Gario

If what he wants is something that's more coverish then it's well within his right to vote accordingly. It's a competition with a public voting system, there's no right or wrong way to vote. That being said, MindWanderer, if you post a public review on something and scrutinize people for subjective details that they may not agree with (what you consider too little source is one such detail... though surprisingly I agreed with your review on my track on that point) expect people to respond defensively. Remixers take reviews quite seriously, so when they hear something that doesn't ring right with them they will respond accordingly.

I saw this a little while ago and was very revved up about it. I love homages to old NES gaming like this. I'mma beta testing this mofo.

Asking for a Mega Man remix? Pretty damn high.

Oh hey, Guitarheroe is joining us in this compo, after all. Awesome.

Multiple puns abound... While the first thing that came to mind for me was Bach, other people might be thinking of less appropriate things. Almost certain that he was going for both, there.

Very similar production quality among most of them (e.g. excellent), so the compo is probably going to be decided on style and arrangement quality. Just the way I like it.

That's a shame - I would've been looking forward to both of their remixes.

Well, the theme is pretty sweet this week... unfortunately I'm out of town, this time around visiting family, so I won't really have an opportunity to work on it. Sir_Nutz or Prophet will need to take this one, I think. And yeah, I changed a vote after giving a thorough listen to everything, sorry if that caused any problem.

Maybe he WASN'T Wily the whole time...?

Do as you feel is best for the project. I really like the soundtrack, personally, and will get to it sometime, but right now I'm unable to commit to it, just yet, due to soon-to-be-released album tracks that I need to polish up. If you want to open my track up in the meantime, though, I won't be offended or anything - after all, I haven't exactly put out for you, as of yet.

If the bill passes and Anonymous attacked various governmental institutions to attempt to get them to repeal it then I suspect most people would call that cyber-freedom-fighting.

