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OCR02090 - Mega Man 2 "The Quick and the Blue"


djpretzel
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This mix took me by surprise - I really didn't expect to be moved by the lyrical content of a game remix, but the effort put in and the vocal harmonies just get me every time. I'm completely enraptured by the storytelling and desperation of the Quick Man, the song's tragic hero. I've never even played a Mega Man game, but the song's so well written I don't have to have done, and that's got to speak volumes. I also barely notice the instrumentation, but upon closer listen I love the acoustic bass.

I definitely hear the Killers reference in there, which is probably my only criticism, as it sort of "breaks the 4th wall" in the storytelling as my brain associates it with Mr Brightside, and I'm momentarily distracted.

My circuits slow

I'm not scared anymore

This is the moment that we have been created for

A great line no-one's mentioned yet - your choice of the word "created" here is a stroke of genius. It implies a destiny; an inevitability about the situation that no matter how hard he tries, the Quick Man will never win, so his efforts are in vain. We know this, he knows this, yet he still tries, and we empathise with him.

Thankfully, next on my OCR playlist is a halc/ben briggs mix to cheer me up again after this song's totally swept me off to a distant emotional plane. Clever, compelling stuff.

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I actually purchased the entire album from iTunes a while back, but this is still my favorite track from it. For me, the lyrics invoke the theme of a wild west showdown at high noon. The brass helps with that as well. Death does wear blue, and this song is great. Not exactly epic, but close to it.

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A great line no-one's mentioned yet - your choice of the word "created" here is a stroke of genius. It implies a destiny; an inevitability about the situation that no matter how hard he tries, the Quick Man will never win, so his efforts are in vain. We know this, he knows this, yet he still tries, and we empathise with him.

...I quoted those exact same lines in the previous page as my favorite lyrics in the entire piece.

For the exact same reasons, no less. That's why this is my favorite that The Megas have done--though the one based on the level select theme approaches it. I could get all Asimov on an interpretation of the lyrics here, too, based around just those three lines--something about the implicit analogy between robots' programming and humans' destiny/fate gets to the sci-fi fan in me. KF

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I found the lyrics of this arrangement to be my favorite aspect of this mix. I liked how Quickman was portrayed as the hero defending his town from the outsider Megaman; it's not the approach many would consider. The instrumentation added to the Western theme of the song nicely. Another win for The Megas.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hee-hee, I agree with Kizyr and DarkSim; my favorite lyrics are

My circuits slow

I'm not scared anymore

This is the moment that we have been created for

for also their reasons about how it deals with destiny. But what I like here is how Quick Man is also rising to meet his destiny (the "not scared anymore" part and how it's repeated mantra like).

There's also just a bunch of little things in the narrative painted here that I like too, such as how the battle between Mega Man and Quick Man is given as much time as the rest of the narrative else even though such an actual battle would only last seconds, if that makes sense.

This is probably my favorite track from The Megas; I still like the non-acoustic version better though because it just reaches higher levels of tension that this one doesn't. Still, this is a really good version, and I hope that this does get more people interested in The Megas like Annihilation of Monsteropolis did for me. :-D

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 year later...

This one surprised me because it was one of those songs that really told the freakin' story and does it well. That's what was so interesting to me, because usually it's the music that I look to (or listen to, rather) first, then the lyrics. But with this one, it was the opposite. The lyrics painted the picture of the battle perfectly, and the music just sorta matched the tone. Brilliant. I really loved that about this ReMix. Kinda interesting that the lyrics kinda fell out of line as Quickman died. That was cleaver as hell. The Megas picks up a decisive musical win here and this is definitely going in my recommended list.

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  • 2 years later...
  • 1 year later...

Can I just start by saying how much I love this song? I mean it's so tightly arranged, performed and produced that it's easy to love the song just on those merits, but where this remix really shines is the story. It's rare to have the narrative match the arrangement so perfectly... I genuinely feel like I'm not only listening to a great piece of music, but a story of epic proportions that bring Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns to mind, especially the final duels and what leads up to them. You simply can't not get emotionally invested. 

 

And since people in this thread have taken a habit of picking a favorite line from the song... Well, this one for me embodies the final moments of a warrior who knows that eventually, someone will come who is stronger - or in this case, faster - than he is, and accepting that inevitable fate with dignity. 

 

My circuits slow

I'm not scared anymore

I see the faces of my brothers that have fallen before

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  • Liontamer changed the title to OCR02090 - Mega Man 2 "The Quick and the Blue"
  • 1 year later...

The moment when you remember there was a really awesome remix somewhere on OCRemix and after wading through hundreds (or tens) of songs because you can't remember the name or the original song, then you find it and listen to it with headphones and tears rolls down your eyes to this emotionally filled story.

This is one of the many remixes that pop into my head from time to time, and it's a really special one.

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