MindWanderer

Richter Belmont is yours, sir!

Cue fan art of Link flying the Vic Viper? That influence definitely shone through, and it's a great interpretation. I never played Gradius III, but I definitely got the feel of the original Gradius (and not a little bit of Timothy's "There's Nothing Like Flying"). I don't have any real criticism here--this is a fantastic and completely original take on the source that absolutely deserves the front page treatment. YES

Despite Lemon's trademark chippy goodness, this is a bit of a departure for him. It seems a little more conservative and less whimsical than his usual efforts, bouncing back and forth between the source's dark tones and his usual upbeat ones. It also repeats the main hook of the source 7 times, granted in a different way every time, but to me it felt like it was getting old. That said, I don't have any significant objections to this as a whole, certainly nothing that makes me doubt that it's worthy of a mixpost. It's still fun, production is still fine, and it's plenty creative. YES

Pretty cool and interesting. Great musicianship as always from these guys. There sounds like there's some distortion going on in the louder section from 1:44-2:47, especially in 2:05-2:26. I don't know what's causing it or how to describe it any better; perhaps another judge can be of more help there. The high notes from 2:27-2:32 were pretty shrill and loud, definitely outside my comfort level. I'm going to hold off on my vote for now to see if another judge can pick up and comment on that distortion. It bothers me a lot but I'm having a tough time putting my finger on exactly how or why. Update: The distortion bugs me but it's not worth holding this back if it doesn't bother anyone else. And I know I'm more sensitive to extremes of dynamic contrast than most. I can get behind posting this. YES

That's a pretty tall order. I assume you mean the lead singer, Amy Lee? She's pretty fantastic. Lots of oomph in that voice that not many women can match. I don't know who's actively available for collabs, but you can use our workshop tool to start off with. A star in the left column means they're a posted remixer, and the star is a link to their profile. You could try Claire Yaxley; she does a lot of collabs and her voice is pretty darn close. Most of the others would be singing more outside their comfort zone to match that, but some might be up for the challenge.

Yeah, I don't think this is Rebecca's finest work, but it gets the job done. There's some random percussion which kept throwing me off (e.g. 2:13, 2:45). I felt the backing strings and general atmosphere were a little static, so I did begin to lose interest by the end. But it's still a strong arrangement overall. YES

Beautiful soundscape. One of your best in that respect. There are a bunch of small things that seem off, though. The sitar run at 0:09 seems off-key, as do the chimes at 0:37-0:45. The swells on the violins are pretty mechanical and a little slow; starting from 1:26 is a noteworthy example. 2:11-3:13 is a little muddy--lots going on here that's conflicting with each other, especially the koto, which becomes very buzzy. The koto is also pretty mechanical in that section. While I would love to see those things improved, I don't think they're quite dealbreakers, even collectively, and there's a lot here that I like. YES (borderline)

I have to admit the radar noise does break the immersion. It could have been a lot more subtle and still usable. Mailed my left joy-con in for repairs today. Hopefully they can get it back to me quickly, before I go into Zelda withdrawal. I had to save and quit at an awful point--I just found the Forgotten Temple and enjoyed the pleasant surprise you get once you walk fully inside. Spent entirely too many of my final hours trying and failing to farm horn fragments--getting close enough and then getting the shot exactly right is pretty tough, and time-consuming. Edit: Never mind, Amazon got the pro controllers in stock (finally), and I snagged one before they ran out, so I'll only be without a controller for two days. Looks like they still have some, for the moment, but not ready to be shipped out until the end of the week. Also, I finally encountered significant lag: found a Bokoblin tower with mini-towers all around, all armed with bomb arrows. All those explosions dropped my framerate to a couple of frames per second for a little while there.

I do like the calm approach and the instrumentation, but I found this arrangement to be fairly static. The percussion and pacing don't vary very much at all. Other than the addition of the flute halfway through, the arrangement is mostly subtractive, switching things up just by removing elements. I found myself losing interest despite the short length. The flute solo at 2:16-2:38 was nice, for then devolved into melody-free grooving. Production was fine, so I don't think this is too far off, it just needs a little less on-rails grooving and a little more variety IMHO. NO (resubmit)

It's a little dirty, and a little loud, but it's thrash, so that's not unreasonable. Arrangement is pretty awesome, I didn't think it was too liberal by any means: there's lots of original content, but Sam's breakdown matches up with what I hear, and adds up to over 50%. For all his self-deprecation about production skills, I don't have any problems with this as it stands. Nice work! YES

