Liontamer   Judges ⚖️

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "The Day the World Revived" (ct-2-06.spc) & "Sara's Theme" (ct-3-06.spc) I felt like I was hearing a different piece than the others in terms of potential for resubmission, but at the same time their votes really hit the nail on the head. I didn't even read theirs until I wrote my own and we're pointing out the same issues. "The Day the World Revived" section was rather plain and annoying with that simple lead. The scratching and beeping-type sounds were annoyingly piercing, and when you take those sounds away, you're not left with much arrangement substance IMO. Go for the better texture of sounds here, but at the same time build the arrangement ideas first then the soundscape. Not enough here IMO to be interesting for 5:30-long, though the "Schala's Theme" arrangement first used from 2:45-3:06 helped balance it out. Still, after 3:45 when you layered the two themes, everything was really cluttered and messy. It's a decent start that could lead to something more fruitful with more work. NO

http://rayman2.ubi.com - "Main Theme" (High-Speed Connections -> Downloads -> Goodies -> Rayman's Music -> 1) http://c9.servage.net/~sc19031-ZCPG/usf/sets/prelim/Rayman%202%20-%20The%20Great%20Escape%20-%20Parasyte/Rayman2-FixedTimings.rar - "Level 12 - (P2) Riding a Chair" & "Robotpirate Fight 1" (or almost any version of the 12) I at least found a 35-second clip of Rayman 2's main theme from the game's official site to compare with this mix, so excuse me if I'm only making partial connections to it. Besides the similar "Riding a Chair" (which Ben pointed out to me; thanks, Ben), the preliminary USF rip I got didn't seem to have the actual main theme anywhere, hence the holdup. Opening of the mix didn't have much to do with the source there, although there were some liberal connections later. Melody of this song came in at :23, seemingly having jack to do with the original. Synths played with the Main Theme's rhythms at :42, while the pizz strings at :55 referred to it more straightforwardly before segueing into a shot of Yankee Doodle from 1:11-1:19. Main Theme wasn't overtly referred to until the pizz strings played it on background for the sitar from 1:28-1:43. 1:43 transitioned to the "Robotpirate Fight" theme playing rhythm along with having the synth woodwind double it for a while, later followed by some cool metallic/industrial-type sounds until 2:15. Original melody from :23 returned at 2:33 before returning to subtly referencing the Main Theme from 2:49 until the end. He used variations of the Main Theme in a few more background places I didn't bother to mention. Basically play-by-played it with my vote since things were already good. Nice use of the chosen sounds, and solid production per Ben's usual. YES

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=mo2 - "Sunrise & Onett Theme" (mo2-017.spc) Nothing really much beyond the original with some synthy and distorted sounds, some beats, and the occasional light SFX underneath. Arrangement has 0 changes in structure and tempo from the original, and the track is only 2:26-long. It's only a few seconds off from the original because you simply didn't use the original's intro. You didn't even give the arrangement any type of creative name. You tried to at least personalize it somewhat, but it's an obvious NO OVERRIDE.

http://www.zophar.net/nsf/megaman2.zip - Tracks 13 ("Wood Man Stage"), 19 ("Dr. Wily Stage 1") & 22 ("Ending") Played this on VGF78. Quite the overhaul from the first arrangement attempt Frank did on this, "Deep Forest Dance", which was restricted to arranging just "Wood Man Stage" and featured all the way back on VGF29.99. The piece has come a long way, and I appreciate the added work. I have to admit, I rather liked the simplicity of the first version, but certainly appreciate the new ideas in this one. I didn't mind the string samples quite as much, though the complaints were valid on it; sounded too synthetic with the note-to-note movements in places, but was fine in the big scheme of things. Beats coming in at 1:02 were too loud the whole way through and could have been brought down a few db, IMO. Definitely good fills going on with the percussion work to keep things energetic and interesting. Also agreed on the Wood Man lead at 1:26 sounding rather tepid, but there was some good subtle freestylish doubling of the melody going on underneath. Good brief change in the flow from 2:13-2:24. Good reference to Wily's theme at 3:23; very stylish writing there and the lead synth there seemed to fit a bit better going for a shriller sound. I actually thought the transition at 3:43 to the "Ending" theme was really abrupt and should have been handled more subtly. As it was, it was too jarring of a move. Arrangement there was pretty good. Heard some odd-sounding piano chords at 4:15-4:16, but it may just be me. Glad to finally have the beats drop out at 4:41 for the piano-based closed. The strings and piano could sound more realistic, but were otherwise handled capably, plus the arrangement was strong. I didn't think this was quite as catchy as FFMQ "And He Returned Home", but a solid addition nonetheless; good going, Frank. YES

