MindWanderer

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I'm fine with it if someone agrees before the pairings go up. Aleix Ramon and PlanarianHugger need to be in the first bracket, but I haven't heard any such schedule restrictions from anyone else.

Session musicians are fine. DarkeSword's logic makes sense: having access to a musician is like having a sample library.

Sources and brackets are finished and in the first post. Please review to make sure your selection is correct and that the timing works for you. Also please note the area title assigned to your source. You'll be using that when you name your remix submission files. Edit: Missed this earlier, somehow: Yeah, that was before I started frequenting these forums, but I did notice that from reading the archives. That's why I'm doing a point-based losers' bracket, so that if someone is too fatigued to continue, their dropping out won't be a free pass for their opponent--and if they want to jump back in later on, they can. That's also why I'm calling the winner of the winners' bracket a tournament victor even if they lose the final round (thus effectively making that round optional for them), but the winner of the losers' bracket has a shot at earning co-winner. Also, since I'd like to make an OCR-I out of this for Castlevania's 30th anniversary, I want to give people who drop out more chances to create something they like well enough to include.

18 will actually work out great! We'll have three brackets with a couple of special rounds. I'll finalize the selections and start putting the brackets together in about half an hour.

Hah, I make an 11th-hour grab to get a 16th participant, and end up with 17, a lovely prime number. If anyone's having second thoughts, now would be the time to express them. Otherwise we'll be starting off with a qualifier/seeding round.

"Evergreen" is the only ineligible source (it's the CV III end sequence). You'll undoubtedly get your first pick anyway (which is a personal favorite of mine). Final reminder: If anyone has any upcoming schedule conflicts--vacations, exams, etc.--please let me know so I can put you in a bracket that avoids that conflict.

That was in reference to "Treasury Room," which is still up for grabs as a first pick! I'm going to list the original Castlevania III version as the official source for "Beginning", but if you want to make your mixes more directly inspired by the Rondo of Blood version, that's fine. I'm hoping that the optional losers' bracket makes up for that failing. I'm just really hoping for as many good matchups as possible. There may not have been as much turnout for this as for DarkeSword's Mega Man compos, but there are some amazing remixers with some amazing source selections that I really, really want to see happen. Kind of wish I had some reasonable and fair "seeding" method like what they have for sports tournaments. "Den" (your second pick) kind of falls into that category, IMO. It's mostly a medley of Vampire Killer, Bloody Tears, Beginning, and another source I can't recall the name of at the moment. Mixing that with something else while making "Den" specifically a recognizable source would be one hell of a challenge. In other news, since I haven't been able to get the forum calendar fixed, I'm extending the signup deadline 24 hours, just in case someone was counting on the midnight deadline.

Maybe there's a more gentle attack on one of the other instruments that's making it sound slightly off? Otherwise, my ear isn't very well trained, so it might be some auditory illusion that's tricking me. Using cheapo headphones myself.

Sorry, that was meant to be tongue-in-cheek. I could have said the same thing about The Moon and it would have been equally ridiculous, especially as of today.

You already have this. There is no need for further Double Dragon remixes, the pinnacle has been reached.</opinion> Could do a whole album on criminally underlooked soundtracks. I'd submit Tetris Battle Gaiden, myself.

WillRock + DuckTales = instant download. But... is it just me, or is the backing arp just a fraction of a second ahead of the beat? There's something about it that's just a little jarring.

I don't think you'll need those, since everyone's getting their first picks right now, but I've added them anyway. Took me a little while to find YouTube links, since both names are a little off. No one has Beginning as their first choice yet, and it's one of the all-time classics. But really, at this point all you need to do to find awesome sources is to go to the signup roster and choose a few that aren't anyone's first picks. This guy has a not-totally-unreasonable point about Treasury Room.

10 signups so far. I've tabulated the selections so far here. Some of these are slightly modified from what people posted. Selections that were not stage/location themes were removed (but added to my list of special themes). Whenever someone gave me a YouTube link to a remix that appeared in a later game, I used a link to the original. One or two source names were changed to their official name. Fortunately, there are currently no duplicates for first choice, so as it stands, everyone gets their pick. I was very surprised at how few people chose the iconic themes of the core games--the popularity of Aria of Sorrow in particular was something I didn't expect. Awesome, but unexpected. 5 more days until signups close! Still hoping for picks from wildfire, theshaggyfreak, and Gario at least. Hopefully we can drum up a few more so we can have a proper bracket of 16! (Though I'll make it work in any event.)

