SwordBreaker

One of my favorite pieces from FFX...and you definitely gave it justice, halc. Quite faithful to the original in terms of mellowness, but you manage to expand on it well. Never expected that the piece to sound this good with chiptune-like sounds.

Vocal Trance is perhaps the only reason I listen to this type of music. Really like this track, Blind. Despite not being familiar with the source, I feel that this track lifts me up with each transition made. I also can't praise the vocalist enough. Sweet voice there, Ashleigh. Totally suits the genre. Here's hoping you contribute more to this site. Happy Anniversary, Jordan, Jade, and OCR.

Really? That has to be a first. Wonder what will happen now? On that note, I love this remix either way. Nice energy and guitar playing. If OCR doesn't fix this then I'm interesting in having the final version.

Nice ReMix. While I'm not a huge fan of "Under Martial Law" per-se, the epic feeling you gave it likens the track to its more cinematic counterpart, "The Gestahl Empire", which is one of my favorite tracks of the game. I get goosebumps every time I listen to it. I'd really like that track to be remixed more...you somewhat filled in that void for me even though you did not intend to. Glad you're tackling relatively unremixed tracks of FFVI. Great transition to "The Trench" indeed. Keep it up, man.

I'll repeat the question that's always asked in occasions like this: "Has it really been that long?" While I've been around for just a few years, it somehow feels longer to me. Either way, this day will be a momentous occasion for everyone. I'm sure there's going to be all sorts of real-life and internet celebrations going on.

About FREAKIN' time this has been posted on OCR. This is one of my favorite DoD tunes ever. I don't even need to praise the quality of production and excellent guitar playing all around...but I will. A very nice homage to such an awesome game soundtrack. I especially like the "hey, hey" vocal screams that tip off the digitized counterparts from the soundtrack itself. Keep on rocking, dudes. I'd like to see Danimal's awesome Galaxy Man track posted in OCR as a follow-up. Also, one teaser from Varia Suite for OCR, please. I recently ordered the CD with a T-shirt and it should be on its way soon.

Dead Space, eh? Might as well go for this one. I've played the original Pikmin. Did not like the 30 day time limit thing...which is why I enjoyed Pikmin 2 a lot more. This Wii port has modified controls and no time limit whatsoever...so it sounds enticing to go through again. Thanks for the suggestions, people. I was initially thinking to go for Spyborgs and FFIV DS but your comments might change my mind.

I recently caught up with an amazon.com offer at the end of October which states that buying specific games worth 80$ will net me 40$ off from my next game purchase...and here I am not knowing what to get exactly. I'm cut off between going for two 20$ games from the backlog or investing on one recent/upcoming game. If I'm going to go for one new/upcoming game, it'll either be the upcoming Zelda DS, Mana Khemia 2, Ninja Blade, Ratchet & Clank Future 2 (which is current 50$), Dragon Age, Final Fantasy The Crystal Bearers, or No More Heroes 2. If we're talking about some of the 20$ backlogs, I'm currently most interested in FFIV DS, Spyborgs Wii (surprisingly cheap), Dead Space PS3, Dragon Quest Swords Wii, Shieren the Wanderer DS, Away Shuffle Dungeon, House of the Dead Overkill, Pikmin [Wii Port], Prince of Persia PS3. What do you think, guys? One new game or two old ones? Feel free to suggest what games from that list I should get...or even if you have recommendations outside of my wishlist. Just reply as soon as you can before some of the prices change up.

Good video as usual. Great job in wrapping up such a big topic in under 10 minutes. Regarding that Fallujah game, people often forget about the suffering from the other side of the spectrum. I've been personally against this game because many Muslim civilians died in that battle as well in addition to the American soldiers. Nonetheless, you've made some very interesting points surrounding the controversy. Keep it up, man. I may highlight this video in a post for the site I work for soon.

Great stuff, you guys. Loving the different opinions here. Like I said in the first post, there's nothing really concrete when it comes to this simply because everyone's a critic. I do agree with The Vagrance on one thing; modern videogame soundtracks are rarely considered "excellent" compared to mainstream albums or even movie soundtracks because you're bound to hit a couple of "filler" and "throwaway" tracks. That's why I sometimes consider Game X to have great music if it contains 10 tracks that I love, give or take a few. Wow, Meteo...you hated Valkyrie Profile's music? That's weird. I fell in love with the soundtrack upon first listen. Glad you enjoyed it over time.

