MindWanderer

Huh. You can actually understand the nephews now, though not Donald. They're voiced in a very modern manner, very like all the other cartoons out there right now. Neither they nor Webby sound like kids at all. Not saying that's a bad thing, just an interesting change that'll take some getting used to. The art is completely different from that teaser image as well as the original show.

I've played both, and granted, while the trailer isn't heavy on details, superficially it seems to resemble Advance Wars more. I don't see anything resembling the hero/RPG element that defines Fire Emblem. In other news, it appears that Friend Codes are back, and are at least temporarily the only way to add friends. Not that you can actually do anything with friends right now. Guess we'll need another one of those "Friend Codes in First Post" threads.

Mmm, I can definitely taste the fake Willrock here. He would probably have hammed it up much more, especially in 2:39-3:00, but overall, mission accomplished. Just a little chippier than what he usually does, getting that genuine NutS flavor in. There are a couple of strange notes scattered around, but otherwise I have no real criticisms. Looking forward to seeing this on the front page! YES

Congrats! The music in the trailer sounds great! Not sure about the game, though--looks like like a fantasy Advance Wars, which I've had enough of at the moment. Have to admit, that's a pretty good lineup. Even though most of them are on PC as well, here's where the Switch's portability is a plus. And the promise of handheld PC's, like the Smach Z, has yet to be fulfilled. Might pick up some of those when I'm more caught up on my 3DS games.

Looking at that breakdown, I was immediately worried that this would end up being a medley. It's not a medley per se; it does revisit elements to create a feeling of continuity, but it does jump around jarringly in places. By the time it reaches Cloud Spires for the first time, it's feeling very medley-ish, having done what sounds like 4 sources in sequence at that point. And even though it's technically part of the same section, and it comes straight out of the source, the piano part of the Lab felt very out-of-place, since it replaces multiple instruments. The soundscape is also muffled a bit, lacking a little bit in the low end and more than a little in the highs. There's a lot to like here--in fact, I don't think there's a single section I don't like in isolation, although it could stand to sound less muffled. And l like the idea of hitting those four themes sequentially and then bringing them all back together, but I don't think it works well in practice because it takes too long to get there, and because the transitions between sections are too abrupt. If you could smooth those out by changing fewer elements all at once, and maybe introduce some of the layered motifs earlier, I think this would be okay. And it's close now, but as it is, I'm leaning towards a NO (borderline, resubmit)

I already checked this out for the project, and this is an improved version. The low pass that was on the last version has been lightened up quite a bit, adding some life without changing the melancholy mood. It could probably stand to be tweaked further in the same direction, but I don't think it's enough of an issue to hold this back. It's a creative interpretation that stands on its own, more great work from Eino. YES

I'm drowning in the cheese! Ivan and Chuck clearly had a ton of fun with this, and it's downright infectious. I love the solos, and the extra melodic elements added onto the original's simple pads and arps add considerable dimension. There's a little bit of frequency conflict in places (e.g. 1:41-1:52), but it's minor. Singing is slightly flat at a few moments, but in this silly mix, I think it's fine (especially in contrast to the massively autotuned original). Let's get this posted and bring some smiles. YES

Which pokemon's cry is that, anyway? I couldn't identify it, and I didn't catch it with a quick listen through all the original 151 cries, either.

You might say that you've had trouble striking the balance between too conservative and too different when it comes to VGM arrangements, but this time you absolutely nailed it. The melody is clearly there, but the change from mellow cinematic to symphonic rock is substantial, and a fantastic decision. I would have liked to have heard more from the chorus guitar, which added a lot of character and couldn't really be heard at all the third time it comes around. That makes me wonder if there are other details I'm missing, since I wouldn't have even known that was there without the breakdown, but I like what I can hear. Otherwise, I don't really have much to add--this is really solid. The accompanying cosplay is really great, too. YES

