DarkeSword

The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet 2013 Presented by the OverClocked ReMix Forums Introduction In the year 20XX (minus 2), the Robot Masters banded together to rebel against the evil Dr. Wily. It was a hard-fought battle, and not everyone survived, but they prevailed in the name of everlasting peace. Or so they thought. Now with the help of The Walt Disney Company, Dr. Wily has returned, and the Robot Masters must once again come together to fight through the remix gauntlet, made up of classic Capcom-Disney stages. Raise arms, Robot Masters, and fight for everlasting peace! The Story So Far... The Robot Masters fought through the jungles of Pirate Island and scaled Moliarty's Tower. At the very top, in the control room, they found that the nefarious Dr. Wily, fed up with Disney's machinations, used the rocketship hidden at the jungle tower to escape the Earth. The doctor was searching for something—or someone—to help him take his castles back! He went to The Moon! High up in his secret moon base, he managed to put out a call for aid to his old, space-faring allies, the Stardroids. Striking from orbit, they loosened the hold Disney had on Wily's castles, intent on helping the not-so-good doctor reclaim his former empire. After a long and arduous fight, the Robot Masters managed to drive the Stardroids back, away from Earth. In the wake of the battle against the Stardroids, Dr. Wily recovered stasis pods he hid in his castles long ago. They contained robotic fighters still loyal to him; robots designed to fight the Blue Bomber himself! Mega Man's Rivals were reactivated, and they decided to punish the Robot Masters for betraying Dr. Wily! But with the Rivals vanquished, Dr. Wily was forced to activate the prototype of what would undoubtedly be his greatest creation. Zero had been awakened. The Robot Masters fought desperately, and Zero had only just been driven back. In the wake of the devastation, Dr. Wily regained full control of the Wily Castles. The weakened Robot Masters had to go after the dreaded doctor himself. But all was not lost: Dr. Light sent help. Mega Man, Proto Man, and Duo arrived on the scene to help the Robot Masters in the final push to defeat Dr. Wily. No more theme parks! No more robotic interlopers! With the help of the Blue Bomber and the other heroes, the Robot Masters fought through the Gauntlet and defeated Dr. Wily once and for all! The dust has settled, and a new sun rises. The Robot Masters have fought and won a hard-earned peace. Thank you, Robot Masters! Current News Final scores are as follows: The Beat Masters - 79 The Handsome Devils - 75 Flying Dog Platform - 52 Robot Master Royalty - 42 Concrete Men 2.0 - 38 Hard Men 2.0 - 37 The Robutt Masters - 31 Rush Riders - 21 The Gobots - 19 Capitals of Science - 15 The Average Joes - 12 The Robot Museum - 10 Army of Metools - 8 Energy Tank - 7 Congratulations to The Beat Masters for their victory, and congratulations to all of the participants for another great competition! The Scoreboard and Voting Tallies can be viewed here. Come hang out in the #wcrg IRC channel for informal discussions, impromptu listening parties, and general Mega Man discussion. Releases Block 1: When You Wish Upon a Star Round 1 - Adventures in the Magic Kingdom - Pirate Island Round 2 - Darkwing Duck - Moliarty's Tower Round 3 - DuckTales - The Moon Block 2: The War for Wily's Castles Round 4 - Mega Man V - The Stardroids Round 5 - Mega Man 7, II, 10 - The Rivals Round 6 - Mega Man X-X7, Command Mission - Everything Becomes Zero Block 3: Dr. Wily's Revenge Round 7 - Mega Man 8 - Wily Tower 1 Round 8 - Mega Man 3 - Wily Stage 2 Round 9 - Mega Man 2 - Wily Stage 1 Final Round: Everlasting Peace Round 10 - Mega Man 6 - Ending Theme Previous Competitions The Grand Maverick Remix Battle 2012 The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet 2011 The Grand Robot Master Remix Battle 2011 The Grand Maverick Remix Battle 2010 The Grand Robot Master Remix Battle 2010 About The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet (WCRG) is a team-based remix competition. Each remixer will choose a Robot Master, and then remixers will form teams of three. The competition is divided into blocks. Each block is divided into three one-week-long rounds, and there are three blocks in the competition. At the start of every round, I will reveal the Gauntlet theme, and the team-members will decide who will be the remixer for that round. Remixers can only take one round per block. The chosen remixer will then write a single remix using both their Robot Master's theme and the Gauntlet theme for that round. The other team members are allowed to help with production, playing instruments, and arrangement ideas, but the chosen remixer must act as the primary artist/arranger. The easiest way to think of this is that you are taking turns remixing for your team every week. Please note that artists are allowed to utilize session musicians and performers who are not involved with the competition, but those musicians and performers should not be heavily involved in the arrangement of the entry. At the end of the round, voters will rank their top three entries, and placing entries will receive points based on where they place relative to other teams. At the end of the competition, points will be tallied, and the team with the most points wins. Submissions and File Name Rules All entries must be sent to me (DarkeSword) via PM on the forums. Please include your team name and the round number in the subject line of your PM. I encode all MP3s myself, so please send me your submissions in 16bit, 44.1KHz WAV format. Do not send MP3s. Please do not use