How did you first hear of/get involved with OCR?

[Brandon Strader]

LIKELY STORY, Mr. 2012 Newcomer

[DarkeSword]

That pissed me off so hard. I think they had it set to like 1 month or 3 months and if you didn't log in, your account was deleted or disabled or something. That's why I had so many accounts.

Nope. We've never deleted accounts for inactivity.

[DrumUltimA]

Man, has it been over 10 years ago that I joined this website? I don't believe.

Anyway when I was in high school it became clear that I would have no choice but to devote my life to music pretty early on. However, I also really loved video games and felt very comfortable with my nerd identity. In my typical practice of patrolling the internet, I stumbled upon OCR--I found it provided the perfect balance for my music and gaming interests. I became inactive for a little while, until I started school at Peabody where I met Jill "Pixietricks" Goldin (who is now Jill Aversa!). The combined nerd energy led me back to OCR, on which I've lurked ever since!

[OceansAndrew]

A former college roommate introduced me to the site initially in 2004, and I grabbed all the Castlevania and Mega Man remixes, as well as Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy.

January of 2006 I decided to join the site itself and learn how to make music!

[Tex]

My brother used to visit it frequently. But in the end, I was the one who got more involved.

[alrubedo]

I had stalked it for a couple of years, hearing music from the various projects show up in flash animation on Newgrounds and on Youtube and finally decided to join up and interact. Simply 'nuff.

[Liontamer]

That pissed me off so hard. I think they had it set to like 1 month or 3 months and if you didn't log in, your account was deleted or disabled or something. That's why I had so many accounts.

There was nothing set like that at any time on the forums. You just forgot your log-in information, noob. All the accounts were still there and could have been logged into at any time, so don't blame us for your n00bery.

Nope. We've never deleted accounts for inactivity.

Shariq's wrong. We did do a 1-time purge of accounts with 0 posts that hadn't logged in for something like over 12 or 18 months. It may have been before a forum migration. That was sometime around like 2006 or 2007, IIRC, but we've definitely done it before. That said, I merged all of Brandon's old accounts personally, so I know for a fact they were there.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Liontamer

[Crulex]

Read about this place in the 2008 Game Informer article on it (one of the only useful things I've ever gotten out of Game Informer, actually) and decided to check it out. Came on, found the Donkey Kong Country ReMixes, fell in love with the site and signed up to the forums almost a year later.

[BardicKnowledge]

One of my high school classmates is the older brother of DarkCecil13, who introduced me to the site back in 2002 as he was pounding on his drumset between games of Super Smash TV and Kirby Superstar. I joined myself to post and lurk in early 2004, when my second semester of college began.

[kupernikus]

I actually started an account here around 2001 or so. Before that, I'd been browsing Limewire or Kazaa for music and came across some final fantasy techno remix by Ailsean. IT WAS BRILLIANT! After that I started searching for Final Fantasy, Zelda, Chrono Trigger, and Mega Man remixes on the service. One of them came with a readme file that suggested I visit this website. I came, made a profile, and posted only a couple times. I moved out of country for a few years and then when I moved back I remembered the site and made a new profile since I couldn't remember the one I'd made before.

[lady zelda]

2005 when I found Zelda remixes on Zelda Dungeon. The bread crumb trail led me here. Wow. It's really been 8 years.

[KyleJCrb]

final fantasy techno remix by Ailsean

Huh. You'd think I would remember this. Sounds like it was mistagged (or retagged to get more downloads...)

[Bundeslang]

A couple of Mega Man 3 remixes brought me here via Google somewhere in 2002 (if I'm correct). Snakeman Get Down from Disco Dan was the main reason. First I only listened to remixes (mainly Mega Man), but in 2004 I decided to create an account.

[ocre]

Always loved vg music and got midis from VG music, so I imagine I started from there then quickly found OCR back when Bart Klepka's site and that weird DJ Pretzel comic was still up. Way back when. I used to hang out in the early days of the mIRC channel. 2000-2001. Didn't start using the forums heavily until a few years ago.

Edited October 24, 2013 by ocre

[KyleJCrb]

Always loved vg music and got midis from VG music, so I imagine I started from there then quickly found OCR back when Bart Klepka's site and that weird DJ Pretzel comic was still up. Way back when. I used to hang out in the early days of the mIRC channel. 2000-2001. Didn't start using the forums heavily until a few years ago.

The OverClocked comic is actually still up: http://overclocked.org/

I think Bart Klepka's site is gone though, sadly.

[avaris]

Downloading Donkey Kong Country and Bubble Bobble tunes through WinMX or Limewire back in the day. Came across a bunch of files that were titled with OC_ReMix, and eventually figured out what that meant.

Downloading Secret of Mana and Final Fantasy tracks for me. On the exact same places. Circa 2005.

[Majin GeoDooD]

A buddy of mine on IRC sent me an mp3 of http://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00336/ in early 2002. After checking out the site and the rest of the remixes I was hooked!

