Darkflamewolf

Super necro posting, but feels relevant to the topic at hand. Outside of maybe Sam Dillard's remix for Water Ruins, my OCR remix album is probably not going to scratch that orchestral itch. However, it does have quite a lot of other variety of hip hop, techno, and other beat-tastic genre renditions of the soundtrack going for it. So it may not 'exactly' be what you're hoping for, but JFG will be getting a substantial recognition boost from OCR soon here. Hopefully a 2020 release sometime depending! So @Light_of_Aether, @Ikari_Gendou, @Meteo Xavier, and @BloomingLate, hopefully this news will bring you some joy? Here's a link to the the current project thread:

******PROJECT UPDATE #9****** And with the except of one remixer doing some polish critiques on a track, we basically have 8 tracks complete now! We're over halfway done! And with the next deadline looming at beginning of March, we are expecting to see a bunch more nearing completion or almost there! But that's not the biggest news.... As of right now, This album has been GREEN LIT FOR OCR ALBUM STATUS! Yep, that's right! This will be an official OCR release just like Arcadia Legends was! So soon, this thread will move on over to Projects soon when either @djpretzel or another forum mod can get around to doing it. Big kudos to all the hard working remixers on this project, this album is looking to be a fantastic collection of pulse-pounding music set to one of Rare's underappreciated gems!

******PROJECT UPDATE #8****** We basically have seven tracks complete now! (six technically, but one isn't far off barring polish critiques! That's basically half way done! If everyone delivers on their promises by end of month or by March, we can get nearly the rest of the album complete in a single month! I also updated the track list with the most accurate progression colors. We're still gunning for a later 2020 release. So let's hope all goes well! We also now have disc art too! Front cover! Back cover! Interior flap! CD cover! It's all done!

Man, there was a story behind this one. I had originally tasked Fina's track to another remixer for the better part of the three years this album was in production. The original arrangement was...unique, but I wanted to stand by my remixers and push forward the best we could muster as a team to the evaluator's panel. However, when reviews came back, and almost every one was singling out this one track as needing some major revisions...I knew I needed to make a decision and quick. As a director, you gotta make the tough calls, even if they suck or hurt someone's feeling for the betterment of the overall product. It's never fun, but I had to make that call in this instance. So I unfortunately had to retire the original track and its remixer and go to @Deedubs and asked him if he could do me a real solid. Could he complete a track in 3-4 days during the entire evaluation phase on a tight time limit to create a replacement track. I told him to take the original inspiration @Rotten Eggplant had with his initial hack at the track and mix it with the 'Short Skirts' track from the 'Voices of the Lifestream' album for Final Fantasy VII. He came back 3-4 days later with this wonderful gem, outdoing himself in every way, and I immediately submitted it as Fina's track alongside the rest of the album. And the rest....is history.

******PROJECT UPDATE #7******** We now have five tracks fully complete, which is roughly 1/3 of the album track roster and the rest in varying stages of development! That means we have enough material to go with to OCRemix to apply for official OCR Album status! Wish us luck and let's see if we can get this album finished and out the door prior to 2021!

Oh, this track has seen many iterations and it has had some history. It was one of the first claimed and worked on, but also one of the last completed and finished in the final year of the album's production. I know @Pavos, or PUFreak as he was known during the album creation, struggled with my vision of combining two different melodies into one song. The transition is probably a rough reminder of that fact, but I still think he pulled it off extremely well and his nice and subtle touch helped lend a soft, humanizing aspect to the first half of the song. I knew this would be the song that would start the entire album off and I wanted to get it right, so much so that many of my critiques and feedback probably annoyed the heck out of him. He seemed to feel the same way, since during the time of mastering in that final year, he kept coming back with nitpicks on how it wasn't mastered well. It was a lot of back and forth, but I feel we got it to a point where it is satisfactory to all involved and a perfect beginning to a grand adventure that is the album: Arcadia Legends! Oh and there was the discussion about the title of the piece: Originally it was going to be 'The Legend Begins', but it wasn't until a later song by @Sbeast named 'Legend in the Making' was arranged to be the follow-up song in the track-list line-up. Seeing two songs with the word 'legend' in it was a big no-go from me as a director standpoint. The name for the song by @Sbeast fit so well and I am sad to admit, 'The Legend Begins' was unfortunately a placeholder name at the start since I was thinking up of titles for the piece. However, @Pavos had latched onto the name and resisted my direction to change it to 'The Voyage Begins' which was similar but not the same. After explaining and showing that 'Legend in the Making' was a perfect follow-on to his album opener and my reasoning for changing the title of his song, he relented and it became what it is today. For that, I am very grateful to @Pavos for trusting me with this directorial decision and I think it is now as it should be for this album! Thanks again for trusting me!

@Deedubs was one of the first onboard with the album and this was the first track he picked and finished. He immediately went gung-ho on his idea with little input from me. He finished it in a few short weeks. However, it went through a crazy polishing phase where we handed it off to the faux-judges (since it wasn't supposed to be an official panel critique) of @timaeus222, @Gario, and @Chimpazilla(at the time, she later dropped out due to real life). I do believe it went back and forth between @Deedubs and judges at least three times with not so minor edits, but all that hard work and touching up on this track turned it into something very strong, powerful and memorable. One of the first tracks to be completed for the album and one of my personal favorites!

