Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

Synth at :23-:31 sounded off-key to start, then the soundscape sounded very muddy and indistinct, as well as being heavily tilted to the right ear in the stereo field. [/squints] Uhhhhh... alright then. Acoustic geetar cameo at 2:07 sounded nice. Man, this mixing does the track no favors; for example, from 2:l8-2:54, the padding (bowed strings? choir?) sounds so quiet, it almost might as well not be there. A lot of supporting writing winds up feeling pushed back and marginalized. Nice bit o' stereo ear candy from 3:31-3:34. This mixing seems to eliminate a chunk of high end, and I'd love another mixing pass, but if the source files were kaput, I wouldn't hold this back, it's definitely high-octane goodness otherwise. My focus on the production here doesn't sidestep the fact that this is a great treatment of the theme. The arrangement's all sorts of good, and for me that definitely carries it. YES

Awesome to finally see a submission from you, Alyssa! It was great being on Patrick's VGM panel with you at PAX many moons ago. :-) The musician Js may have some mixing/balance/sequencing/timing/tuning suggestions, and that's all well and good; what's here for me already sounds strong. I like the energy of the percussion in particular to keep things energetic and have this arrangement approach stand apart from the original, and the guitar/violin interplay worked well to personalize the theme's presentation. I'm genuinely curious what imagery synesthetes would get from this. Meanwhile, the music video for this has so many quaint sites in New Jersey; a very fun treatment! YES

Artist Name: A.C. Menes A Latin inspired take on the Theme of Love from Final Fantasy IV. Features myself on guitar/bass guitar/percussion programming and N. Fanning on violin. Games & Sources Final Fantasy IV - Theme of Love

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Artist Name: TheManPF Additional artists: Zach Chapman, Biggoron Came out of retirement with an itch to make new music for DoD's Fresh Month (surprise surprise), I heard about this horror indie gem called Look Outside back in March when it came out, I haven't got the chance to play it yet but everything I've seen about this game is incredible in all departments, so I've been wanting to cover something from it since then. The original source plays during a sequence where a car-turned-demon swallows people and takes them to literal hell, I just took that and repurposed it to represent a really bumpy uber ride with a crazy driver, with a bunch of really intense proggy metal. Zach plays some nasty distorted bass and Biggoron shreds his ass off with keyboard synths. Hope you enjoy Games & Sources Game: Look Outside Songs arranged: Ride to Hell (https://youtu.be/hoTV0pY1I4A) Original composer: Eric Shumaker System: PC Year: 2025

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Artist Name: colorado weeks, Mel Decision, Moebius colorado weeks - main arrangement Mel Decision - additional synths, sfx Moebius - guitars Howdy! This was our Team Whip entry for GSM2, Round 2 where we were tasked with mashing up tunes from Metroid Prime and Castlevania III. Mel pitched the idea of doing a synthwave track for Round 2 in the Team Whip Trello board, but let me take the helm for the arrangement while she was cookin' up some Pure Zebes. Moebius and Mel came in clutch with the ear candy while I struggled to re-learn FL studio within that time. I sat on this track more than a year so details from back then are a little fuzzy. This submission is slightly different than the competition version. This submission is still not the Feel Good Inc entry that Team Gun did and I still hate myself for it. Mel and Moebius I love you. Uhhhhhhhhh Team Whip 4ever <3 Games & Sources Metroid Prime - Tallon Overworld Castlevania III - Dracula's Curse

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Beautiful extended original intro before shifting to the theme at :33. Excellent performance dynamics here, really adding a lot emotional weight to the theme, and definitely very reflective (per the theme of Mike's collection of arrangements here). Would love to hear MkVaff perform this on a grand piano, that would be cool, though there's also a sincere nostalgic quality to the tone of the keyboard used here. Send this one to djp; this very much felt in the vein of some of MkVaff's old-school OCR classics, if not by arrangement approach, then by simplicity and earnestness. :-) YES