Covered by the others. Basically a copy of the original + lame beetz; texture was really sparse. No meaningful arrangement value to speak of. Listen to the other tracks here and observe how they offer creative reinterpretations of the source material involved. This has none of that and is inferior to the original. This track was a good example of a fadeout ending being a sign of having nothing left in the tank creatively. And don't fade it out and leave 24 seconds of silence at the end. Apply some originality and creativity not just in the instrumentation approach but also the writing in order to take whatever ideas you may have to the next level. NO

http://www.zophar.net/gym/sonic2.rar - "Mystic Cave Zone", negligible other bits This is 2:04-long; there's no way some undeveloped megamedley is going to pass. The effects and whatnot are decent if not overly simplistic, but there's no substance here whatsoever in terms of the arrangement. Write more varied beats, and develop the arrangement ideas more instead of playing briefer than brief motifs from several themes on top of the Mystic Cave bassline. NO

http://snesmusic.org/v2/download.php?spcNow=ct - "Corridor of Time" (ct-3-04.spc) Starts out pretty cover-ish with some beats and lil' strings in there. Would have have had more of a chance in the old days back when there wasn't too much emphasis on rearrangement so much as personalization (see: "Island of Zeal"), but even so the track is still fairly lacking. The beats are repetitive and need to vary more, plus the texture is really thin/sparse and the pizz strings are used very poorly. You used a Reason default for the beats? Too bad yo, write your own beats and offer something more creative. Decent additional warbly sounds and pads in at 1:34 for some new ideas, along with some piano as well, but the same tired beat pattern came right back in at 1:46, lasting practically until the end. Decent beginner effort, but not much of a rearrangement. It's only working with the extreme basics right now. Needs more development and more of your own original ideas introduced into the track, along with a more solid texture via more elements in play, less repetition/looping writing for both the lead and supporting instrumentation. NO

What's the consensus on the analoq-endorsed Grado headphones? Are they too impractical due to being open-eared? Aaron mentioned the sound quality was pretty good.

I think it'll just be mentioned in the writeup, much like http://www.ocremix.org/remix/OCR01341/ EDIT: We have a winner! Yep; seriously whatever you come up with is cool. The title really just me being preposterous, so don't sweat it. Although on my site, I'll probably just keep the title that I have. So yeah, whatever you end up with is fine. -K

Haha, is that what's been holding you guys up? Well, I'd love the whole title, but if not then however much of the title you can fit in is fine with me I guess. Even if it doesn't make sense I PMed Kunal in order to see how he felt about the name so we could get this up. If you go with Kunal's preference, I think the best we can do (and still keep it sensible ) is Wild ARMs 2 "Lord Blazer, the Robot who time travels..." or "Lord Blazer, the Robot who time travels back..."; I'll leave it up to you.

This "zircon", he's white, and I've never heard of him, but I'll give him a chance.

Lockdown 2. We've already looked at it.

http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/Chrono_Cross_psf.rar - 106 "Reminiscence - Feelings Not Erased" (:00-1:50) & 307 "Time of the Dreamwatch" (1:50-4:10) I like the track, but the arrangement doesn't do enough to distinguish itself from the source. "Reminiscence - Feelings Not Erased" is solo piano, and the first half here is basically a playthrough of the original only a bit more delicate and with more embellishments/accompaniment. Nothing really going on to distinguish it significantly from the original. Second half is a fairly straightforward conversion to some richer sounds than the original. The drum writing sounds way too similar and the melody's verbatim. 2:30 finally brought in some nice original material, and then combined it at 3:00 with piano playing the Dreamwatch melody for a little bit. But at 3:33 it was back to the conservative cover for the finish. I'd like to hear some branching out in terms of the instrumentation Reu uses for his cinematic-style writing. I suppose if it ain't broke don't fix it, but it really makes his material sound too samey and formulaic. The same criticisms apply for the tempo and mood, IMO. You can only eat steak for dinner each night for so long before you get tired of having the same thing every time. This was genuinely enjoyable, and I actually liked all of the sounds, but it's not interpretive enough or additive enough to significantly distinguish it from the originals. NO

Guys, what in the hell is the holdup? Stop making us look bad.

Another old 404 from January 25th, I finally got a copy from Stewart. Original letter is quoted with the new, working URL in place. http://www.zophar.net/nsf/castleva.zip - Track 9 ("Posion Mind") Opens up with some really basic, beginnerish-sounding thumping and distortion. The synth design is really really really basic, and there's not much going on in the way of texture to fill out the track beyond the backing beats and distortion. There's effort put into creating some limited dynamics by dropping some parts in and out over time, but the effectiveness is really limited. By 1:28, you've seemingly heard all of the ideas here and there's quite a lot of time left to go. Luckily we at least got something different on lead at 1:56-2:26. Some very simple phasing-style thumps built up the next/last section at 2:51, which was basically a rehash of the first part with some phaser/laser beam SFX on top. Should be (and it was) pretty difficult getting enough mileage out of a 7-second-long theme. 3:51-long with the arrangement, I didn't really have to listen to it to know it was gonna be a challenge here. So yeah, too repetitive, I'm not sure how you're gonna make an idea like it work. Israfel managed to pull off more with less with his Pac-Man mix though, so it's not impossible. The arrangement was fairly basic, but you at least changed the rhythm and tempo of the source. You gotta go for more variations in there to keep things fresh. And last but not least, I dunno when you're gonna get around to it, but your sounds are generally terrible. It's not that you need expensive stuff, but the synth design is so defaulty, thin, overly simplistic and poorly done that you don't have anything approaching a good texture. I'm not a hater, but you gotta step up that game, bro. This stuff has no chance. NO