MediaFire as a host for your entry. I recommend Dropbox or SoundCloud. File names for the final round must be in the following format: Team Name - Artist - Title (Robot Master, Robot Master, and Robot Master at The End). For example: Everlasting Peace - DarkeSword - Imitation System (Fake Man, Break Man, and Snake Man at The End).mp3 If one team member helps you with your entry in a significant way and you want to give him or her credit, add his or her name as follows: Everlasting Peace - DarkeSword feat. OA - Imitation System (Fake Man, Break Man, and Snake Man at The End).mp3 If both team members help you with your entry in a significant way and you want to give them credit, add their names as follows: Everlasting Peace - DarkeSword feat. OA & DragonAvenger - Imitation System (Fake Man, Break Man, and Snake Man at The End).mp3 Notes: I will tell you exactly what you need to write for the Gauntlet Theme part of the file name every week. Robot Master names are two words. Centaur Man, not Centaurman. Robot Master names and Gauntlet Themes need to be capitalized properly. Team names, artist names and remix titles can be whatever case you want, but team names and artist names must be consistent from round to round. Put spaces on both sides of the hyphens between Team Name, Artist, and Title. I am dead serious about file names guys. You need to make sure you follow the format exactly, because I use the file names to make sure that all the metadata is correct when I re-tag everything properly. It is a massive pain sitting there renaming, re-spacing, and reformatting so that everything works properly with mp3tag's file-name-to-tag tools, and ultimately it means that when you all do it right, I can get the music up for voting way faster. If you or your team repeatedly submits remixes with bad file names, you will be disqualified from further rounds, I will award you no points, and may Dr. Light have mercy on your souls. Voting Rules and Guidelines Voting is conducted publicly in the social group. Every week, a thread will be created for the most recently completed round of remixing. Voters should post their top three remixes in the thread as follows: First place choice remix name Second place choice remix name Third place choice remix name Things to keep in mind when voting: Everyone is allowed (and encouraged) to vote. Competitors should not place their own team's remix in their rankings, regardless of whether they are the remixers for that round or not. However, by voting, they will earn a first place vote for their team's remix. If you are on a team, you must post what team you are on in your vote so I can make sure your team gets your voting bonus. If you do not specify your team, I cannot guarantee that your team will receive a voting bonus. The most important thing to consider when voting is how well the remix incorporates and arranges both themes. Production and enjoyability should also be considered. You are required to make an actual decision for each choice, meaning, you cannot declare a draws or a ties for different places. This will be counted as not voting and your vote will not be counted. Do not post reviews in the voting thread. Compile your reviews for a round into a single post in this thread. Post only once in each voting thread. Everyone must adhere to the Competitions Code of Conduct. FAQ So do I just pick a Robot Master? Is it first-come-first-served? I'll be doing a draft for Robot Master selection. If you're planning on participating, please post a list of five Robot Masters you're interested in claiming, in the order of preference. Choose any Robot Master from the following games: Mega Man 1-6 (NES) Mega Man 7 (SNES) Mega Man 8 (PSX/Saturn) Mega Man 9-10 (DLC) Mega Man and Bass (SNES/GBA) Mega Man Powered Up (PSP) Once everyone posts their lists, I'll go through and assign everyone their first-pick, resolving any conflicts with a coin-toss and moving down the lists as necessary. You will only be assigned one Robot Master for the competition. Every team member must post their own five picks. Are you assigning teams or do we get to make our own? I won't be assigning teams. Please feel free to form a team with your friends or artists that you already work well with. Can we have team names? Team names must be specifically Mega Man themed. Your team name can't just be a generic video game, music, or robotics reference. Team names must be 1-3 words long. A number counts as a word. Team names can't contain characters that are invalid for file names. \ / : * ? " < > | Team names must be rated E for Everyone. This means no alcohol, drug use, sex, or excessive-violence references. Some examples of good team names: The Yellow Devils, Team Metool, ENERGYTANK, etc. Wait, so we have to all collaborate every week on a remix? Not at all. The whole idea is that each team member will take their turn at remixing. Collaboration is not required at all; in fact, I really want to avoid one single guy carrying the entire team every week throughout the competition. That's not how this is supposed to work, and I'm trusting everyone to play by the rules and make sure that the primary remixer is changing every round. How many rounds are there? Rounds are grouped into blocks. We will be doing three blocks this year, so that works out to nine rounds. There is also the possibility for extra rounds either in between blocks or at the end. I have not made any decisions regarding those yet. I'm not a remixer but I want to take part somehow. What can I do to help? We need sigs and artwork and stuff, so if you're good with The Photoshop, that would be a big help. Also spread the word and let the internet know what's going on.