Great stuff and definitely one of the album's highlights. Faithful to the original material while adding some nice AnSo electronica flavor. Those hentai moans are creative and hilarious! I smiled and chuckled as soon as those entered the mix. Whose brilliant idea was that? Nice work, you two.

This can be obviously videogame-centric even though it applies to the music industry in whole. When do you consider a soundtrack to be "good"? This varies from people to people. I haven't really considered it until my friend brought it up one day during a discussion, mentioning that his personal bar is that 4-5 tracks need to be well-made in order for the full album to be a good one, regardless of the length of the album itself. When it comes to videogame music vs. mainstream soundtracks, it's sort of hard to apply the same logic since most videogame scores these days have multiple tracks that average 2 minutes in length...so it's a lot of content in short bursts. OCR's albums have lengthier tracks since they're remixes but not the whole soundtrack is essentially covered, so maybe those can fit under my friend's personal tastes. Regarding videogame music (not remixes), I usually find myself loving a soundtrack when there are about 10 or more tracks that I find addicting, as evident by my iTunes ratings. The reason I'm asking this is because I'm curious on how you people personally evaluate Music CDs and I'm trying to find my own way to consider a soundtrack to bad bad or good instead of depending on my friend's logic. This is a very subjective discussion of course...but don't be afraid to rant away. Another thing that made me write this topic is the recent release of Xenogears "Humans + Gears". I currently have strong mixed feelings about this one to be honest, divided right down the middle. Still not sure whether it's "good" or "disappointing" in my opinion. The effort is your typical OCR A++, but the direction with most of the tracks is sort of weird to me. You see, we have an interesting situation in evaluating OCR or game remix albums in general...especially if you're a fan of the material and you've handpicked a couple of personal favorites. What if most of your favorite tracks that have been remixed aren't your cup of tea at all, yet some of the other original tracks that you've initially under-appreciated are surprisingly well-made? That's basically my thoughts of Humans + Gears. I still need to listen more in order to formulate a full opinion.

So glad to see this project released earlier than expected. 2009 is indeed an active year for OCR! I pimped out the release for our game website here: http://www.projectcoe.com/blog/2009/10/19/humans-gears-xenogears-remix-project-released/ Now I simply need to listen to the material and write off a review or some impressions. As always, good work in pumping these things up, people. BTW, you guys are in Kotaku now so expect some insane traffic.

It's official: Sega of America caught on the news as well! http://blogs.sega.com/usa/2009/10/05/nights-fans-add-your-voice-literally-to-a-special-ocremix-project/ You're going to be getting a ton of voices, man. Keep that inbox empty!

I was extremely floored when I read the announcement. Definitely didn't expect Sparkster to make a return. Sadly, I didn't play through the whole series, just the SNES one, which I have fond memories of.

Yeah I actually caught wind of this news through Sega's twitter, so you're definitely starting a chain reaction here. I didn't even know that a NIGHTS projects existed in OCR. Yeah, I don't check the projects section much. Nice idea on the big collab. Props to OA for starting it out. Would be nice if all projects had something like this. Getting the NIGHTS community involved is also a pretty cool thing to do. I'm interested in trying out for the chorus once you have more details on the matter. Good luck!

Can't download the tracks for some reason. It says that the site's bandwidth has been exceeded.

I LOVE. A leaner, meaner, greener, and cleaner version of one of the coolest metal medleys ever (try saying that three times fast).

Lost Odyssey...one of my favorite soundtracks this generation and definitely one of Uematsu's finest. After a slump with Blue Dragon's soundtrack, I started to doubt the man. Glad he bounced back. Very interesting interpretation of Battlefield we got here. It's too electronic for my tastes (considering who we have collaborating here) but it's done well. My criticism is that there's just too much going on it's hard to get the source on your first couple of listens. Upon listening closer, the lead sound is a variation of the Lost Odyssey main motif (which is used in the original Battlefield). So that slight variation in addition to the drum work and electronica masks the source tune for me. Additionally, I don't think you used enough of "Battlefield" in the first place. The original track is extremely dynamic in structure, but the remix uses only a part of a source that's repeated for about 2 minutes. There's another part of Battlefield used towards the end as well. So in essence, the dynamic feel of the original is somewhat lost here...replaced with some repetitiveness in the first half of the remix. I do like the fact that some of the electronic samples of the remix remind me of what was used in other Lost Odyssey tracks (like the Capital of Uhra). Everyone's praising the drums, which is the highlight of the remix...I feel the same way too. Great stuff. Again, it's hard to appreciate the drum work at first because there's too much going on. Perhaps if the percussion was highlighted a bit more (more volume than the electronica). For me though, I loved that breakdown at 2:30. Definitely another highlight here. It gets good after that part too. In short, I feel that the other parts of the remix were underdeveloped in terms of structure in favor of some very solid percussion work. Either way, keep up the good work people. We need more Lost Odyssey music. Epsylon Range, anyone? I'd like to see a Sixto/AnSo/Skryp collab on that one!!