Oh man, there is a story behind this one! I knew I wanted @Jason Covenant to do a song for this album since day 1. I have always been a fan of his work and my spouse just loved his voice and stuff! However, @Jason Covenant had an interesting stipulation on the deal. He said he'd be up for it, but he was busy with other projects. He told me to come back when there was only ONE TRACK LEFT unclaimed. If no one else wanted it, he'd take that one. Quite the odd request. There were several times I checked in with him, but the response was always the same, check back when there was one last track left. Sure as heck, we had Guilder's Theme as the final track and I pinged @Jason Covenant about it and he agreed to take the track. It was a further 4-5 months with not much to show for the track since he said he worked in a way different than most where he couldn't really provide many WIPs for me to listen to since he goes in non-sequential order with his tracks. Some of my team was worried if something was wrong or if we needed to pass the track along to others, but I kept the faith and kept checking in every other week with @Jason Covenant. In the end, he finally dropped this bombshell of a track and I instantly fell in love with it, as did my spouse. It has since become a favorite of my team as well and I'm very happy I stuck with him throughout these three years to get him to remix a track. Thank you again, @Jason Covenant, you added a unique element to disc 2 that I believe couldn't have been achieved otherwise! Bravo!

********PROJECT UPDATE #6******** Another four tracks are looking to be done soon anytime now, just waiting on the remixers. If they get done as advertised, we'll have 8 tracks complete for the album and we'll be about 2/3s done with the entire project and plenty of finished tracks to begin to start applying for official OCRemix album status! That'll be a huge step in the right direction! I've also secured an artist to make album and disc art and we're already in the WIP stages at this time. Things are progressing great with the album!

****PROJECT UPDATE 5**** Waiting on final track polishing from @Sam Dillard and @GlacialSpoon , but we’ll have four tracks complete for the album, but unmastered as of yet. That’s basically 1/3 of the album depending on final track count! That’s fantastic progress since March! Keep up the awesome work and looking forward to the remainder of the tracks!

So are unofficial, unapproved albums like my MIZAR ATTACKS! Not yet on the list or not eligible to be?

****PROJECT UPDATE #4**** In a short span of time, we got pretty much all the core tracks of the album claimed and being worked on in some fashion or another, to include a few extra tracks! However, there are two that are...unique and definitely deserve a remixer that will do some 'out-of-the-box' thinking when it comes to remixing: Tawfrey and Goldwood. These are not going to be easy to translate and I would applaud any remixer who is willing to rise to the challenge in tackling them.

Congrats to you both!

I was unfortunately hands off for most of this track actually. Modus was the primary middle man when it came to contacting and recruiting Guifrog. In fact, it wasn't until the final weeks of track completion that I was able to talk to Guifrog directly on instant messaging. So, most of the feedback going between us went through Modus, so this turned into more of a track where I had little involvement in terms of critique and input on overall direction. Despite this, Guifrog was phenomenal in turning something that two other remixers struggled with and made it his own and in record time too! I don't think even a month went by before the near finished product was plopped on my lap by Modus when Guifrog sent it to him. Definitely a standout track in an album of so many standouts!

@Deedubs has claimed another track! Eschebone! Looking forward to great things from him!

@Glejs joins the album claiming Sekhmet!

*****Project Update #3***** Skipped a whole month in updates, but we are actually making good progress! We signed on a few more folks to the project and got some great WIPs in from PirateCrab, Aluminum, MkVaff, Rotten Eggplant, and GlacialSpoon. This entire album is already feeling full of energy and sick beats! I love it! We even got the first initial final WIP submitted by Deedubs of Ichor! Fantastic job all around to our remixers! We're still recruiting for those remaining tracks, but I'm confident we can get them all claimed by year's end! Looking forward to the next batch of finished WAVs!

And we keep getting fantastic news! @Gario has claimed Cerulean and we are excited to have him onboard the project!

An @aluminum joins the fight against Mizar and is selecting none other than the big Mizar's Palace track itself! It's big and epic and I can't wait to see what he has in store for it!

*****Project Update #2***** Second month has been a bit slow. We got MkVaff and PirateCrab signed onto the team, but on the whole, not much progress has been made. Which is fine. There were slow months during Arcadia Legends too, so I'm not worried. We also got a few more interested parties for the album, but no firm takers yet. Still looking forward to the music in the coming months!

MkVaff has now joined the team and has claimed Rith Essa!

I wish I had more history to say about this track that I did with the others, but I don't. This track is just plain awesome. I thought it an interesting choice to do a spaghetti western theme for the track with Jorito pitched it, but I was willing to give it a whirl. I know this was a combo track of Yafotuma Dawn and Eastern Sky Pirates, but it was clear the Sky Pirates was the dominant theme of the two, Jorito struggled hard trying to incorporate Yafotuma into the melody somehow. Within a short span of a few months, he gave me a WIP that sealed my love for the peace and I signed off on this amazing rendition and he went full throttled and got additional performers to make it the best it could be! Definitely one of my favorite tracks on the album and hot off the heels of the atmospheric Dark Rift theme "The Darkness is Already Here." A perfect wake-up call from the somber rift, just like in the game!

*****Project Update #1***** With the advent of this update, and GlacialSpoon signing on for Spawnship, we now have 6 remixers on board with at least another 10 interested in a few months once other commitments are fulfilled! Things are looking up and it's not even been a month! Sure, there's only been 1 initial WIP submitted so far, but none of the deadlines have been breached and everything looks to be on track! I'm excited and hopeful for this album. Definitely a good idea to scale back since Arcadia Legends and focus on a more condensed and focused 1-disc album for my second project. Will be updating everyone like this at least once a month to keep interest current and to be 100% transparent to remixers and fans of JFG about the state of the album! Look forward to more progress next month! EDIT: And now we have Piratecrab signed on for Boss Battle!

And since this year is the 20th anniversary of the game, here is a look back 20 years later to see if this games holds up to today!

bLiNd has signed up for SS Anubis! We're doing great so far on interest! We got 8 others also interested in claiming tracks, but are holding off due to other commitments and real life things, so definitely checking back in with them in a month or two!