OH GOD, NOT THE BEES! OH GOD NO! - Mega Man vs Hornet Man

Most appropriate post in this thread ever. I would die a happy man if someone made a Hornet Man remix using this name. *Ahem* I'm in another insomniac spout, so may as well use that time wisely (y'know, aside from actually working on remixes). The Root of All Things: Lots of cool harmony switch up in the beginning of the piece - mixing in Wily and Plant Man in that way is very interesting and fun. The instrumentation was well placed, but the realistic instruments were a bit dry, overall. The electronics fit in quite well. Listening to everything again with some fresh ears, I think I'll put you on my list, here (I hope DS doesn't mind me changing my votes before the voting period is up). I don't think the production is 100% up to par with a few other pieces on here, but the arrangement is quite awesome. Wily's Inferno: Big orchestra. I thought the complete change of pace was welcome, myself - I'd rather listen to some very different renditions of the same source than listen to interpretations that were close to the same, pacing-wise. Then there's Napalm Man (a robot master that I'd love to get my hands on someday). Willrock's wankery is always a welcome addition. I'll agree that the arrangement is often in the realm of 'Wily, then Napalm, then Wily', but there are small transitional tricks that you mesh the two tracks together with that still keep it interesting. Toward the end when they're all together... while I think arrangement-wise it worked great, I didn't feel the timbres coming together that well. It sounded like two different songs just getting mashed rather than a song coming together. Doesn't take this one down much, though - overall it still earns a solid spot in my list. Attracted to Power: Gario is a sexy beast. That is all. Mr. X was Wily the WHOLE TIME: Love the title, and found the key change to be pretty neat, actually. Almost Arabian, even. It does generate some strange sounds from time to time, though. The guitar soup bugs me a bit, and the dry sampling could've been better with some reverb, at least. It's not the top of the crop, but I still enjoyed it. Smooth Heat: I like the beginning... and with that echoing fifth in the background, that's saying something. The hollow feeling evokes Heat Man quite well. The plan, uninteresting rendition of Wily after that, though, leaves me feeling 'meh'. The Heat Man arrangement was pretty sweet, though, using the Wily harmonies like that. The arrangement overall, though, takes more of a 'Wily, Heat Man, Wily' approach, which gets pretty boring. I like interaction when it's there, so the lack of it in general takes it down a notch or two, in my opinion. The drums stand as being pretty dry, while the instruments for most of the track (save for the beginning) sound boring. Glacial Ice: ... I like this track. Call me crazy, but it actually evoked a very chilling image of Cold Man and Wily. Not what I was expecting to hear in the compo, at all, actually. Frankly, that synth in the background is just really cool. After a while I feel it loses it's direction, though - in the beginning I heard quite a bit of interplay with the themes, but in the middle it seems to lose it's way a bit. It comes together in the end, at least. Not the best, and I can easily see why others might not catch onto it, but I thought it was pretty neat, myself. Light Your Way: Fun fact - Glacial Ice is the perfect opening to this track; I honestly didn't catch the transition. Almost like it was planned (and if it was, it was brilliant). Taken on it's own salt, this track has a lot of punch, and some tasteful sequenced acoustic guitar. The arrangement has a bit of that 'Wily, Flash, Wily' problem, though - would like to see more interplay in your next submission. The instruments are pretty sweet, but they seem to create some high-end clash (especially with those crashes). Nice work overall, though. Far From Home: People seem to love the blast from the past stuff... personally I think the genre ranges from meh to just alright. The singing is excellent, though - I can't possibly fault you with that. The gated 'Oooh's were cool, by the way - worth enough for it's own comment. I'm hearing 'Cold Man, Wily, Cold Man' in this mix, though it works alright in this case as transitions to the chorus and verses. I can't really complain about much with this song; technically it comes together very well. It just doesn't ring too much in my mind - personal preference has a place in my voting, too. Love ya, but this one doesn't do it for me much. Shadows of Wily: Fuzzy guitar. Wish I could hear that organ with Shadow Man a bit better there - there was some decent interplay in the beginning, there. I like what you did with the synth work and guitar work, overall, but the mixing seems to play it safe a bit too much, and thus nothing sticks out very much. A bit too much Wily in this one and not enough Shadow Man, which makes me sad since when you DO use Shadow Man it's actually very well done. I liked it nonetheless, though. Whatever.jpg: Always sad to see a fallen comrade - sorry you had to drop out of the compo. The piano is a nice change of pace in the string of rock/electronic mixes we've been getting in here (of which I'm as guilty as anyone of contributing). I like the jazzy effects you've got going in there, and really appreciate how tasteful Wily sounds in this context. Bubble Man, when he's there, sounds pretty neat too. Not a bad piece, considering the time constraint you were under. No Ticket!: More titles should end in an exclamation point. It just makes them punch you in the face that much harder - much like this song does. Glitchy train, very hard hitting synths, great Charge Man action... I'm loving it, here. Those pads are detract from the track quite a bit (0:56, for an example of them), but when they're not there, it has some of my favorite arrangement and sound design. I thought the interplay between not only the two songs, but the theme of a train was used excellently, in this. Because of the awesome stuff you do in this, I can't help but give you my vote... I would like to hear those pads changed out sometime, though. Gated explosion, for the win. Glitch in the System: Starts out promising, with those deep sounds and drums. The heavy side chaining is quite distracting, but otherwise not bad, with the glitched waves and sounds. Nice parody of Zero Wing in there, for good measure, too. Wily's theme sounds... strange, though. Off beat, and out of tune - if this was intentional (a glitch in the system, indeed) then it doesn't work for me as a listener. I'm also missing interplay between the themes completely... which leads me to believe that this was just a work in progress. It sounds like it has potential, but it feels incomplete, as it stands. And that's my thoughts on the tracks. I personally thought this round was quite enjoyable. Let's see what next round brings to the table!