Nice, nice. Very chill. Great playing, recording, and improvisation on the original track...the guitar and piano compliment each other well throughout most of the track.

Vigilante's "Beneath the Surface" set an extremely high bar for this classic tune in my opinion. It's one of my favorite remixes and certainty one of OCR's finest works. Nonetheless, you guys manage to reach that bar with this remix of yours. Some truly excellent work here. Love the mixture of styles despite being a rock-centric band. Electronic background noises sound extremely haunting and manages to capture the spirit of the original track quite well. The rhythm and lead guitars are played well and compliment each other nicely. Nice keyboard playing as well. The overall progression of the track is also pretty cool. Very grunge rock in a sense that it starts off very moody and calm...the hits that climax mark at the third minute, which is epic!! Guitars around there are a bit drowned out, but I really appreciate the keyboards in that section. Love how the keyboards started out as classic piano, went all "organ" in the climax, then went back to classical toward the end. Keep it up, Monkey Kong. Keeping an eye on your work.

Sounds like virt to me. Either way, it's not that it makes him/her a worse person. Life gets in the way of things like this sadly.

Nice video. I enjoyed that montage of feelings. Reminds me of how I felt back then and also makes me wish that I played through the game with a friend or something. I kind of interacted with other friends back then and played through the bonus Weapon bosses with them...but never like what's seen in this video. I've been replaying FFVII in my PSP right now and it's still an excellent game. Haven't touched the game since I finished it the first time so I'm finding some of the scenes and areas interesting.

First off, thanks for releasing and managing this project, man. Must've taken awhile to get things straight. Thanks to all the remixers who participated in this as well. Going to download this in a bit. Even though I'm not a fan of the source material, I bet this stuff will be excellent. After all, Bound Together turned me into a huge fan of Earthbound music despite not being familiar with the original soundtrack in the first place. All that being said, I find it extremely weird that you're not treating it as a full-fledged project despite some solid work put into it. All this because of one medley from an "important remixer" which got delayed indefinitely. It's like the project itself and its success depends on this one medley track or something. I find the excuse for not releasing it "properly" weird. I don't want to put words into anyone's mouth, but this type of treatment might be offensive to the other remixers who put a lot of work into their tracks. Harvesting the solid tracks that made it in and trying to put the canceled stuff behind has always been done in projects like this. I mean...you can't win 'em all, right? So the least you can do is make a big deal out of the work put into the project and simply ignore everything else. I'm not saying you have to promote it like a madman, but your post makes me feel that this project is your illegitimate child or something. A basic website with tagged tracks is more than enough for a proper send off. I hope you don't take my criticisms as offensive, man. You managed "Bound Together" for crying out loud! What's the harm of hyping up this project the same way? I mean...this is good for people like us to check forums. I'm not demanding more. I just like to see a bit more hype going into the finished work for your own sake and the remixers attached to it. After all, those are some pretty big names there, right?

Very good topic. I'm trying to think of a game that applies to to this from the top of my head...only I can't exactly mention one from experience. Games that I usually go back to after years of not playing them remain masterpieces to me. Super Mario RPG, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, Wave Race 64, Zelda: The Wind Waker, Final Fantasy Tactics (PSP version) and most recently Final Fantasy VII have been really enjoyable games that are still awesome today in my case. Perhaps Final Fantasy VIII, Legend of Dragoon, Legend of Mana, Legend of Legaia, Lunar: Silver Star Story, and Donkey Kong 64 are games that I won't go back to anytime soon because I get the feeling that I won't enjoy them as much as I did years ago.