Artist Name: MkVaff Greetings! Here is another piano arrangement from my "Reflections" project that I felt was different enough to submit to OCR. I know Guile's Theme one of the most-covered tracks in all of game music, and it's such a perfect original that I avoided it for years because it almost felt too intimidating. But as I was considering piano covers I couldn't stop thinking of the theme and decided to give it a shot. In the context of my project, the arrangement and video I created pays tribute to my older brother, without whom I likely wouldn't have gone so deep down the music creation rabbit hole at such an early age. He has always been a massive source of knowledge and inspiration in my life, even though a lot of our tastes and our approaches to music are quite different. Musically, I enjoyed trying to capture the beauty and the epic feeling of the original track in a way that felt different from the original composition. It's challenging to cover anything Shimomura does and not come up woefully short, but I'm hoping that this arrangement properly pays tribute to her musical genius, and one of the greatest themes she's given us in her incredible career. Thanks for listening, and Enjoy! Games & Sources Street Fighter II Series (Original, C.E. Turbo, Super, others, etc.) Composed by Yoko Shimomura

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Opens up with some uncanny valley orchestration that sounds... aight. There's effects on everything to give it some depth and mitigate the realism issues, though it's not enough to prevent lack of realism from standing out as soon as this started. Hard to articulate but at 1:07 when it transitioned into the more grandiose texture with these high strings, the volume was too quiet for the energy of the part-writing, if that makes any sense; obviously, this shouldn't be clipping, and I'm not saying "just turn the knob one higher", because it's actually pretty shrill. But something about the layering of the parts should have been fuller and more cohesive. The high strings were always very exposed as being a sample, but the articulation around 1:10 was the worst offender. A little better texture at 1:32, though it's pretty muddy until 1:39. Something about the way the strings at 1:45 and winds at 1:51 were produced made them feel like they weren't in the same room, even though I hear the stereo placement being different; again, difficult for me to articulate. There's some sort of light pop at 1:59 that needs to be eliminated as well. The bar isn't "now, go find some live players!", and this possibly could have passed like this 20 years ago. That said, I do wonder how much this could be improved to humanize these sounds and make the textures less shrill, more cohesive, and with more realistic ambiance, because that's the real hangup for me, not the arrangement, which in a vacuum is fine, no problem with it. Needs some more finesse with these samples, Pipko, but it's a good concept. For something so short, this needs to be closer to firing on all cylinders. NO (resubmit)

From what I can tell here, this seems like genAI. Fuzzy overall sound, some good instrumentation in places, but it wanders around with wholly original sections that have 0 connection to Crystalis. Obviously not enough source too, which is an automatic NO. If it's genAI, begone. EDIT (9/28): Talked to RJ and apologized for mistakenly calling this AI; we don't want to discourage anyone who actually creating their music, and I'm definitely snakebit from the rash of genAI submissions we've gotten, including some that initially made it past the panel before we updated our guidelines. RJ graciously offered to share some things he looks for to help with AI detection, so I'll be sharing that with the judges when he sends that. That said, the lack of usage of the Crystalis source ultimately tanked this, so we'll reiterate that to approve VGM arrangements for OCR, we urge everyone for the majority of the arrangement to directly reference the source theme(s) for at least 50% of the track. The arrangement and interpretation of the VGM theme(s) needs to be the primary focus. Looking forward to RJ's next sub!

Says Hitoshi Ohori on sax for the Kingdom Hearts II soundtrack, but if you told me it was proph here, I wouldn't have batted an eye. :-) Beautiful theme. Definitely a straightforward arrangement, and we'll see where it goes, though offhand the reinstrumentation here does help it stand apart from the original. The light little bits of recording feedback do add some character, but not sure they should be in there. 1:31 has a subtle but noticeable shift in the energy by adding the percussive support and doubling the melody, which is the kind of stuff I was talking about in terms of needing some more personalization. Nice little guitar riffing/ornamentations from 2:37 until the end to add a last bit of flavor to close it. It's not my thing personally, i.e. I would have done something more boisterous with the theme, but that doesn't mean this isn't a substantive albeit melodically conservative arrangement approach. I disagreed with proph; sure, I'd personally like it with more complexity, but that's not required, nor do I think this approach isn't substantive enough without it. The reinstrumentation of the first half has a measure of personalization to the approach. Not enough to YES it if the style stayed like that the whole way, but then everything from 1:31 on for the second half pushed it over the line for me in terms of standing apart from the original. I don't think it should be turned down for needing more dynamics when that's more of a personal tilt to me. If I heard this on the actual OST, I'd say it did enough to feel texturally different from the other version. We ride... YES