I'm gonna go ahead and close this thread. I'm not sure what use a separate OCR block thread would be. Let's continue discussion in the main Magfest thread.

In the immortal words of LuketheXjesse MAGFEST

Matchups updated.

This is pretty groovy. I don't think the melodic adaptation to the new time sig is awkward at all. Sounds great. Nice sounds. I like your pads in the background. Really nice dreamy sound. YES

Man I love this source tune. Torvus Bog is the best. Really great arrangement; "aggressive" really nails it. Lots of great embellishments. Love the texture. YES

Yeah I'm also bewildered at your complaint of lag.

He was being facetious. I didn't talk about Snake because it's a well known fact that he was included due to a personal request made by Kojima to his friend Sakurai. But even then, Snake is an iconic, immediately recognizable character, and he does have connections to Nintendo's 8-bit era. Tales is popular in Japan and in the western JRPG fanbase, of course, but the characters are not iconic. They are not mascots. Combined that with the fact that they are not Nintendo characters, we can safely say that it is very unlikely that the new Smash Bros. game will feature a Tales main character. I'm not saying it won't happen, I'm just saying it probably won't happen. I'm not sure what argument you're making here. They included Fire Emblem characters because they wanted to do that, and they were able to easily do that because those guys are first-party Nintendo characters. They didn't include the other Nintendo characters because they didn't want to. Including some characters doesn't mean they have to include all characters. Metal Gear Solid isn't niche. It's not "niche on Nintendo platforms." You can't be niche on one platform and mainstream on another. Individual games in a worldwide best-selling franchise aren't "niche." It's extremely well known. Kojima's request actually does change everything about Snake's inclusion, because it's purely about a guy doing a favor for his friend. That's it. All the other stuff about Metal Gear Solid and Nintendo doesn't factor in at all. It's a successful franchise, the creator is friends with the producer, so they just do it.

Sonic was Mario's rival back in the 16-bit era. He's an incredibly important character in the context of Nintendo's history with their old rival Sega. Mega Man is an iconic NES-era character. There is probably no other character outside of Nintendo's own first-party roster that exemplifies the 8-bit gaming like he does. Lloyd Irving is the main character in a niche JRPG that was re-released on PS2 and is being re-released on PS3. I know you like the Tales series but it's really not as popular as you're making it out to be. Smash Bros. is, generally speaking, a mascot fighter. Nintendo can do more obscure characters from their own first-party titles (Fire Emblem characters, random Pokémon, Mr. Game & Watch, etc.) because they own them and it's fun for them to bring those kinds of characters to the forefront, but for the most part it's about iconic characters duking it out. Lloyd isn't really a mascot character; no Tales character is. He's not immediately recognizable to anyone who isn't really into JRPGs. It's not impossible, but it's highly unlikely that Smash Bros. will feature a Tales character as a fighter. Pac-Man is probably going to be Namco's representative; he's iconic, immediately recognizable, and has crossed over into a Nintendo game before (the arcade version of Mario Kart).

I probably will not do another B4C2 in the future.

That design isn't "shit." I don't think you even understand what good design is, if you think that design is bad.

After those games, Sega put out Sonic Colors, which was very fun and a step in the right direction towards getting Sonic games back on a quality track. They followed that up with the Sonic Generations, which was excellent. These are not not "semi-good;" they are genuinely good Sonic games. Sonic Lost World looks to be continuing the trend.

You should have backed it!

I'm inordinately excited for Mario 3D World. Mario 3D Land is one of the finest Mario games I've played and I played it to death, even after 100-percenting it. The control, the level design, the pacing, the aesthetic, everything came together in an incredible package. 3D World looks like it's going to continue that.

Hey these tracks are pretty good.

I do have to say, participation in this competition has been a disappointment. I don't think we've had a single week where all 12 contestants have submitted tracks. Oh well, just one more round and then we can start putting things together for the new WCRG.

Gonna move this over to R&C. Mods, let's keep this one open.

Well, I don't know about that. I was at Apex 2013 in January, which is the biggest Smash tournament in the world, and all three Smash games had competitors with an absolutely insane level of play going on. The Brawl matches were incredible.

Yes! Let the toku spirit burn!!! Also holy shit. This is killer. Really impressive sequencing and such a great, cohesive sound. I don't know why but this has such a Konami sound to it, like something out of the original NES TMNT game. Really excellent. YES

Piano's killing me. Forgive me for saying so, but the entire affair sounds incredibly lo-fi. What's going on here? Piano is very messy and muddy, and your synth pad lead thingy isn't very interesting or expressive at all. Needs lots of mixing and sound design attention. NO

Killer arrangement. Wicked energy. I love bein' a turtle. I agree with Vig and Deia. Gets a bit crowded. Needs to go back to the mixing board for some balance adjustments. NO, resub as soon as possible

I agree with Vig. I think you have a killer soundscape here, but it really feels like the whole arrangement sort of just dances around the Requiem. I think working in a B-section with a strongly stated melodic line from another source would really help anchor the piece. NO, but definitely resub. Need this on OCR.

Sounds pretty kickass to me. Vinnie's source breakdown helps; good expansion of a short source tune. Nice breakdowns with the filtered percussion. I like it. YES

Awesome arrangement. Needs production fixes. Let's close this out. NO, resub

In agreement here. For a big ol' dance track, it feels awfully empty. Like Larry said, needs more source usage too. There's a lot of unrelated vamping going on. Not a bad start but it needs work. NO