MindWanderer

An unusually conservative take for Timaeus, but it works. The increased emphasis on melody combined with the changes in instrumentation and accompaniment more than make up for the similarity in style. The use of The Spanish Empire is quite subtle, but it's there. Solid production, as always. Not really a lot to say here, except YES

I can't argue with any of Gario's points, but the performance issues didn't bother me as much as they did him. There were maybe a few too many hesitations and a few odd pedal choices (the long sustain at 1:08 bothered me less than the short sustains at 1:48), but I didn't think they were that impactful. Granted, I don't play piano myself, but as a layperson, I can't find much at fault with this. That note at 3:12 leading into the transition was a pretty severe moment, and I certainly wouldn't mind a revision just for that. But that's my only significant concern, and I don't think it's enough to send this back. YES

I didn't hear the original either, but the performance here certainly seems above the bar to me. I thought there was a little room for improvement regarding the levels, but not much. There was a little more dynamic range than I'd personally like, in that the loudest sections were just a little too loud for comfort when I had the quieter sections just loud enough to hear well. There was also a small amount of distortion around 2:22-2:26 and 3:12-3:23. Both are minor concerns, though. Otherwise, this is a solid, emotive performance that captured exactly the intended unpleasant eeriness. Works for me. YES

Well, this is... interesting. The transition at 1:36 doesn't come completely out of nowhere--there is a quiet rise that leads into it--but the transformation is so total, especially coming over a minute and a half in, that it's really jarring. The other transitions from synth to orchestral are smoother, but that first one really needs to nail it, and probably come sooner in the arrangement, to avoid such a shock. Other than that, my main concerns are with the instruments used. The static accompanying the kettle drum seems to be intentional, but it just sounds like a really poor sample. The exposed kicks from 1:20-1:32 also just sound like noise--in isolation like that it literally sounds like my headphones aren't securely plugged in and are popping. The snare at 1:37-2:45, especially from 2:11 on, is pretty generic, loud, dominating, and distracting. The horn-like synth at 2:07 is also very vanilla and sounds dissonant with the part leading into it; when it returns at 3:29, there are also a few moments that sound off-key. Same for the synth at 2:58 and other places. There are some interesting, creative ideas here, but ultimately I don't think the orchestral and synth elements blend well together, and I think some more care needs to go into the sound design on the synths. Keep at it, though! NO

I'm not at all sure what was meant by "enhance the atmosphere," since this arrangement transforms the original atmosphere entirely, and it's not what I'd call "atmospheric" at all anymore. Maybe if this is supposed to represent Green Brinstar in the distant future after it's been built over with technology, a feeling subtly reinforced by the ducking on the strings/pad. It's an interesting take, especially with the syncopation added in--took me a while to get used to that, but it's grown on me. Not much to criticize here. It's hardly "true to the original arrangement" at all--not only is it laid out differently, but the instrumentation and balance change it completely. Production is pretty clean; the kicks are a little punchier than I'd like but are perfectly appropriate for the genre, and the unusual balance in places is clearly an artistic decision that worked well. There's a tiny bit of copy-paste (0:45-1:00 and 2:31-2:46), but 15 seconds is hardly worth mentioning, especially considering the context. Nice work overall. YES

I definitely still see what the old crits were talking about, though they're all improved. The snare is still thin and splashy, but I didn't think it was buried or out-of-place with the kick. The voice clips still sound a bit odd because of their poor sound quality, but it's not a dealbreaker. I personally strongly dislike self-congratulatory ones like the one you end with, but that's purely my pet peeve. The overall arrangement is a bit conservative but well over the bar. A few of the synths are a bit strange, especially the one that starts at 1:13, but again it's a small issue. And while the strings are definitely fakey, in a synth-heavy, glitchy arrangement, it doesn't bother me much. It's fun, it's different, and it'll be a fine mixpost. YES

I'd already heard a version of this for the album evaluation and liked it well enough then, and this version is further improved. The small crits I'd had back then have all been addressed, and production this time is firing on all cylinders. It's an eccentric approach, succeeding at bringing something new to an overused source. Weird but a lot of fun. Not much more to say here. It's solidly good to go in my book. YES