Man, all the years I've known about Phantasy Star II, but I've never actually listened to this specific source before, this is awesome. In any case, Rick, I've gotta echo prophetik. This is under two minutes (read: underdeveloped), and it's sampling the original audio and (in your case, substantively but basically) building around it, which itself is a violation of our Submission Standards. We're looking for a true arrangement when you reinstrument & interpret the source tune, not a traditional remix where the foundation is the original in-game music/audio. No ending either, c'mon; at least make one instead of ending at a hard stop. Stick around and see what more you can learn from this community, Rick! NO

The arrangement side was previously a pass, so I'm side-stepping that and just looking at production. I'll say right off the bat, this still sounds massively cluttered. When the growling vocal word came in at :19 with no clarity, I knew this was going to be a tough hill to climb. EK's vocals at :30 sound so dry and untreated, and are getting swallowed up by the surrounding instrumentation, it really nerfs her potential impact if the vocals don't sound airier. Even Gregorio's vocals at :49 & 4:44 are really buried and I'm mainly just hearing the guitar's pushed way forward over the top of him until 1:26 & 5:03. The choruses at 1:26 & 2:41 sound noisy/cacophonous, this balancing doesn't make sense. The vocals never cut through and the guitar stuff is just massively overdriven to the point where it feels like the loudest parts are distorting. I did like the guitar parts from 2:22-2:39 & 3:37-3:55, those isolated bits were sounding aggressive without obliterating other parts. Anything texturally more busy than that was a hot mess. Vocals are buried. Guitars are overdriven. Textured are cluttered. Energy of the performances sounds strong. Arrangement's on point. As I lamented last time, Zach, I'm not a musician or producer, so I can't tell you how to rein this in, which disappoints me because I want this posted, it's a creative arrangement. Saying no may come off like I'm saying you're an incapable producer or a no-hoper when we all know differently; you're bold for working outside your wheelhouse. Though this doesn't need to have perfectly balanced, pro-level mixing, the mixing revisions still leave this far from where it should be; the parts lack clarity and they're not reasonably positioned/balanced. This is still promising, but it needs production TLC. I'd love us and/or DoD to hold a #workshop session where other community members work with you to tighten this up, because this deserves it. NO (resubmit)

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

I liked the ominousness of the lightly warbling bassline, which subtly added a feel to this that I've never heard in a "Corridor of Time" arrangement until now. Instrumentation choices are nice, particularly the sustained strings (which would be awesome to hear done live). Lots of subtle textural trickery going on that fans of this theme will absolutely love. Right at 3:00, "Schala's Theme" arrived for some interplay with the backing of the main theme. For me personally, the string writing's my 1A feature, but the whole thing is a restrained yet dynamic treat. Great ingredients, but also cooked up by a great chef. :-) YES

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.

Artist Name: Azina Summer is a time of nostalgic memories, and the original version of Lazy Afternoons perfectly represents that. But Roxas' life was only 1 year and 7 days long. My arrangement opens after that, in the last moments of his life. The piano holds the tonic, G, in the bass as often as I could get away with as an expression of Roxas' desire for things to stay the same. My guitar work in the first half is merely the melody reprised on guitar. In the second half, I offer two harmonies that follow the melody strictly; the intent is to musically illustrate what could have been had Roxas, Xion, and Axel been able to have their own summer. As well, the arrangement opens up to accent strings and a soft, pulsing synth to support the three primary parts. The title itself is a reference to Lizz Robinett's lyrical adaptation released in 2016. Games & Sources Game: Kingdom Hearts 2 Composer: Yoko Shimomura Youtube:

What did you think? Post your opinion of this ReMix.