Ooooooooooo... essay questions!
1. What first encounter with VGM? What kind of effect do you remember it having on you?
My first memorable encounter with the bloops and bleeps of yesteryear was with my Atari XE's
. It has a funk-inspired, jazzy intro song that's catchy as hell, and got stuck in my head for a while afterward.2. At what point do you remember considering yourself a VGM fan (or OCR fan) in relation to your first VGM experience?
I probably became a VGM fan after hearing the soundtrack to the arcade game, Darius. More specifically, "Captain Neo" ("Cosmic Air Way" was a close second). This was back in the mid-80s, and that song really captured my attention. It's short, but good and memorable (enough that I eventually did a remix of it... which is on this site). And while the rest of the soundtrack was good as well, it was that particular song that really got me paying attention to VGM. Then came my SEGA Genesis and games like Thunder Force II and Ghouls 'N Ghosts to cement the love.
3. How did you hear about OCR?
I heard about OCR back when I was a relative newbie on the now dead version of the website, VGMix. It was the beginning of 2002, and I'd been submitting remixes on VGMix for a couple of months when someone on the forums there mentioned OCR as a website similar to VGMix. I came by and checked OCR out, and eventually signed up in May of 2002.
4. What do you feel would be some non-musical examples (fan art, videos, interpretive dance, horse racing, rock-throwing) of the OCR society?
Well, it kind of depends on what you want out of the website. If you just want to make remixes without having to potentially butt heads with the OCR judging standards, you have various fan competitions and occasional projects like "An OverClocked Christmas" that aren't official site projects, and thus are open to everyone, regardless of their talent level. There are signature making threads, where people can use their artistic talents to produce small images for people to use on the forums. There also used to be fan art competitions, where you'd have a couple of weeks to draw something relating to a game/game series. There are Workshop forums to post original music and remixes where you can get feedback, a forum called "Off Topic" to just shoot the shit about anything, and of course, all the officially posted remixes and remix albums to grab.
Then there are all the discussions taking place that range from talking about games and music, to helping people with relationships, various kinds of mental or physical illnesses and treatments, even finding answers to niggling little things that bug you sometimes (like trying to remember a movie or game title). The forums are filled with topics that range all over the place, so even if you're not into game music or remixing, you'll still likely find something to talk about at least once in a while.
5. How has VGM and OCR affected your life?
VGM got me to pick up a keyboard so I could learn to play the game music I liked, and that led to me writing my own original music. As for OCR, it was in the then-called "Unmoderated" forum that I first learned how to do pixel art (for a signature I wanted to use), and I've since gotten better at pixel work. So basically, the two things introduced me to a pair of new areas to be creative in.