Not sure I'd call this trance, it doesn't have the long grooves I usually associate with that genre, but it is an interesting arrangement, cool mix of chiptune and chiptune-ish synths. Despite the loud, gritty bass, I didn't have any trouble hearing the individual lines. The FF8 breakdown in the middle was an elegant touch, I didn't realize what I was listening to at first, with how well it blended in. Fun stuff all around. YES

Fun facts: Netflix is producing an original miniseries based on Castlevania III. We currently have claims (and one WIP) for three of the four protagonists of Castlevania III: Trevor, Grant, and Alucard. The one hero from the game we don't have a claim for is Sypha Belmades. Sypha's theme is "Mad Woods." I still don't have someone to do a tribute to gamer/wrestler Xavier Woods. Xavier Woods has several very different theme songs, which include rap, funk, and dubstep. One of the few to have a purely electronic theme song. Surely someone can step up to this obvious challenge?

I didn't hear the original version, but I don't have any concerns here with production or speed. Performance seems good, arrangement is a nice, fleshed-out take on a humdrum source. Works for me. YES

Nice and smooth. I'm glad you submitted this; it has more fun with the melody than any other Aquatic Ambiance remix I've heard before. The piano is pretty mechanical, but it's not a dealbreaker for me despite how prominent it is, and I don't have any other concerns. I can see other judges maybe having an objection to it, but I have no problems giving this a YES

The key word is "gradually." Streaming services do this. I don't know of any standard software that applies any kind of volume standardization to a plain ol' playlist of MP3's. As such, we have to make certain guesses as to how loud a track should be in comparison to similar music that exists, not only on OC ReMix, but elsewhere in the general market. We're pretty tolerant, on the whole: unless a track has a lot of unused headroom, or is distorted, pumping, or clipping, we're likely to be OK with it (although there's certainly some subjectivity involved, as NutS and Rozo said).

There are some nice ideas here, but this is a very static arrangement. The percussion and pads are on auto-pilot for long periods of time, and the general pacing and energy level are unchanged throughout the whole thing. There's no precise repetition, but there are several sections that vary from each other in only small ways (e.g. 0:31 and 2:04, 1:02 and 2:43). I think this needs more variety in terms of pacing and approach to hold interest for its duration. NO

Awesome, you got it! Also, Flameing Daeth Fearies had to drop their claim on the CastleMania theme song (Vampire Killer), so that's up for grabs. Needs to be a kickass track with vocals, though (rap is an option).

Team Knight - Shovel Power (Shovel Knight vs. Tinker Knight).mp3 Team Robot - Lonely Cosmic Workshop - (Saturn vs. Tinker Knight).mp3 Team Knight - Ghost in the Machine (Specter Knight vs. Tinker Knight).mp3

I'm putting my round 4 reviews here since the voting thread for that one is just for votes. Armor Medley: Well, it's a piano medley. Does what it says on the box. Almost no integration of themes here, pretty much just three piano covers end-to-end. Lonely Cosmic Workshop: Nice integration of the sources. Severe overcompression, though, and the levels could definitely use some work. Could do without the fake orchestral instruments. Overall, though, this definitely hits the main design goal of the compo. Shovel Power: There's a certain deliciousness in using 80's synths to remix a game designed to emulate 80's game aesthetics. Other than some odd harmonies a little atypical for the genre, I don't have any substantial crits here. Fun stuff! Not So Deviant Ballade: Lots of clashing notes, and the various instrumental lines don't sound like they're integrated in any meaningful way. The vanilla saw lead and the overcompression aren't doing this any favors, either. Ghost in the Machine: As much as I hate cliche titles, you could hardly have chosen a different one here! Accompaniment is frequently off-key. More vanilla leads, but at least it's a couple of different ones. Tinkering on Pluto: A very static arrangement. Instrumentation and beats hardly vary at all after the melody kicks in. Heavily crowded in the mid-highs, making the instruments very hard to distinguish from one another. Seems like some lengthy sections are repeated wholesale.

Battle to the Grave: This is full of seriously clashing notes. Timing seems out of sync in a lot of places, too--part of this is due to a lead with a really slow attack, which is really obvious with some of the quick notes that never get the chance to fully form. I'm having a hard time picking out Mercury's theme, but that's not surprising given that what I can hear of Spectre Knight's theme is greatly distorted. The Siege of Venus: Pretty slick concept here to start off with. The jazz works better than after Wandering Travelers starts, though--it tries to be big band, but it's a small band. Panning is also unbalanced--it makes sense to have instruments have a "place" in the audio space, but that can become an issue when all the instruments playing at a particular time at a particular frequency range are on one side. The arrangement was just Venus->Wandering Travelers, no integration between them, and even the genre changed. Four Against One, Sounds like Fun: Interesting take on Wandering Travelers, focusing on the late part of the song. Arrangement is pretty good, mostly the usual production issues here--balance, overcompression--which are secondary concerns for this compo and can always be fixed given time.