Looks like this project is currently on hiatus, so may need to check back in from time to time to see if there are any plans to finish it. Regarding this arrangement, I'm not sold on the instrumental production. It's driven largely by those strings, and they're very mechanical and on the dry side. The lead flute is pretty mechanical as well, but very wet. The ethnic instruments are easily the highlight, but they play a minor role overall. It's also a little on the repetitive side. The main hook is played by a couple of different instruments, and the accompaniment and percussion are changed in small ways, so there's no literal copy-pasting going on, but 0:38-0:53, 2:10-2:25, and 3:05-3:20 are extremely similar; 1:24-1:39 changes the lead to horns but is otherwise mostly the same yet again. Also, the droning instrument at 2:34-2:49 seems to clash with the other instruments at times. You adjust it in the next section to avoid dissonance, so I'm not sure why you didn't do it here as well. I like the pacing, the creative flourishes and the original sections when they're there, but I don't think this is quite there. Add some humanity to the instruments and some variation to the repeated sections and I think this'll be good to go. NO (resubmit)

Thought it was going to be robot masters from the Game Boy games? Enker's theme from MM10 is quite a bit different, and Punk's and Ballade's are completely different past the intros. (The MM10 ones are better IMO, though.) I guess whoever chooses Wandering Travelers is just representing the whole mob of them, and not a knight per se?

This is certainly a lovely reinstrumentation of the original piece, and I agree that the additional instruments, mostly the guitar-like one (is that an oud?), push this over our bar as far as interpretation goes, even counting the much fuller second half of the source. My main concern here is that the arrangement is quite static and repetitive. The second half is nearly identical to the first, with just some different instrumental flourishes to distinguish them. Even the halves of those halves are very similar to each other, playing the exact same melody with nearly the exact same instrumentation, with only some differences in the accompaniment. The overall effect is four minutes of a one-minute melody, with largely similar instrumentation and energy throughout. I think that as a 2-minute arrangement, this might have been a pass, but as it is, I don't feel like the changes the second time through are enough to hold interest. If this were to be used in a remastered version of the original game, I think it would be a fantastic fit, and a great piece of music, but I don't believe it's what we're looking for here. NO

So, they've announced that the online service will be between ¥2,000-¥3,000/year., which works out to about $17-26 or £14-£21. So probably $20 or $25/year. $19.99/year would be a pretty sweet spot to sit at, and I don't think they've have much trouble selling it at that rate. It'll probably be influenced by that free NES/SNES game, though--getting, say, Yoshi's Island free for a month would be somewhat attractive, but if they give you Clu Clu Land it had better be for life or it's just a slap in the face.

That's literally nearly the opposite experience with the Phazon Mines. I chose the wrong direction to explore that area at least 3 times, twice involving the large lava/ironworks room at the very bottom, and climbing back up out of that room takes forever. Part of that was due to my not knowing that the X-Ray Visor not only let you look through some walls, but revealed invisible platforms, and the quick "back door" route into the Phazon Mines from the surface requires using one of those. I found the Plasma Beam pretty quickly, but I actually got the Grapple Beam extremely late--not only did I not suss out the correct direction to look for it in, but I accidentally found a skip, not realizing it was a skip because it was just a very difficult jump not unlike all the other difficult jumps, that let me get much further without the Grapple Beam than I was supposed to. I found about half of the artifacts naturally, but my point isn't that they were hard to find, it's that they were meaningless MacGuffins, not actual upgrades like everything else in earlier Metroid games (other than the bosses--of which, in Super Metroid, only one of which wasn't required just to proceed anyway). Meanwhile, the actual upgrades were hidden extremely well--I never did find the missile upgrades for Wave or Ice, and finished the game at 81%. Plus, in other Metroid games, a new upgrade would let you enter new areas if you backtracked, although sometimes those areas were small; to get the artifacts, often you could get all the way up to them but not actually collect them without the right upgrade (e.g. one that required Plasma Beam in Phendrana). Plus, the game just wouldn't let you scan all the artifact hints at the beginning--there were a few I could have collected the first time though if I'd had the hints, but no. Certainly 3D platforming is harder to get right than 2D, and DmC is a great example (one of its major problems was also in visibility, with its terrible camera angles, and I still personally found it easier than Metroid Prime). But while lots of 3D platformers do get it right, very few first-person games have even arguably decent platforming.