I didn't hear the original version of this, but other than the recording/mixing comments from last time--although it's really quiet for most of its length--the criticisms from then still hold up with this new version. Taking a source that's just pads and using its chord progression to create something that isn't just pads is too far of a stretch to call source usage. There's still very little direction in most of the first half. The segment Larry thought "was performed too loosely and with too much dissonance" can still be described so. The new sections are indeed an improvement, for the most part, but it's not enough. 2:47-3:35 was pretty good, though long-winded. 3:35-4:20 was performed very loosely again, and isn't clearly tied in to the source. This is a real challenge you've set for yourself here, with two minimal sources and a liberal approach to interpretation. I'm not 100% convinced it can be made to work at all, and even if it can, it's going to be tough. I definitely don't think it's there yet. It still needs more source connection, slightly smoother performance (although here, you should definitely err on the side of too loose rather than too precise), and more constrained dynamics. NO

Review time! For Hope and Shovelry: Oh, man, going after Gario on his electronica home turf? That takes guts, even with the guitar help. You clearly had lots of ideas about how to integrate these two themes! Lots of clever blending. It does have a few awkward moments, though: At 0:36, the arrangement begs to repeat the phrase a second time, but instead moves on. Same thing at 2:24. 1:12 is a little strange, structurally--it starts the transition with rising notes and then drops low instead of the high climax it leads the listener to anticipate. Some of the blends get a little too busy in the highs, e.g. 2:18-2:47, which is so cluttered the cymbals turn to mush. Overall, though, really great job, and I hope you spend some more time on this and send it in to the site. The Wanderer: Well, it's a good start. Reminds me a lot of Phonetic Hero's Tengu Man remixes from the last compo, which I liked a lot. Too bad you never got a chance to finish. Boulders Wreck Rapiers: Nice soundscape, but those leads aren't strong enough to cut through it all. Interesting coincidence how the opening hooks of both themes were so similar to begin with, and you really took advantage of that, although at the expense of the rest of the sources. The last section, where it becomes more melodic, doesn't fit very well with the rest of the arrangement or with the backing, and the transitions are a little awkward, especially with the wild portamento. Still, lots of good stuff here. Age & Alchemist: Very thin soundscape, lacking in both low and high end and cluttered in the mids. More importantly, this is basically a medley until 2:25, with Plague Knight followed by Saturn. Nice effort to try to make the two play together at the end, however briefly, but there are a lot of clashing notes there. I like where this was going, but it needed a lot of adjustments to work.

Same here--I've only ever bought one or two consoles within the first year of their release before: the SNES and I think the Wii U. The Switch already has a release schedule more than sufficient for me to want it, and it's not going to go on sale for a long time, so I figure why wait? Although I am concerned about the reports that the left Joy-Con keeps de-syncing for some people. I hope that's not a hardware issue, or at least if it is, that Nintendo gets together a nice streamlined system for dealing with it and compensating affected users.

Interesting use of the gritty synths. Sometimes it's extremely effective; I liked it a lot when it was used overtly in the intro, and later on when used as an intermittent effect. I have mixed feelings about its use as a bass, though--it introduced some staticky noise that I didn't feel was really necessary. It was clearly an intentional aesthetic decision, though, and I don't think it substantially detracted from what the arrangement was trying to do. The ending is a little weaksauce, just kind of stopping after a phrase, but the source does exactly the same thing. Otherwise, I think this is pretty solid. Obviously Laarx knows what he's doing, and you two did a great job of turning this sort of passive backing music into a driving, in-your-face rock theme. YES

The first link isn't viewable in the U.S., unfortunately. Anyway, hard to guess, and it might depend on their development process. I'm not sure if U.K. media is as careful about copyright and licensing when it comes to that sort of thing as the U.S. is, so it's possible some random person just snuck in in there, or someone might have pulled it out of some general list or database without realizing what they were getting.

It's better now, thanks!