There are a lot of new remixers putting out some incredible work, and you really should spend some time going through everything. However, it sounds like your tastes run pretty similar to mine, at least in part, so here's a short list of some of the artists whose remixes are still in my list of music I've downloaded but not transferred to my permanent collection: Sir_NutS Tetrimino Geoffrey Taucer DDDRKirby(ISQ) Jorito Metal Man Hylian Lemon Sam Dillard Chimpazilla Showroom Dummy Chris ~ Amaterasu Claire Yaxley Nutritious Phonetic Hero timaeus222 Gario Again, that's really reductionist, and you really shouldn't limit yourself to just a few choices like that. (Oh, but if you like Game Over, make sure to check out The Megas if you haven't yet.) Put on OCR Radio and let it take you to new places.

Only partially. This was a backwards way of arguing that if games are not are, then movies are not art also. However: So, this is a definition of art by merit of prototyping. Things which share the characteristics of things commonly defined as art are art; those with different characteristics are not art. This is a common way of defining things, but it's a poor one. It's the same sort of logic that leads to declaring platypuses as not being mammals, because there's something about them that's different from something that all other mammals (except echidnas) have in common. It works as a heuristic, but the better way to define categories is to determine the essential characteristics of those categories. Defining art as a creative work meant to evoke an emotional reaction is a valid definition, and most games (certainly most modern games) meet that definition. Certainly games meet the dictionary definition of art. While you could certainly define art as "blah blah blah that's not interactive," I'm not sure why you'd do that. Exclusionary definitions like that are how people used to not classify rock and roll as music, etc.

So media which includes participatory elements is not art? Improvisational theater in which the audience suggests elements to be included are not art? The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not art? I'm guessing you'd say that yes, those are art, because the "observer" isn't a core participant in the events, they only get to control certain elements or add minor embellishments. To which I would argue that this is true of video games as well; even in the games which allow the greatest amount of player agency, the story is substantially railroaded. Some events might unfold in a couple of different ways, there might be a couple of different endings, and you might choose to do things in different orders or omit some sidequests, but the bulk of the game remains the same. The player can't even really fail, since dying or meeting other fail conditions just causes you to reload. The only exceptions are games which have essentially no narrative at all--an open world without quests, like, say, Proteus (which most people would call an "art game"). Besides, I can't think of any reason participation has anything to do with the definition of art.

I'm going to take a fairly radical position here: Movies are not art. Bear with me for a moment. Movies are the combination of many discrete forms of art, arranged to make a composite whole. Script-writing, acting, score, art direction, visual effects, editing, sound, stunts, etc. By that same logic, of course games are also not art. They too are a combination of many elements, including graphics, score, writing, etc. (though there's no single artistic element that a game must have), but there are also many technical aspects as well: programming, game balance, etc. Movies also have some technical elements, of course, especially in the digital age, but not as much as games. Now, you could consider the assembly of all the discrete elements to be itself a work of art. This is the director's job; if you consider a movie director to be an artist, there's a claim to be made that "a movie" is itself a work of art. But by that same logic, I don't see why a game wouldn't be. A game's director has to artistically combine many if not all of the same elements that comprise a movie, while meeting the technical constraints of making it a functional and fun gameplay experience.

I think I figure out why I can't set the Calendar field now. It seems my event-creating privileges have been revoked--I can't find a "create event" button anywhere anymore. I can't select either calendar because I can't create events in either calendar.

I've been a Garpocalypse fan for a while, didn't even notice he was unposted until now. Knew this had to be amazing if it was better than his remixes that didn't get posted. Did not disappoint. Great work!

Sure, the rest of the galaxy would know. But within it? They have no mass media, no internet, nothing but whatever the First Order chooses to show them. They don't even need a Great Firewall to control the information their troops have access to. I can't even think how Finn would know, unless the more seasoned troops decided to tell him--and even if they did, if they were successfully indoctrinated, they wouldn't make it sound like it really was. Yep, that works when you're on the page you want, and I could have used it here. Wouldn't work if you wanted to do it with multiquotes on different pages, though.