This is a surprisingly mellow take on this source that I actually really enjoyed. I didn't get to listen to the original submission, but this definitely doesn't have the severe volume issue the judges described back then. There's still a little bit of distortion in the hottest sections (like around 3:12), but they're brief and perfectly acceptable to me. There's a little bit of crowding in some places. The pad that starts at 0:41 is very hard to hear (which is a shame, 'cause it's pretty cool). The horn-like synth at 1:54 starts off being buried and turns into the instrument doing the burying as it gets louder. Starting at about 2:27, the sine synth is buried by the koto. 2:58-3:11 is just busy all around, with lots of instruments stepping all over each other. You could definitely go further following the judges' previous advice about EQ, but it sounds like the dealbreaking issue has been resolved, and I don't think the EQ issues that remain are enough to hold this back. Nice job! YES

A source 13 seconds long is pretty tough to make into a full-fledged arrangement without becoming repetitive. Unfortunately, I don't think this succeeds. Not only is the basic melody repeated many times, it's only carried by two different leads. The arrangement follows a basic additive structure: one loop with just backing, then a loop with the lead added, then one with percussion added. It repeats twice more at 1:29 with an extra (quiet) arp and an SFX added, and then one more time again with the percussion removed. Then it ends at the end of a loop, with an SFX. The interlude in the middle is driven by voice clips, which can be OK if used in moderation, but here they're used in lieu of doing something interesting with the actual music. The melody in that section is mostly even more repetitive than the original; there are a couple of interesting variants in 0:51-1:00, but that's it. On the production front, the piano from 0:12 on is almost completely muffled. Piano is a tough instrument to mix with others in the best of situations, since it covers so much of the frequency spectrum all by itself, but with a busy set of synths like this it's even harder. There's some creative work here, but it never really develops. You might want to try your hand at a less challenging source before revisiting this one. NO

Stellar arrangement. Of course, the original soundtrack makes heavy usage of leitmotifs and lends itself well to this sort of treatment, but this is exceptionally well done regardless. It's a little tricky to pick out all the sources, since they overlap so much, but unique sections from each are all there. This does get very busy in places, and loses clarity in the highs. 0:44-0:47, 0:52-1:00, 1:09-1:12, 1:23-1:32, 2:36-2:54, 3:27-3:36, and 3:48-3:58 are the sections that stood out the most to me. On the flip side, there's a lack of bass presence throughout most of the mix, basically from 1:01 on. The switch to electric guitar at 1:01 has a dramatic drop in overall volume. It's pretty jarring, since it's building up to that point, plus it's electric guitars, which are usually loud. The effect is sort of unsatisfying. Mostly, the fakeness of the instruments didn't bother me a whole lot (the chiptunes prime the listener to not expect the most realistic instruments). However, the horns at 2:57-3:15, the strings at 3:17-3:27, and the strings and horns in the ending (4:08 on) are more exposed, and the mechanical articulations are very prominent. I do feel like there's a lot of room for improvement in the production, but this arrangement is so strong that I feel it just makes up for it. I wouldn't be disappointed if this got sent back for a touch-up, but I think it's good enough as it stands for a YES (borderline)

As near as I can tell, they're all sold out. One or two of the more obscure retailers had them a couple of days ago, but I don't see any now.

I'm glad you explained about the Namco 163, because otherwise that just sounds like background noise from a really poor-quality microphone. But you can certainly get a much cleaner sound than this while still using chiptune hardware. It sounds like even the percussion is created using the Namco, which is a very odd decision, since you can create nearly identical sounds in other ways without introducing that unnecessary artifact. When you have multiple Namco instruments playing at once, like at 2:48-2:59, the effect, frankly, sounds terrible, turning everything to staticky mush. The piano at the end (not bookending--to bookend means to appear at both the beginning and end, or on both sides of something) is very pretty, but completely out of place. It's the only place in the arrangement when the Namco 163 isn't playing, so even though it's melodically and stylistically similar, the sound space is totally different. Otherwise, the arrangement is solid, and I actually liked it a lot. I just don't think your creative gamble using that particular chip so heavily paid off. Used judiciously, I think it could have worked, but this is really hard to listen to. I can see this passing if other judges think the nod to authenticity is worth the loss of sound quality, but I'm not one of them. I'd love to hear another version of this that either uses that chip less or cleans it up more. Edit: I decided to revisit this after reading Gario's vote. The key differences between this and The Wily Malfunction, in my opinion, are that Mazedude used instruments that are themselves low-fi, and, strange as it seems for such a chaotic-seeming arrangement, he used them in moderation (only one instrument generating any given type of distortion at a time). The Namco 163 creates an audio artifact in addition to its primary sound (which itself is clean), and with multiple instruments creating that artifact, the effect is cumulatively more severe. I will correct myself about the piano, though. The fact that it doesn't start until 30 seconds in, and never without the Namco buzz, threw me off. The bookending would work better if the clean piano at the end fit in better with the rest of the piece. NO (resubmit)

Yeah, they're probably looking at how XBox Live was at launch, where you pay a fee to get basic online features. They're forgetting that 1) the market has moved on since then, and 2) Nintendo games aren't really about online so much, and paying a fee so you can play just a couple of games online doesn't make much sense.