Personally, I think the dubstep in this track is sex. It's one of those genres that really suck when don't wrong and really shines when done right, and I think you've done it right, here. I think there's some crowding in the highs, though, especially at 2:16 when that trance lead comes in with the tweaked squares. Using a high pass on the squares when that instrument comes in might give you the room that you need. At 0:59, 1:07, 1:12 & 1:18 the harmony strikes sound... off. Check your chords there and compare them to the source, since they're not ringing right in my ears. Also, while this is very nitpicky, the piano at 1:20 just seems too dry and clean for this track. Everything else is so damn dirty, don't be afraid to throw some sonic mud on it, as well. I'm also going to throw out that this song doesn't sound finished. While it does an awesome job of running through the source in as interesting a way as possible... it only makes a single pass through it. Returning to material from earlier helps tie a track together and close it off properly, so I suggest extending the song a bit with some of the older material from the source to close it off properly. Otherwise, very sexy. I really like the effects and overall soundscape. I hope this crit helps get you through the panel.

Eep, I missed the update, sorry. Bass is much better, arrangement is as sexy as usual. I think the half phased square is a little on the 'clipping' edge, but a small volume tweak would fix that pretty easily. The trance lead is a bit vanilla, too, but I think you can get away with it. When the phased square + trance lead come together, though, it creates a little bit of a sonic mess. Sorry I didn't catch it before. That's it. I see this as a great track, otherwise.

Agree'd - great title. The song is pretty sweet, too - I love the arrangement choices, in this, too. Very awesome use of chiptunes, neat glitching, solid beat. If I were to drop some critique (which is what I tend to do), I'd say the beat was a little too consistent for it's own good. Maybe it's a part of the genre, I dunno, but it just got old after five minutes of it. A couple more breakdowns would help considerably, or possibly the addition of a breakbeat in a section or two to change it up at least a little. Your call - that's just how I feel about it. IF you wanted to sub this to OCR then the vocal clips would probably need to go, as awesome as they are. Site policy is not to accept material from licensed sources, so you'd get nailed on it. That's if you wanted to submit, though - that's up to you (I personally could see this as having a shot, given you take the voices out and vary the drums a bit more). Love the untz. Keep it coming.

Oh yeah, forgot about that clause. Oops. Well then parody away, PETA. I thought the bloody Mario image was funny enough where I approve of it, anyway.

Actually I thought it was kind of funny. Stupid, but funny. I don't think Nintendo will approve of the use of their character like that, though - can't PETA get sued for intellectual property infringement for something like this? I would've thought that they'd be smart enough not to toy with the biggest VG company's biggest icon like that. Then again, this is PETA we're talking about.

Probably some effect, but not in the way you're thinking. There are two ways of valuing an item - one for it's monetary worth and another for it's actual function. If a barb item can get you a hold of a monk item, as long as the other person can use the barb item s/he'll probably still trade. Real money can add a different perspective to trading (which means you'll have a possible alternative edge, when bartering), but overall if someone would have made the trade when real money wasn't involved it's likely that they'd make the trade when each item has some monetary value. Beside that, not everyone is going to know the value of every randomly generated item. They won't look at a rare drop and think 'Well, I could probably fetch 2-5$ for this on the auction house'. Remember, in a game like DIII, if it's anything like DII there will be a lot of items that are great drops for somebody (I'm talking about a 5-1 ratio per character on a given server, to give a conservative estimate). That means with a player base of a million (and THAT is a conservative estimate, to say the least) there would be about 5 million great items that people would want to trade/sell to other people - and that's assuming that each person only makes one character (which isn't even conservative - that's probably just going to be incorrect). At best, most items will be in the micro transaction range (>1$ - 2$, maybe), if a person wants to make money off their items, and THAT'S assuming that a person can even find a price for a randomly generated item on the auction. Sure, there will be those one-of-a-kind items that'll fetch ridiculous amounts of money every once in a while... but again, looking to Diablo II as a model, those items are astronomically rare (think something like literally 1/1,000,000 chance to drop from only the top tier baddies, like Nihilithak and Baal - with 300% MF). So yes, there will be items that are expensive on the Auction House that you will NOT want to trade for an item, the law of averages says that you will likely never see those items legitimately drop so that's almost a non-issue. I suspect that it'll have less effect on ingame trading than you'd think. Thinking about this, though, I'm wondering if Blizzard will incorporate Hardcore into this game. I'm really hoping that they do, but looking at this marketing model I think Hardcore would be counter-productive to this style of marketing. Who would want to buy an item for a character that could be lost forever in the next game s/he is in?