There was exactly one measly line explaining it. Han said something like, "If we were able to find the Falcon, so can the First Order." It implied that Han had indeed been looking for it all along, even taking a detour from his current job to go intercept it shortly after it took off. Witnessing exploding planets many star systems away--in real-time, no speed-of-light issues--was a pretty big gripe of mine, too. The bowcaster gag was insignificant and funny; worth it IMO even though I've seen that complaint before. I actually really like the contrast as-is. Kylo Ren, the son of two heroes, trained by another hero, becomes a villain. Finn, the son of no one in particular, raised and brainwashed by villains, becomes a hero. I'm hoping the two get to talk out that contrast later on. It kind of bugged me that Leia got no Force training in the last 25 years. She knows she has the talent, did she never think it would be a good idea to do something with that? Luke was ready enough to train new kids, he really ought to have taught Leia a little. I felt this was typical fail, actually. Starkiller Base was all snowy forest, except for the metal cravat. The others were Desert Planet, Lush River Forest Planet, Megalopolis Planet, Island Archipelago Planet. Seen from space they're literally just one texture from pole to pole. No evidence of arctic or tropical zones whatsoever. Oh, but I did really like that they named it "Starkiller." Sure, it uses stars to kill, but there could have been a better name if they hadn't wanted to use that as a callout to obscure aspects of series lore. I felt like the Riot Control Trooper came out of nowhere, though. There should have been one somewhere earlier in the movie. As it was, it looked like this one random stormtrooper suddenly had a melee weapon just to give Finn someone to fight (and explain why Finn knows his way around a melee weapon at all). I felt a little different about it, but liked it just the same. From the trailers, I thought it looked dumb and impractical. Knowing it was made by an emo teenager who was just trying to make it look cool but couldn't build it well enough to stabilize the blade explained everything. Can't really break up quotes on the new boards, so: When you're in an organization like that, how would you know what they're really doing? It's not like they get to watch TV reports or anything. Finn should indeed have had no idea of what atrocities the Order was capable of until he saw it firsthand. I remember opening week of Episode 1 very well. The group of friends I want with hung out in the lobby for a solid hour after watching it, tearing it to shreds. No honeymoon period there. Episodes 2 and 3 were much better, but mainly by comparison. Had I not seen Episode 1 first to lower my expectations, I'm sure I'd have had the same reaction to Episode 2. Yeah, it was definitely a little too close to a carbon copy of Episode 4. I guess they wanted to stay close to the source material to reclaim the fanbase, but it was overkill. Speaking of that last point, the whole "First Order"/"Resistance" thing made no sense to me. Clearly the First Order still has a ton of resources, maybe even more than before, which pretty much means they're still an Empire. If they're not an Empire, then having a "Resistance" makes no sense. And why didn't the Resistance join up with the New Republic? Ideological differences? Seems like a bad time for that. Not sure how they've managed to keep going for over 30 years with no source of income or new personnel.

Still hoping for an update on this. I don't want people submitting their source selections 12 hours after the deadline by accident... although I suppose I'd just change the deadline to match the calendar in that case.

Apparently Mega Man Powered Up! for the PSP had a level creator. It wasn't well publicized, though. Mega Man Universe was going to be almost exactly this, but was cancelled. I personally think that at Mega Man Maker wouldn't be as compelling as Mario Maker. The stages in Mega Man games are characterized more by their themes and gimmicks than by their actual design. The gimmicks are almost all just different ways of killing Mega Man, very few of them as interesting as P-switches, note blocks, etc. Enemies only have movement patterns and occasionally weapon immunities, and not the wide range of interactions that Mario enemies do. Bosses are single-room affairs, with very few having anything in them at all. There would be some fun in getting access to all the Mega Man weapons in levels from games they weren't originally in, but that's pretty much it.

"Theme of Simon Belmont" is fine, it's the Gatehouse (Block 1) stage theme. It's just poorly named. "Legend of Dracula" is the credits roll, though, so it's out.