Rexy

I got one word for that - MissingNo.

http://www.game-art-hq.com/98200/we-are-celebrating-the-20-years-of-pokemon-the-game-art-hq-pokemon-generation-i-tribute/ Posting this in here because it's a project I had gotten involved with. Some of you guys may be familiar with Game-Art HQ via the Dwelling of Duels, which members of that site contributed banner art for some of their duels within the past few years. Outside of the DoD, the art they have on display pays homage to different types of videogames past and present, with past projects previously being featured on Kotaku and Destructoid. This year, the site members chimed in on a big celebration for Pokémon's 20th Anniversary, illustrating the original 151 (152?) in over 300 drawings (including 8 from myself), illustrating some of the moves and abilities they would be able to pull off. Whether done serious, silly, conventional, unconventional or in even unusual styles, it felt so much like the Pokémon community has had loads of people crossing its paths and it clearly shows. The site is aiming to do Generation 2 next year, so who knows how far it would go after that! Nevertheless, do check out the link!

Oh my! Looks like over the past hour I suddenly got a Steam overhaul! I have received: - Tales of Monkey Island complete edition - Bit Trip Void - Lego Harry Potter (both instalments) - The original Five Nights at Freddys - Crypt of the Necrodancer (YES, top of my wishlist!) - and Undertale! Yikes... @Wiesty, you have one heck of a Steam wallet! Don't worry about the package that's in the post (damn you, Royal Mail!!) - I'll be ready for that when it arrives. Other than that, thank you soooooo much!

And according to the mail trackers, my Secret Santa gift is at their house! I'm so relieved it made it in time

I think we'll ALL be anxious at this rate. I've maintained a spreadsheet for the Secret Santa and I noticed that just less than half of us had checked in with progress on sending our parcels out, while only 3 of them have arrived so far - and with 5 days until Christmas, this is telling me there's less overall enthusiasm than in the previous few years. Heck, I usually help out a few people that hadn't got their gifts by giving them Steam gifts if they have an account, but that's going to be hard to ease the minds of 21 people excluding myself xD

I can confirm that my parcel has reached its target country. Take that, Royal Mail strikers!

Alright, I AM DONE! I could say that I beat the post... but barely, if the Royal Mail strikes are anything to go by. I will make sure this ships tomorrow! D:

I'm uo for providing you with an Alto voice and can also read sheet music at a reasonable level. I have been in school choirs when growing up, so this feels like a great callback to that. It also sounds like a neat project that can definitely provide a solid community effort

My person gave me some generalised subjects as well, but that was nothing that looking up more information about them on their social network couldn't fix. Do you think this can help out a few people unsure on what to give to their match?

Oh yeah! I learnt of my match half an hour ago and my mind is now whirring with ideas. This will be fun!

Aw yusss, I am in! I'll fill it out later this afternoon

Eash, I'm sorry to hear about that... D: I feel guilty in simikarly getting tied up myself, but all I can hope for is for this project to get a safe and stable home. It must be rough on both you and timaeus

Yes, that's a band that has melody and three other musicians. From what I saw on VGMdb, melody arranged the entire suite and played the guitar parts for the band recording. They also came back together for the recent Nintendo 64 tribute as well

I was about to say that. just like I did with every other year! xD Make it happen!

Personally I'm with Mirby on the statement that the involved artists should be asked about this. We had experiences with Brandon to varying degrees around the site, though like djp stated in the FF8 thread post it's best to remain professional and make OCR solely about the music. As I have a finished track on this album, I'd prefer to remain on the album regardless of who's running it or whether it would be an OC Remix album at all, though I can imagine for some that there'll be grief no matter what happens.

...derp, that's an error on my part! Apparently I thought it was "Together Always", which grated on me due to the low-toned mallet melodies. Seriously, someone should at LEAST do something good with that song though

I found myself able to listen to the entire thing on the train back from a day out at London today. It's so refreshing to see so many arrangers specialised in meatier genres trying something new if they hadn't gone down the mellow route before - and for those that did handle it before, it's great to see what vision they had in the grand scheme of things. Silly notes that ended up coming into my head throughout it: - As an artist involved, I obviously got to hear "Baby Blue Sky" before even getting to pick a source. And my thoughts now are the same as they are back then - it's a tough act to respond to; the fusion of Chimp and halc's writing / production respectively works so bleedin' marvelously; and it serves as a great understanding for the album's vision. - Yep, Meteo Xavier's Secret of Mana track turned my least favorite source from the entire game into something much more tonally spaced and clean - as well as by far being the most energetic on the entire album (!!) - Considering a fair number of OCR arrangers are parents now, I'm surprised Eino was the only one that sampled his own kid in this! It also made me want to check out ilomilo as a game, but I don't have neither an XBox (and am keeping refusing to buy them for obvious reasons) or a Windows phone to play it on... - I can trust a trance-based arranger like bLiNd to make a pun on Samuel Barber's famous classical adagio. I guess it won't be long until it'll get other EDM remixes from people around GameChops or something... - You did good with that accordion, zyko. You stood out all those years as a musician that focused on stylistic creativity, so I'm glad to hear a track that makes it feel like you - Hearing E-Bison's re-harmonizations in the Sleepytime disc feels as if C418 ended up on the roster spiritually. Actually... did the 'recruitment net' get that wide we could've had C418 doing something for this? - LOL at Zoltan's sillytime bonus! Just wait til you get halfway through and you'll see what I mean. and who's that Rexy chick again? Some cute animal loving n00b? lol This album may have come out of the (baby) blue in terms of release, but it seems to be going really well. Hopefully this time we'll get those that think OCR does 'too much techno' or 'too much rock' to be silenced if only for a little while.