Strangely enough, we don't seem to have any remixes of Strago's theme that don't also use another source, although one of them also makes the Inspector Gadget connection. The arrangement goes to some pretty interesting places, but only the leads. The rest of the instrumentation is pretty paint-by-numbers, with some very generic bass and percussion synths. The delayed saw in particular gets old pretty quickly. The percussion is arranged very statically, with just a few loops that aren't varied very much. And even the leads, there's only two of them, which take turns more and more rapidly until the end. There are a few breaks where one or more instruments drop out, but that's it, and it's not enough to reduce fatigue. I think the general direction and pace of this is just fine, but you need to explore the sonic space a little more. Check out remixes by Gario, WillRock, Neblix, and zircon for some examples of how to take a lead treatment like this and back it up in more engaging ways. NO (resubmit)

There's a lot going on with this source, but the arrangement actually makes pretty straightforward use of it, although transforming it substantially. It's plenty creative. However, the lead used throughout most of the remix is a loud, bland saw--many of the accompanying instruments have some nice textures that you can't hear while that saw is playing. The instrumentation is also pretty static through most of the piece--the lead changes a few times, but the bass, arps, and wubs change very little, although they occasionally drop out. There are a few breaks, but then the instrumentation goes right back to what it was doing before. It gets very fatiguing. I like the breaks, but there needs to be even more variety to keep the listener interested, and as a main lead, that saw is really bland. Pick two or three more interesting leads and swap around the accompaniment from time to time as well, and I think this will be a winner. Also, for some reason the MP3 ends with 58 seconds of silence. That definitely needs to be corrected even if this passes. NO (resubmit)

That's the one. You got it!

Those are some pretty juicy 80's synths, all right. Genre and production are spot on. First, I did some digging on the source. In the game, you play one level as each of the Planeteers, and the track is named after them. The file is misnamed, though it's correct in the email: this is not a remix of "Ma Ti," otherwise known as the "Heart" stage; the final (6th) stage music is named simply "Captain Planet." Here's an embed of the track by itself: When I listened to this source, I was worried it would be tough to arrange. There's not a whole lot to it and it's very repetitive, and this arrangement does get somewhat repetitive. It keeps things somewhat fresh by mixing up the melody in various creative ways, but by the time it reached the 2 minute mark, I was definitely ready for it to move on--which it then did. In fact, every time I started to think it was wearing out its welcome, there was a break or change of some sort. Definitely skirting the edge of being too repetitive, but I don't feel like it crossed that edge. The ending is really odd--there's a perfectly serviceable ending at 4:10, but then it starts back up again and rehashes the main theme (which I was already getting bored of) to fade out. It would have been much stronger had it just ended at 4:10. Otherwise, this is pretty solid. I'd prefer a bit more variety and a better ending, and it needs a new title, but I'm fine giving this a YES

I'm trying to do one album project already, and I'm having a severe problem with attrition. I've had maybe 2/3 of the people who claimed a track end up dropping out, and no completed tracks yet. Probably not being sufficiently "persistent." So you definitely don't want me running anything more right now. Plus I'm not particularly passionate about the PSIV soundtrack anyway. It has a few gems, but it's not really my bag, and a lack of passion in the director will trickle down to the contributors.

Yeah, be careful--Nintendo is aggressively banning folks with hacked pokemon, even if they got them over Wonder Trade. So if you do get a shiny or a legendary that way, or something else suspicious (perfect IV's, carrying a Master Ball, evolved at an impossible level, in a pokeball you wouldn't ordinarily catch them with, etc.), you shouldn't use them for anything online.

This really is a very pretty arrangement, but the off-key vocals bothered me more than they did Gario. 1:48 is the most severely flat note, but there are notes that are off by less throughout (0:51, 1:03, 1:11, 1:30, 1:43, 2:22, 2:31 as just a few of the most clear examples). This would drive someone with perfect pitch nuts, and even I find it unpleasant. However, I don't feel like the issue is quite severe enough to keep this from being posted, and it's the only major issue. It's a solid if conservative arrangement, with solid instrumentation and production. YES