director. I'd think Jake would eventually host it at something like contra4.vgmix.com, to help pimp his work on the soundtrack. That would be the best idea to me, since it's Jake's baby here. Jake could talk about his thoughts on the creation of the soundtrack, then possibly do something like comments on the strengths of each arrangement. I know Jake thought it would be cool to get a professional release of the soundtrack; once more songs get done, why not angle for something involving the arrangements here? That might get Konami to consider something if they didn't have to do too much legwork. All that said, any of the more interpretive arrangements within the format here, I'd definitely love to see submitted to OCR. I'm actually a big fan of when really recent games get good coverage; I actually love hearing artists take a new idea and quickly putting a spin on it that's just as good as the new soundtrack, so having games like Twilight Princess and Metroid Prime 3 represented here already has been great. Hopefully we'll see Contra 4 added to that list this year. Still waiting for a Shantae mix though...

We certainly are; it's looking exciting! I'll be mailing the entrants later today (waiting for one download-able copy I forgot to contact an entrant on, hopefully we get that today), but everyone's entries were received, and I've got them all. We should have winners and runner-ups announced in the next 2 weeks, which is hopefully a larger than needed estimate.

We're underway judging the entries, but I'm waiting on hearing back from bethel on an easily download-able version of his 7+ min video. Looking forward to getting that in HQ, as it was looking cool.

ReMixers have to provide us a picture to use, though when I have free time without my usual 100 other things to do, I'd be glad to dig up everyone picture and simply handle that myself. If you want to provide a picture to use (and egg everyone else on to do so) that would be great.

Noting that Tim's brother Geoff Follin composed the Tom & Jerry soundtrack mentioned in the article. Treasure Master is always a good choice. kingshriek's version of the NSF features two tracks that were missing from the more widely distributed NSF. I remember me and djp trying to figure out if the Zillion game was developed before/concurrently or after the anime series; if it was after, we'd have to pull the Zillion mixes, since they'd really be anime mixes, with most of the themes from the game being adaptations of the anime soundtrack.

Is that Saturday night going into Sunday morning? Dear God, that sounds like death. That definitely takes me back though. I started out with Thursday nights 2-4AM EST, but I didn't have to stick with that for very long. If you're able to record the show, you should host it; if you're anything like Emory, I'm sure the students get some webspace to use. The rest of you guys, just PM me if you ever want me to fill an interview slot. My Skype connection sucks, but I've got Vonage, so I can call anywhere in the country for free. Radio is my first love, so lemme support you faegs.

Just noting that I'm caught up on this. Thanks a lot for all the new images, guys, keep 'em coming!

For both the DarkStalkers and Mascots categories, we should be able to add text to the Category pages like any other entry, so we'd use those to house that stuff. For project thanks, I'd think to use the Mascots category page. We could probably get a link to that added onto the sidebar and dropdown menus as well.

if you know the bitrate is too large, you should have just sent a version at 192kbps or below. We definitely can't post something at 256kbps. http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=dkc - "Aquatic Ambiance" (dkc-08.spc) The note decay at 1:04 exposed the sampled piano way too much. Once the track moved over into the more beats & synths material at 1:59, I felt the arrangement was good, but the textures were pretty thin. Another instrument added into the background could have done a great job adding a bit more depth to the piece. The monkey SFX from 3:35-3:49 was weird but a good idea for some added flavor. I thought the writing of the original material at 3:49 didn't really mesh well with the rest of the arranged source tune, and also agreed with Vigilante that the segue back into the piano at 4:30 felt jarring. Otherwise, still a solid enough arrangement, even if it could have been bolstered in some other ways. YES

http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Xenogears_psf.rar - 215 "Omen" Man, this sounded like all the highs got cut with extreme prejudice, so I don't see how the production was excellent. If anything, it undermined the nice ambiance generated by the chords here, as Palpable mentioned. Otherwise, solid stuff, IMO. Already passed, but I've been busy lately and don't want to let anything go without a comment. Keep submitting more stuff, Will! YES

http://tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/ValkyrieProfile_psf.rar - 224 "Behave Irrationally" & 113 "Turn Over a New Leaf" Well, as soon as the track opened, the sequenced guitar stuck out, but it was pretty serviceable. HAHAHAHA, these vocals are ridiculous, in a funny way. But honestly, pretty bad in some spots. The more spoken word portions were serviceable, the growling parts cool, the yelling parts sounded awful. When the vocals dropped off at :37, the instrumental textures were really poor, IMO. The atmosphere was super quiet despite everything hammering down. The balance was pretty bad. It was stupid that the cymbal shots were so much more audible than the snare; meanwhile the machine guns drums were annoying in their frequency and were too soft to give off the intended impact. So really you're just left with a really flimsy drumkit layered on top of the machine-gun drums and nothing sounds good as a result. The 1:41-2:02 & 3:06-4:35 sections were stronger in the execution in terms of sounding fuller, though the balance still needed some work. Palpable was dead on though, once vocals were added into the picture, certain parts were fighting to be heard. I'll be frank, the other NOs broke it down better than I can do, so take their advice and run with it. Keep working on it guys. NO

I implied the reference specifically as being made to a sampled guitar, when it wasn't sampled. Just like how e-penis refers to your fake penis. Black power!

But of course. You dumb ho, Jon. Why do you think I corrected that in the first place? Ain't no e-guitar in here, honky. Black power!

Just linking to more info on the album: http://www.vgmdb.net/db/albums.php?id=5343 I'll enter! Thanks for the headsup, Jayson!

Fixed. C'mon now.

djp can elaborate more, but he mentioned to me yesterday that the new composer pages are now on a 12-hour cache. So basically if anything is changed/updated, it'll take about 12 hours after the change for the page to update. If you look now, the info is current.

Counterpoint: this mix is an awesome old school piece. What it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in humor. Tre bien.

None of you win. Nobody's interviewed me yet about the site. C'mon now, have some brown peeps on your shows.

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.