It's always challenging to try to work with such a short source, but you do a pretty good job here of keeping it from getting old. It only repeats a couple of times each time it comes up, and evolves each time it returns. The section from 2:20-3:07 goes on for longer than I'd like, but not egregiously so. There are some strange chords that don't match the rest of the arrangement at 1:40, 1:52, etc., but to be fair, the source makes some strange chord choices as well, and I think you actually do a better job with some of them than they did! I don't think this will be everyone's cup of tea, but it seems to meet our standards for production and arrangement, so good job! YES

Or this, for that matter.

Unfortunately, that's Funiculi Funicula, so it wouldn't be eligible for the site... or even be considered a VG remix by most people.

This one was challenging for me to judge. I kept on starting it and trying to listen to it closely, but after a couple of minutes I'd lose focus. Then, six and a half minutes later, it would end, and I'd think to myself, "Oh, crap, what did I just listen to? All right, let me start that again." By the time I finally managed to stay focused all the way through, after trying six or seven times, my conclusion was pretty much inevitable: This arrangement is very static. It takes a simple D&B line and iterates over it many times, slowly adding minor changes, then winds it down, then repeats with a different line. We don't necessarily have anything against trace, but trance should generally be either more melodic or more progressive than this. I know the source doesn't have much in the way of melody to work with, which is why I expected this remix to be along the lines of progressive trance. This doesn't really "progress," but instead keeps re-introducing elements used earlier on. The result is an arrangement that doesn't feel like it goes anywhere. I didn't have any other concerns--production is fine, and although picking out source usage is tough with a mix like this, I got enough to feel it was used appropriately and effectively. But ultimately I think that as a standalone piece of music, this needs to be more dynamic. As part of a soundtrack, I think it would be great, but I don't think it's what we look for in a mixpost. NO Edit: To clarify, I didn't "ding this on not being more melodic" per se; I dinged it on neither being melodic nor having what I would consider progression. That lack of progression is what other judges criticized as well; I feel it would have been saved if it had been more melodic instead. But it was neither, thus the NO.

Interesting ambient piece, relaxed despite the frenetic beat. Somewhat similar style to the original, but very different execution. Reminds me very much of the soundtrack to Parasite Eve. Production is clean, no concerns there. It does, however, get pretty monotonous. 0:24-0:47, 1:12-1:36, and 2:12-end have the same percussion and the same pad (even when that pad creates dissonance with the melody), 2:36-3:00, repeating again to fade-out, even sounds like a copy-paste of 0:24-0:47. The fade-out especially sounds like you just ran out of ideas. The two breaks, the use of the sax and piano the second time through the main hook, and the electric guitar the third time help, but unfortunately it really does just sound to me like the same thing repeated 5 times, with two breaks and some variation. There's nothing in particular I don't like, but I found it hard to stay interested through the end. As background music, I like it a lot, but as a standalone song, I don't think it holds up. NO

I don't have any issue with the source usage here. "Unicorn Forest" works perfectly well as an intro, and the other two flow together well enough. I do think that the lack of contrast is a more serious issue, though. It's very static overall, with the string ensemble, the maracas, and the bird cheeps especially getting very old by the end. The bird cheeps also seemed to me to be very loud and high-pitched, which certainly didn't help endear them to me. They hit that same spot for me that the chimes did for others in Rebecca's Final Fantasy mix. There's also a sort of quaver in places, e.g. the oboe starting at 3:14, which sounds almost like overcompression. Still, I don't think any of these issues are dealbreakers, and it's a lovely arrangement overall. Perfectly happy to see this on the front page. YES