Poor Suzu . Unfortunately the market is a a point where it's perfectly justifiable to have online-only games, though, so people who simply can't get online access will be SOL. From a business point of view, that model is genius. Frankly, I could actually see myself doing that - my brother paid for his DII set back in the day with a shitty drop that someone was willing to pay 50$ for. People do this already, whether others like it or not, so incorporating it into the game and pocketing some of the revenue for yourself is brilliant. From a player's point of view... you can just ignore it, if you really don't like it. From my experience playing DII (which is a bit more than it should be... so many hours lost...) it's a perfectly playable game when you run it 'pure' (that is, without any hacks, outside assistance or hand-me-down drops). I am curious, though, whether or not they'll have a 'soulbound' process - that would work both for and against their market system. I personally am hoping for a non-soulbound system (or one which allows the item to at least be passed between characters on the same account), but we'll see what they do. If they already announced what they're doing... then it shows how much attention I've been paying Great video, as usual.

I saw this one in the rejection thread and was very curious about it - I'm glad you've decided to put it up in the WIP forum . Very appropriate style change - I think that'll make this great source more listenable to the general audience (let's face it - while TWEWY has an incredible soundtrack it does tend to lose a lot of people with it's J-pop style). As the J's said, great style choice. I like the instrument choices, but the guitars are all mixed up in the same sonic area, causing all the muddiness. One trick that guitarists use to spread the guitar sound better is to take the rhythm guitars and left & right pan them. It thickens the sound and gives some room in the center of the mix for the vocals/bass/drums to shine. Right now I think the arrangement is pretty good - I suspect you worked it through before posting it up here? There's a lot of nifty little changes that you made which leads me to believe that the arrangement should now pass, no problem. While the voice is actually a great one for this genre, I still agree with the judges when it comes to the intonation issues. A little autotune won't hurt too much, here, but it would be ideal if you could be more precise when you strike the notes. One of the things that makes bands like Offspring work with this style is that while they have a neutral, almost speech-like timbre (much like your voice), they tend to be pretty accurate with their intonation. If it's tricky to keep the intonation accurate with the decorations you sprinkle in there, consider singing the song straight - intonation is important enough where if you can't keep it together with the decorations then you should drop the decorations altogether. Notice that I didn't ask you to find a different singer, though - I actually can't imagine a better voice for this song. You just need to get the intonation down, since that will still nail you come the next panel process. I hope this helps you get this to a postable state - we really, REALLY need some TWEWY remixes on this site, and this would be a great mix to satisfy that need with.

84$? Alright, I'm there.

Last post on theory... Melodic minor is not harmonic minor, no. Sorry, I wasn't clear - I meant harmonic as in a vertical interval (as those you find in chords) and melodic as in a horizontal interval (as one you'd find between two notes in a melodic line). I can see where it was confusing, though

To clear up the theory, when you raise the 7th and keep the 6th lowered in minor (pretty much defining 'Harmonic Minor'), the interval between the 6th and 7th is an augmented 2nd. It's called 'Melodic' because you normally hear it when playing the scale sequentially rather than when it's in a chord (it sounds like a minor third, when in a chord). That gives harmonic minor it's 'exotic' sound, but sometimes sounds a bit grating, too. I personally liked it in "Mr. X Was Dr. Wily THE WHOLE TIME", though - it gave it an interesting feel.