Review time! El Polar Enker: This is kind of a textbook example of a static arrangement. There are only two leads, the guitar and the piano, and their thin and artificial character makes them sound very similar to each other. The percussion is a simple loop that's varied very little from beginning to end, and there's very little other accompaniment; the Enker section has some mid-range piano playing a simple loop, and that's about it aside from an extremely quiet bass. As for source usage, it's a straightforward A-B-A pattern, which works but isn't very striking. Arctic Robot Dance Party: A good effort at integrating two sources that don't lend themselves to integration in any obvious way. Some good ideas here, although vanilla synths and simple beats do bring it down somewhat. Some of the transitions are a little awkward, and the ending is a little abrupt. King of the Kuiper Belt: I had a very hard time identifying the source usage. On the second listen, I caught some suggestions of both themes, but they're really far afield. Nice approach with the style, although there was an awful lot of the organ lead that could have been switched up a little. Bass and highs were both a little light. Pridemoor Cat: Not bad at all! A little slow and repetitive, but it's trance. There's an odd effect in the first main section and again at the end where the lead is pushed back a little, which almost works, except that the mid-low arp is supposed to fill in the pauses in the Pluto theme, but isn't quite beefy enough to pull it off. I was worried about a simple A-B-A arrangement here, but then you started doing the layered thing, and it worked really well! It was kind of disappointing when that section ended, since it was easily the best part and there was a full minute left. Solid approach overall though. Fellow Knight: Odd how this gradually grows less melancholy and more trancey as it goes, until the end when it reverses. The lead is a little static, but it's a good arrangement. Nice, if brief, layering of the sources.

I just listened to @mikedm92's WIP, and it's pretty freaking good. And he claimed his track less than 2 months ago, setting a great example for the rest of y'all. The deadline to get a WIP in is less than a month away, so please get me something! I've only got two near-complete tracks so far, but they're both stellar and I don't want them to go to waste (though of course they can always be submitted to the site as normal).

I can pretty much quote-vote Gario here. Very unusual but effective harmonies; I can see why Gario liked them even though they're surprising to the untrained ear. Vocals are a little overly fakey, especially the one at 0:19 with its mechanical vibrato, and the baritones sound tuned just a hair below their natural range. The ending is just a little overly drawn-out, but that's just getting nitpicky, and I don't really have any other criticism. Beautiful work. YES

Lovely, emotive playing, and some inspired variations on the source. If Ganondorf's mother played this for him, though, I'd suspect that she was foretelling his tragic future, as this is extremely mournful. Now I really want to see a reverse Zelda game told from the point of view of Ganondorf's life story. It does get a little repetitive with the main refrain, especially 1:24-1:50, but I don't feel like it quite goes over the edge. The style is quite static, and I do think the guitar especially could have been varied more--I hear some very small variations in it but mostly it seems to be an autopilot the whole time except 1:48-2:11 when it takes a break. The violin playing isn't perfect, but I think that actually works well here. It's suitably humble but good enough. I'm not a big fan of that ending--it almost fades out, but then does actually end before fading all the way out. I don't have the ear to be able to tell if that's you naturally playing quieter and quieter or if the fade-out was done in your DAW, but if the former, it was overdone, and I don't think the latter is a good idea at all. If it had just gotten maybe half as quiet before closing out, I think that would have been more conclusive without changing the atmospheric intent. All in all, I don't think there are any major issues holding this back. I wouldn't mind seeing a little bit more to hold the audience's interest for the duration, but then it is supposed to be a lullabye, which is supposed to put you to sleep. Otherwise I consider this a rousing success (pun intended). YES

Very nice approach, with the string trio married to ethnic folk accompaniment. The soundscape is a little thin, partly out of necessity given this approach, but the cello in particular could have had a bit more presence, and the bass a bit too. Fade-out endings are almost always a cop-out, and even though it works better here than in most cases, it also shatters the illusion of an intimate live performance. Even an abrupt ending would have been better. Otherwise, I don't have much to add. This does pretty much exactly what was intended, with strong instrumental performances and a lovely, creative arrangement. YES