MindWanderer

Yep, this is pretty fantastic. There's not much to this source, so props for building it out into a full song that still clearly makes use of that source throughout. I didn't think it got excessively busy at any point--at several times, you have to choose where to focus your attention, but whatever you pay attention to, you can hear it just fine. I did think the dynamic range was a little too much, in that I found the quieter portions to be a little too quiet to hear well when I lowered the volume to the point where the louder sections weren't uncomfortably loud. It wasn't too severe, though, definitely not enough to hold this back. A great choice for the album mixflood. YES

The only reason I didn't list Battletoads is because there's no one near-impossible part. The hoverbike section was hard but not insanely hard, whether you went for the warp or not. I did beat the snake level, it was bad but not the worst, you just have to memorize the pattern. The wall-riding unicycle thing was the part I never did get past, although I also tried using cheat codes to start at the last level and could never beat that either.

Dang it, this would have been perfect for the CastleMania album. Wish I'd known this was in the pipeline. Oh well.

The April 15 check-in date has passed. Thanks everyone who submitted a WIP, and thanks also to the new signups! There's definitely been enough work to keep this project going. In fact, if all the WIPs get finished, that's probably enough for an EP quantity-wise; I'd just look for a few more to fill out the wrestling roster to make sure everyone has an opponent. Unfortunately, @WillRock and @DarkDjinn are MIA, so Death and The Creature are now available to claim. I've set the next check-in date as 3 months from now, July 15. At that time, I'd like everyone who recently signed up and hasn't given me a WIP yet (@HoboKa, @That Headband Guy, and @elenaiwilliams) to send me at least an early WIP, and everyone who's given me an early WIP (@Sbeast, Moire Effect, @ibeginwiththeendinmind, and @JonnyAtma) to send me some additional work. Thanks again to everyone! This is starting to look pretty good!

I'll echo Gario's comments here. I wouldn't say all the woodwinds are problematic, but the flute certainly is, and that's an issue given its prominence in the arrangement. But I'll also ding this on being somewhat static, with basically the same instrumentation and energy level throughout. There are some variations, but not many; almost everywhere it's flute, oboe, clarinet, usually tambourine, and occasionally harp, with the mandolin just in the intro and conclusion. It does get pretty fatiguing. And the conservatism is an issue as well. So, sorry, but I do look forward to hearing some more recent work from you! NO

I have a job and a kid and you'll pry my video games out of my cold dead hands. It might just be an hour or two a week, sometimes not even that, and a few minutes of Sentinels of the Multiverse or ALttP Randomizer on my phone, but if that's what I get, then I'll take it. My backlog of games I want to play before I die is probably long enough to last the rest of my life, even though I get more and more judicious about what I add to it.

I don't have almost anything to add to Gario's analysis, which is dead on. The slow attack on the rhythm guitars is OK by me, though I can see why some might object to it. I don't have the musical vocabulary to describe what I'm hearing at 0:54 and 2:14; normally I'd just defer to Gario on the matter, since he didn't like it either, but I don't hear the same issue in the source at all, so there's something different going on here. But anyway, yeah: high-end EQ, drum mixing, and reverb are the main issues which definitely need to be addressed. NO (resubmit)

Really? I only found one to be difficult, the "World's Hardest Puzzle." Never did finish it, but thankfully it was optional. But the worst optional puzzle I've ever seen is the one to get Bombada in Breath of Fire 2. It's an insane musical rhythm game that uses every button on the SNES controller and you only get one shot at it. You can reload your save, of course, but that's really slow for something you'd probably fail dozens of times. It's not that it was difficult, it was just grindy. The only way to heal the mechs is to use expendable items, so you have to burn through them even if you want to just go down there for some XP and money. Or you could grind elsewhere, where there's a shop inside a secret dungeon that sells the best equipment. And the final dungeon is so long, you end up having to go through a lot of repair items. Not to mention I wasn't terribly motivated to complete it, since one character is removed from the party until the final boss, so you can't level her up anymore, and I'd spent the last several hours doing scripted quests and losing the open world, so I couldn't go back and pick up the stuff I missed. It just wasn't fun anymore.