I wanted to see something for Crash Bandicoot's 20th anniversary and it actually HAPPENED in last night's Sony press conference! I am so greatful for both the remakes for the original trilogy AND the appearance in Skylanders Imaginators as a PS4 exclusive - I just feel so happy that there's people that DO care about the fanbase so much! It'll be a long wait to get gameplay footage, but I'll be glad to board the wait train and see what happens

I think I only have one question to add to this sudden revelation - what's the relevance behind Ralf Schneider anyway, other than just the first convincing German name that came up the top of your head? o__O

I'm so happy I'm not alone in regards to Crash coverage now! And not only did you go for a difficult source but I can see how it served as an outlet for your childhood frustration. Though the Crash 2 bosses didn't really give me much trouble in comparison to the first game, Tiny was definitely one of the bigger challenges there (no pun intended). For me, it's a great recognizable arrangement; sensed the source AND the Williams inspiration with the writing, not to mention some great additional melodies to add to the otherwise chaotic approach. I don't know why but the word-builder intro made me laugh - it's the same kind of effect as the final boss music of Jamestown, which also started out with amusing use of word-built choir, and in both cases it makes it feel less serious and more fun. It's also very difficult to be able to build up an orchestral palette when you have experience in multiple arrange-writing fields according to your Soundcloud, yet you've built up a great selection and also took advantage of different patches / keyswitches when appropriate (staccato strings at points, brass swells, etc). I didn't even expect the drum set given what I read prior to listening, though it's a nice surprise as using that gives me serious Video Games Live vibes about it. Seeing all this come together, I'm so happy to see you managed to put all this together to get it onto OCR! I am however with the judges when it comes to humanization, as there's some instruments like the piano and some of the staccato writing that felt more like the velocities for the entire riff were stagnant. It's a good idea to think about what the instrumentalists would do in a live setting and envision how the sound would come out for that purpose. Extended legato based sections, especially with some of the lead / chorded brass, can also benefit quite well from the MIDI volume control from what I've learnt; I don't know what patches you primarily used, but I'm aware of some that completely change expression depending on the value of the MIDI volume event at the time, which would be really useful to bring in a sudden dynamic change or regulate the kind of air-flow you may see from (again) players in a live setting. But yes, this is kind of weird for me to offer a pointer or two in an otherwise absolute moment of elevation for me. xD Kudos for giving some love to the Crash series here. welcome to the OCR clan, and I really hope you keep pushing yourself and sending stuff over in the future!

Interesting. I put in a few artists under those conditions and saw the common bridges out of OCR tend to be through either Jillian Aversa or Mega Ran. Mazedude stood out, though, with a loose six degree link using Chad Seiter as the outward community bridge. There's got to be more artists that would tie over in a completely different way... XD

Yep, I too hit 3 steps because of the Final Fantasy connection. XD I'm actually interested in looking for any artists that didn't cover any of Uematsu's scores and seeing any other major links that amateur arrangers could have.

Funnily, I have a feeling that OC Remix changed my perception on the world rather than my actual music making skill. Back in 2003, I was a college student that saw OCR as a fun place with a fun premise and wanted to instantly interact with other fans there; turns out, it didn't feel like a safe place for a 16-year-old pencil-using fanartist and amateur fan-writer with a huge admiration for PlayStation platformers, so after failing to interact I felt as if I could just keep my core interests as a low profile and start over when the time was right (i.e. the opening of VGMix's 2nd incarnation served as that platform). Needless to say, time passed and especially within the past few years, I felt as if I opened up considerably. As for music writing though, just being aware of the wider community for some time gave me time to experiment with different ideas, see a bunch of ideas work, see others don't, try to see what's supposed to work and keep pushing to blend in, which seems to have had a hand in my versatility. I STILL experiment to this day, though luckily it's over time when I finally felt I didn't need to break the gamer that I was to still make great arrangements, period.

I saw the news! Now I'm trying to find anywhere that is accepting preorders for the Special Edition, which is hard when it's just got a date xD

There's no release date for Europe yet and I'm super stoked to play through Fates! Awakening was the first FE game I ever played and it made me re-think how to approach tactical RPGs, so I'm totally set for going through the new installment. Birthright playing a lot like Awakening should be no problem, so that'll be a case of getting back to how the system works. Yet from what I read on the net though, I noticed people saying that Conquest (the one that plays more like a traditional FE) is insanely difficult and has nowhere to grind if you're stuck on a certain map. And being the challenge seeker that I am, I feel uneasy at the idea of playing through it on Casual mode. @AngelCityOutlaw - considering that you're actually making good progress through what I presume to be Conquest (in comparison to one journalist I read taking 12 hours to beat an early map, apparently), do you have any tips to share that would help out anyone that's currently struggling?