Another great PirateCrab remix, although this one is a lot more conservative than his earlier mixposts. After a brief intro and warmup, it basically loops through the source twice, very conservatively. The first loop has a little bit of added accompaniment, and of course the percussion is much more filled out than the original, but otherwise it's pretty much a cover. The second loop takes some additional creative liberties, but still doesn't take things too far afield. it breaks into original content at 2:26, followed by a fairly stylized version of the ending. I don't have any other concerns. The cymbals are a little muffled, but otherwise I'm happy with the production. So... this feels close to me. The first loop is probably too conservative, the last minute definitely isn't. The second loop is awfully close to the first one, at least once the rhythm guitar joins in at 0:46. I think I would have been completely happy if 0:28-1:31 were simply not there--it would have left the mix a little short, but not too short, and that conservative section being repeated so closely is the whole issue. But the second loop isn't precisely the same way as the first, with a different take and slightly different accompaniment and a few melodic flourishes, so I'm just falling on the side of YES (borderline)

I imagine that major release has come and gone by now, but hey, a mixpost is good publicity whenever it goes up. This starts off as a nice reinterpretation of the original score, going from mournful instrumental to Tron-like synth hybrid. However, it does get closer and closer to the original source as it goes on. Starting at about 1:20, it's quite similar to the source. In fact, as an experiment, I tried playing the remix and the source together, time-synced with 1:20 in the remix to 0:52 in the original, and in many places the differences between them aren't huge. The source and remix do diverge again as the arrangement progresses, but largely it still has the feel of a few instrumental changes on top of the core of the original. The remix does more interesting things with the instrumentation than the original, but doesn't make use of much of the original's melody; similarly, some of the instrumental replacements (such as the piano replacing the source's synth arp at the end) are melodically simplified. Because the arrangement does focus on a small part of the source's melody, it does get pretty repetitive, but the changes in instrumentation do keep coming just fast enough to keep it from getting excessively old. Also, that high piano in the intro, and especially at the end, is uncomfortably shrill, and could use a slight low pass to take some of the bite out of it. I feel like this is close, from an interpretation perspective. It's substantially different for the first 1:20, which is nearly half the mix, and the rest is clearly more than just adding drums and assigning new instruments. I wish it had done more, especially with the melody, which would also have helped with the repetitiveness, but I think this is over the bar. YES (borderline)

Mission accomplished, I'd say. This started off worryingly conservative, but after passing through the original source closely one time through, it goes off into arrangement territory. My one big gripe is that the instrumentation is very much on the static side. The same lead synth is used the whole time, although it does undergo some small filter changes every once in a while. The percussion and bass also follow mostly the same pattern the whole time. The changes, such as the choir, bells, and timpani, help a lot, but they don't change the fundamental issue. Especially starting at 2:55, things get same-y and rambling for much longer than strictly necessary, considering most of the same ideas had already been explored, more dynamically, in the section starting at 1:34. Had this been done with a live instrument, it might have stood well as a solo, but with a synth it gets old, especially since it's the same lead synth the whole arrangement. The electric guitar cameos are almost like a slap in the face to me, saying, "Hey, wouldn't this be awesome if the guitar was the lead instead? Well, too bad!" I think overall, the production and instrumentation are nearly solid enough to make up for the static lead, bass, and percussion, but not quite. Definitely look into switching the lead up a few times during the piece. Or find a seriously amazing guitarist to take it on. I know you really love the original bass and drum line, and while I think this would benefit from deviating from those more, I think you could probably get away with leaving them if you did more with the lead. Best of luck! NO (resubmit)

For metal, this is mixed awfully quiet. There's also almost no dynamic variation at all: other than the intro and the organ & bass breakdown from 1:02-1:14, everything's at a flat, static volume level. Oddly, the second organ section (2:45-3:50), as well as everything after it, is overcompressed despite being quiet. There's some overcompression in some of the earlier part of the track as well, though it's not as severe. The arrangement suffers from being on the static side, as well. The bulk of it has the same bass line, and two or three percussion patterns account for the majority of the track as well. The leads go to some interesting places, but it's always in that very limited soundscape, which makes it feel fatiguing long before it reaches the end of its 5+ minute length. There is some great melodic work here, but I feel it needs to be backed up by equally interesting accompaniment, after which the levels will need a second look. NO (resubmit)