It's a simple interpretation, but the three passes through the source definitely show off different interpretations of it while also setting up an engaging progression. Does what it needs to do, and I don't see any reason not to post it. YES

I can't hear that glitch at 1:36 Gario mentioned (although I hear something like what he described several times at 2:00-2:10, and at 6:22), and overall levels seemed fine to me, but I can't argue with his comment about the static nature of the track. The ethereal backing only lets up a couple of times throughout the arrangement, so it gets quite fatiguing. It's only one issue, but it's a substantial one. Switch things up a few times to keep the arrangement interesting and I think this'll be fine. NO

I'll echo Gario's thoughts, for the most part. The thin soundscape and minor, additive changes make nearly the entire track sound like a build-up, but then instead of reaching a climax and bringing the main theme in, it either keeps dragging on or drops elements into more of a breakdown section. The one time it does break into the main melody, it's just a single melodic line added, with no change of energy, and doesn't at all live up to the build-up. In another genre, trance for instance, this type of progression might have worked well. As it is, it's just unsatisfying. Gario's details about how you might have arranged this in a more enjoyable manner are spot-on, so I'll just refer you to his comments above. NO

I never finished FFIII either, also gave up on the final dungeon. So long, so painful. Never even reached the boss rush, the dungeon was just that un-fun. Same problem with Xenogears and Breath of Fire II, never finished either because of the last dungeon. I put down Devil May Cry for a long time when I was near the end. I think the boss is called Nightmare, it's a big blob that sucks you in and makes you re-fight other bosses. There are tricks to beating it easily, but I didn't know them at the time, and at that particular point there's no access to red orbs to grind upgrades. Went back and beat it a year or two later, still no tricks but less frustrated. Final Fantasy X was the reverse for me--I beat the game, then a couple of years later, went back with the intention of doing the post-game. Unfortunately, none of it is fun. I actually liked Blitzball, so getting Wakka's ultimate weapon was OK, and Auron's was just lying around, but Tidus? Stupid impossible chocobo game. Kimahri? Stupid impossible butterfly game. Lulu? Stupid impossible lightning bolt game. I don't even remember the others, they were all awful. And grinding to upgrade weapons manually was insane. My favorite FF game for the story part, my least favorite for the optional stuff (except Blitzball).

It's tough to evaluate a "variations" piece, as it's deliberately broken up into distinct sections, which runs afoul of our "multiple songs stuck together" rule. I think in this case it is mostly effective at coming across as a stream of evolutionary changes. I think the first break (0:29-0:33) is also a smidgen long, with that 2:10 -2:16 one being quite a bit too long--again, nothing wrong with that for a traditional "variations" piece, but it's an issue vis-a-vis our standards. Since it's just the one transition out of five that's really problematic, and three that are perfectly fine, I'm OK with it as a whole. Production is fine, could be about 1dB louder without clipping, but it's not egregious, and the performance is excellent by any but the most stringent criteria. YES

I'm more in agreement with Gario here. The low-fi, mid-heavy EQ to pretend to be an old garage band recording is a cute gimmick, but it can be overdone, and it is so here. And that last section really does feel long and drawn out: with over a minute and a half of basically the same thing it feels very stale. The performance and concept are great, though, so please do send this back in! NO (resubmit)

I'll agree with Chimp in my turn. Everything she said about the production, the piano and viola expressiveness, and the strangely off-kilter drums is exactly what I'm hearing. The backing strings have some strange timing to them, too. I do like the creative approach to the melody, but the production and the percussion aren't doing it any justice. NO

The track does show up as 25:36 long for me in Clementine, and 8:26 in Music Player for Google Drive. I had to use Audacity to get correct timestamps. Re-encoding at a constant bit rate should resolve the issue. I agree that the main issue with this is the background effects, which indeed sound like white noise much of the time--clutter at best, distraction at worst. 39 seconds of carnival noise as intro is a bit much, too. They also cut out for half a second at 1:36. 2:10 is a seriously sour note, and the electronic game noises cause some clashing notes in the Mario section as well. I agree with Gario: Go with a shorter intro to set the stage, and use just a few carnival/crowd sounds interspersed judiciously at key moments, and definitely nothing tonal (game machines). I thought 1:53-2:09 was pretty good, though it would have been better without the horse sounds. I'd definitely like to see this get posted in some form, though. NO (resubmit)

Agreed that this is definitely hit-or-miss on the transitions. 1:48, 4:10, 5:40, and 9:46 were especially awkward; 3:03 and 7:52 were abrupt; 9:02 was also abrupt but worked pretty well anyway; and 4:48, 5:22, and 5:59 were pretty slick. It doesn't help that Marx's theme is kind of medley-ish all by itself, and your treatment exacerbates the differences between sections of it. I do agree that the middle (Heart of Nova and Gladiator Kirby) is very clever, and while I can live with a few awkward transitions, this is a lot of them. This doesn't sound like ten different songs stuck end-to-end, but it does sound like at least six or seven. Since that's explicitly against the submission guidelines, I don't think I can give this my vote. NO

