OCR00202 - Maniac Mansion "Manic Mugenical"

[m68030]

Maniac Mansion 'Manic Mugenical'

Weird little remix here.. I'm not too big on the scratchy noises, but the

drum track is kinda neat; clean and punchy.

[AnotherOneBitesTheDust]

Catchy melody. Nice rhythms on the synth thingy at the beginning. Massive panning effects in the middle followed by a rewinding type sound of the whole song with crunchy noises deafening it. Putting it in this style seems like it would be hard to add something else...without it sounding bad. Maybe an effect here and there could have been added since it likes to screw around with things to make it sound intense.

Download for the melody at least.

[Liontamer]

Not a bad sound for an old mix. For better or for worse, it still stands alone after all this time. Not sure what the point was of the effects from 1:45-2:14. Pretty pointless. In any case, the arrangement was pretty simple but it has it's place in the older stuff, even if overlooked.

[OceansAndrew]

some of the effects, like the heavily delayed bass synth is really cool, and a lot of the counterpoint ideas that are used are cool, but the effects-only breakdown went far too long, and the hihats are distractingly boring.

The rest of the drums are nice, and there is a lot of creative processing going on, so overall this comes off as enjoyable if flawed.

[about:blank]

Whoo! More flanged percussion! When I was younger, I'd always play this game with my cousins at family Christmas parties, but still I only vaguely recognize this source. The drums are very hard hitting, which I like. The synths sound pretty cool, but sometimes things get a little cluttered. The reverse flange thing around 1:45 was pretty damn cool IMO. All in all, while this did tend to get repetitive, there were quite a few cool things along the way that prevented it from getting boring.

[Rozovian]

I played this game too when I was younger. I remember not understanding much of it, but that's about it. It's a pretty cool synth demo, but doesn't really sound that much like a remix. Then again, the source, that of it a quick google let me find, wasn't much to remix anyway. Anyone working with synths should listen to this, just for the synths. That it's a remix of the first game from which the SCUMM engine came gives it a bonus point, too.

[DragonAvenger]

Drums are repetative throughout the mix, which is somewhat of a turn off. I wish more had been done with them. They aren't bad, just repetative.

The melody is catchy, and adding the 'crunchiness' makes me dig it more.

The 'sound effect' section is a bit strange, but it could have worked with more lead into it. Just a bit more of a transition.

For it's age this mix has done well, and I'm surprised there aren't more reviews to it.

[halc]

the synth bass is distracting. at 0:58 it really dilutes the rest of the sound.

1:46-2:14 loses my attention really fast. this section goes on for too long.

annnd i think you may have overused the phaser a little bit...

[Lint]

Definitely an interesting introduction. Everything hitting at 1:00 and getting louder grated on my ears for a second. The synth set-up is very nice, but the "crunchiness" can get a little to much for me. Other than that it seems like it has a continuous drum loop and leads into a little sound effect section that is an interesting portion, but doesn't really seem very impressive. The ending part feels like the most fleshed out part of the song.

I'm not really interested in listening to the mix that much.

[42]

Funky.

Still a little too "out there" and repetitive for my tastes.

Ultimately, I don't really care for this mix.

[Bahamut]

The drums in the introduction made me think I was listening to a Magitek Factory mix at first.

The mix doesn't really catch my ears though, as there's not that much going on sound-wise. Mainly just a drum and a synth?

[justinj212]

The drums at the beginning were interesting, and I was eager to see what they were setting up. It felt like an intro to a chase scene from a 70's spy movie. I liked the synths as well, and they sound very unique. Would have liked it a bit more if you had done something more with the mix (some soloing, or taking the source in another direction). I just felt like the mix ended before it really took me anywhere.

[Rexy]

The source material sounds weird to me, with that many crazy synth and percussive effects that could mistake it to be from a Genesis. o_O

Even this remix interpretation sounds weird to me - while maintaining the same groove focus on the original, it manages to take the melody in a more ominous way with the strange high-dependant throbbing bass and experimental panned nature to the accompanying sound to it. I also thought the reversed section at 1:50 sounds rather ridiculous coming out of it, but that to me seems to add more towards the quirkiness.

Aside from the drum progression and the melody being present for 16 bars, it to me sounds really liberal though. We got this quirky setup, and it may work for more experimental listening, but to see little source being used at all tells me that it's going to be hard to see it as a proper remix, but just as what sounds more like an Acid experiment.

People may understand this quirkiness driving the mix, and for a 2000 mix it did its purpose, but attributing to changing standards it has shown a considerable amount of age over the years just for its purpose. So if you are to check this out, bear all this in mind.

[Crulex]

Well, this is a weird one. It does seem like an experiment on effects and while it's age is showing something first, for what it is and when it came, it didn't make me cringe, so perhaps the offbeatness of it all just wasn't enough to turn me off of it. Seems to me like it was just pulling itself together right at the end, and it's a shame that there wasn't more to it. Reminds me a lot of early to mid-90's computer games set in a futuristic setting, so the sound fits it's style, and having played many of those when I was younger, the thought made me smile, but beyond that, can't say I loved this one.