http://snesmusic.org/spcsets/fzero.rsn - "Mute City" (fz-09.spc) Well, y'all know me, I'm generally not about the lo-fi. I felt a lot of subtle details got obscured on account of the production, and wished for something cleaner. I would have liked to have heard Gray tackle the source files for a production nudge, but the overall atmosphere was very good regardless. The arrangement on just the intro was excellent, from the guitar fade-in to the referencing of the source melody to the bass work to the percussion. The percussion work in particular was ridiculously well-written. Very very interesting to listen to on its own, I loved all of the different instruments and tones Jon employed there. I liked wet-sounding guitars on melody at :53 for a very nice laid-back, tropical vibe. Snappy percussion at 1:17 only added to the enjoyment. Nice chill section from 1:36-2:23. The arrangement never loses track of the source material at any single point, even during the guitar soloing when the bass keep working away at it. It'll satisfy both those who want their arrangements straightforward as well as those who want lots of additive original ideas and personalization. It's really the best of both worlds, and does a great service to the source material. Production was a hit on some level and IMO you do get a sound quality disparity with the drums vs. nearly everything else, but the writing was nothing short of A-grade/official arrange album quality. The progress on this one reflects a turbulent ride for Jon, but after hearing the WIPs for this one since a few years ago, I'm glad this one's finally seen the light. And Champion Vinyl? Stick with that name. YES

Just letting y'all know that I'm at Emory and will be doing tonight's finale as planned. Hope you enjoy the show, and I'll see you on the other side.

Ha, after being awake 47 hours straight in the past few days, my body did the only sensible thing and went to sleep. As soon as I got home, ZzZ. This fucks up my schedule, that's for sure. So if I can't do this show tonight, I'll have to scrap it, which I don't plan to do. So we'll handle things tonight at 2AM EST now that I've gotten some rest.

I'm gonna sum this up really quickly. Just like the game characters in the top right corner emphasizing the interests of this site, we use mostly VG avatars because that's the kind of fansite this is. We don't really care about uniqueness or the principle behind the avatar. It doesn't stop a fair amount of people from being recognized that way to begin with. We have this system so the avatars don't look big, clunky and ugly with people using 80 different dimensions or animated GIFs cluttering up the look of the forum. If we used GFF's system, we'd just be copying GFF, which is ultimately a lame idea. AFAIK, there will be sig limits under vB as well. But once we switch to vB, you know as well as I do that you can turn off viewing signatures entirely just like at GamingForce or any other vB-based forum, so why you're even complaining about them is beyond me.

OH YOU THINK YOU CAN JUST SWAP ONE BLACK FOR ANOTHER! WELL, OK... MAYBE. But in all seriousness, I'm probably too busy to do anything or at least have 0 idea what my schedule is until I get settled in Washington. But being a hop, skip and a jump away, I'll special guest star or some special dealie one time. I miss John in there already. Black power.

Looking forward to playing some of these on VGF in an hour or show. This should be excellent! Thanks, Roland!

Now that I think about it, I've been not looking forward to trying to do two decidedly long shows back-to-back like this at all, and that's definitely not the way I ever planned to go out. It'll be completely unenjoyable if I can't take calls tonight AND try and cram the finale in there when I'm already gonna be dog tired. So I'll just do the finale tomorrow night. Sorry if that makes it an impossibility for people that have work/school the following Monday, but I'll be doing right by me in order to keep myself sane and be able to relax a little more. I believe it'll have to to be Sunday late-night at 2AM EST, and it should be about a 4 hour show covering this final season's best-of-the-best. If I can swing midnight EST instead, I will, but I dunno about the availability. There. I feel better already.

Send it over, so I can check it out.

Home stretch, y'all. Now if for SOME REASON, I'm too out of it to do the finale show right after VGF84, I will come back the following night in order to do it, though it'll probably be very late like 2AM. Obviously not a preferable time there, but I'll have to make due with it. But the plan is to do the first show, MP3 it really quickly and then record the finale which is not open to any calls. This is so I can keep things done in a reasonable time and because the best of shows are about music rather than calls. Plus I'm sure VGF84 will have too many calls. Please don't be offended if I don't take your call. I hope you understand that it doesn't mean I don't appreciate your company or your support of the show. I hate to seem like I DON'T want to talk to people and talk about the show ending and all that, but my time is really limited in that I'm essentially screwed in terms of handling everything I need to do before I move if I spend more time at the station than I need to. Doing both shows will likely be in excess of 8 hours, and I'd really like to not push that amount as I have a lot of editing to so as well. Aight, we'll see you there, no? (NO!)

Nah, I would just say you don't know the standards.