"Top-heavy" is a good word, and a bit of an understatement IMHO; I felt like this was missing presence in the lows almost throughout, and not just because of the kick (although that contributed). It was fine in the middle at about 1:59-2:40 or so, but elsewhere the mix felt very thin. The busiest sections (1:29-1:52 and 6:25-6:52) sounded crushed up into the mids-to-highs; the individual instruments were each audible, but they all had a muffled sound to them. The clean guitar that started at 3:02 was better, but even it has a slight buzz to it, and it too gets more muffled as the mix goes on. I also wasn't a big fan of the quavering pads used throughout. It's a distracting texture that drew away from the other instruments, and it's quite unpleasant when exposed (e.g. around 1:55). It also eats up a lot of the spectrum and is contributing to everything else sounding muffled. I'm sorry, but to me this doesn't sound "crisp" at all, but thin, distant, and wet. Other than the exceptions I described above, it mostly sounds like I'm listening to it being played through a stereo on the other side of a wall. I like the arrangement, but I really don't think the production is as full and as clean as it should be. NO (resubmit)

I'm a bit more in favor of this than Larry was--there's a lot going on here that I think works really well, and I actually thought your use of the samples as instruments was pretty effective. However, it's also definitely true that the organ and the orchestra hits were really thin and not effective as lead instruments. The MIDI electric guitar wasn't much better. And the arrangement also does feel repetitive by the time you get to about the halfway mark, due to a general lack of variation in instrumentation, style, and melody. I definitely think this is worth pursuing, but for me, the leads need some attention and the arrangement modified to be more dynamic. NO (resubmit)

Agreed that the wetness isn't doing this any favors, and it's actually causing clashing notes in some places (e.g. 0:30-0:44). And I agree with Chimpz that the march-like beat doesn't always match the melody, the Zelda melody from 1:00-1:21 being the worst offender, when there's some nice varied pacing in the lead that just ignores what the percussion is doing. Still, most of this is a pretty great arrangement, and I don't think the issues are enough to warrant a rejection. Definitely not Alex's best work, but I'm still OK giving this a YES (borderline)

I can't argue with any of Gario's crits. I didn't feel the issue with the counterpoint at 1:04 was a big deal--it took me a couple of listens to hear it at all, since it's quite quiet and brief--but he's completely right about the balance and the piercing synth. The SFX starting around 3:25 are also in that discomfort zone for me. In addition, I heard clipping in a dozen or so places throughout the mix. The static at 1:27-1:31 sounds like a severe rendering error, even though it's clearly deliberate because of the way it ends. I'm also not sold on the change to the slow piano+violin section at 1:48-3:18. It's so dramatically different, so long, and comes with its own introduction, it doesn't really work as a breakdown, but rather sounds like a different remix stuck in the middle. The transitions themselves are fine, especially the one coming out of that section, but I don't feel like that section belongs in the same remix at all. I think the general concept could work, perhaps if you cut out most or all of 1:53-2:23 and made some changes to the backing to make it feel like part of the same song. There are a lot of individual elements that I do like, but I don't think it's just the production that's bringing this down, but that the arrangement could use another look-over as well. NO

Well, unless you do a really bad job of it. If your whole remix is a MIDI rip, the judges will usually call you on it (and most likely send you a form letter rejection). And there are a couple of MIDIs out there, and some sheet music, that make some recognizable changes from the original, but it's still OK to use those anyway, as long as you made plenty of changes of your own.

It definitely does drag, especially 1:53-2:53, which a whole minute of basically the same thing. That bass triplet plays nearly the whole time, and although the filters on it do change constantly, I found its character insufficiently changed to make it interesting. I would have loved for the changes at 3:30 to have been made at least a minute earlier. Still, there is a lot to like here. The composition is indeed interesting, and production is fine. Some more dramatic shifts would have been greatly appreciated, but I don't think it's quite enough to keep this from being a YES (borderline)

I thought the volume on the SFX was just fine, although some of them are unclear what they're supposed to be--some sound like cap-guns, not even really like the old-timey fake gun sounds. Otherwise, I don't have any complaints. Lots of fun and well-executed. YES

The static arrangement is definitely a downside, but I'm not sold on the production, myself. There isn't a whole lot of presence in the low end, and I find that when the bass, rhythm guitar, and lead guitar are all playing at once, there's some definite crowding going on. I can rarely hear both the bass and the rhythm guitar clearly at the same time when the lead guitar is playing. At 1:41, when the vocals are added and the lead returns, it gets even more crowded, and only the lead guitar, the vocals, and the percussion come through clearly--the bass is there, but it's muddy and periodically inaudible, and I can only hear fits and spurts of the rhythm guitar. The intro is also a little on the quiet side, especially the snares--I can't set my volume anywhere that I can hear the intro clearly but the rest isn't uncomfortably loud. I don't think this is far off, but I do think it really does need another pass at the EQ before being posted. NO (resubmit)