I was more active 4-5 years ago than I have been recently. I'm just some weird lurker now

[SwordBreaker]

In the late 90s/early 2000s, I suddenly had a huge interest in listening to game music outside of the games themselves, i.e. having mp3s of them or something. As with most people, I'll shamefully say that I did so via share programs like Kazzaa and iMesh. Admittedly, however, back then I never realized that they actually released official game music albums, and by the time I did realize, it turns out that most of them were sold in Japan and I had no ability to import whatsoever. Poor excuses, I know, but that's how I got my fix. I like to believe that I've been compensating for my thievery during last couple of years as importing and downloading official OSTs digitally are easier than ever today thanks to the power of the internet.

I remember some of the first stuff I looked for in these share programs were Mario music, Zelda music, Final Fantasy, and Valkyrie Profile...the latter of which had been an obsession of mine because it started a bug in how cool and dynamic game music can sound (kick-ass samples). I stumbled upon some mixes and mash-ups along the way of course, the most infamous one was the erroneously tagged Rabbit Joint arrangement of the Zelda theme (tagged as System of a Down's cover). Little did I realize that this would lead me to OCR. I then started searching for game mp3s and remixes via search engines like Yahoo and Altivista, and stumbled upon this site around 2004.

As soon as I discovered what OCR's all about, I began a download and search frenzy. Some of the earliest OC ReMix I recall listening to were Dale North's incredible take on Rena's Theme and The Ken Song. My growing obsession with Motoi Sakuraba and Dale's memorizing remix caused an explosion of feelings. Needless to say, I was in for the long run. Eventually (2 years later), I started participating in the forums. I'm sure some remix I heard was so good it made me want to review it badly.

[Dunther]

It was in my first years of internet, I was searching for Zelda music on emule or something, and found something like Zelda 3 Jazz...followed the url and BAM, totally addicted.

[Gollgagh]

in 2003 I had a friend in scouts that I was showing an orchestral mix of One Winged Angel that I had found, I don't even remember where, and he was like "dude! you should check out ocremix.org"

and then here I was

[Crowbar Man]

Hmm I can't remember details exactly since its been forever. (Probably just skip this post because its a trip down memory lane)

I remember in 1999 listening to tons of MIDI/remixes on VGMusic.com (Powerlord's website I believe) on my WebTV... at some point I believe I stumbled upon Overclocked.org (Pretzel's website/comic) and a real computer. Sometime after, when mp3s were still pretty new, I stumbled upon OCRemix whenever it was created (maybe overclocked.org linked it probably? Maybe VGmusic? Maybe RPGamer, another site i went for remixes).

MOSTLY just listened to the music and never participated/lurked in the community (whenever that started). Always a fan of videogame music & remixes so I came back often.

I found many, many years later when I was heavily playing TF2 (around 2008? maybe '09) that OCR had a TF2 server, joined that and had some pretty awesome times hanging out with some pretty cool people, including some of my favorite remixers.

Then while Minecraft was still getting super popular, We're Meeting Gman and I joined the server Fireslash had setup for OCR at some point shortly before it was going to be shut down. I decided to step in to provide a place to fuel our MC addiction (both ours and the OCR crew that played it) and we ran the OCR MC server for a short while. Joined the forums (11/2010 according to my profile), hung out when even more cool people. Some unfortunate drama later, I passed the MC server torch to Abadoss/phil.

Now everybody pretty much hates me (and my terrible opinions) and I'm just lurking on the forums like a cranky old man. Still think this place is awesome though

So, that is the story nobody probably cared about

Edited October 25, 2013 by Crowbar Man

[Moguta]

Sometime in 2002 I found Project Majestic Mix's Tribute to Nobuo Uematsu (probably from searching for Nobuo, don't remember that part). Hanging out on the old PMM forums led to me OCR, VGMix, and OneUp Studios, and I was hooked.

Who were you on the Majestic Mix forums?!? This is almost exactly my story!

Never really noticed the Overclocked comic like many of you, but I do remember Bart Klepka's remixes. Got probably the only Daggerfall mix I'll ever hear from his site.

Also, I find it awesome that Kaleb Grace helped lead you to OCR, Amy. We both frequented Gamingforce Forums back in the day. I got involved in his awesome Song of the Week when it started, and I've still got a forum-stickied MP3-ripping guide over there (gathering obsolescence as quickly as technology runs past the CD).

Edited October 28, 2013 by Moguta

[Nonamer]

For me, it was listening to "video game music" under Last.fm back in the summer of 2010 (before it went pay-to-listen). After hearing some of Project Chaos, I decided to check OCR out, and I've been hooked to VGM ever since. Then there was OCAD... *shivers*.

In terms of getting involved, MAGFest 9's OCR panel was when I decided to join the community. Still haven't made anything noteworthy, but I still hold no regrets (okay maybe a little).

[Cash]

I'm not entirely sure on the years, but sometime between 2006 and 2008 I had listened to a bunch of OCR remixes that my brother had collected. I remember looking up OCR and checking out some remixes from my favorite games. I also remember lurking in the workshop forum to find remixes of my favorite songs, and reading the feedback.

I continued my lurking on and off for a couple (give or a take a year or two) years until about the time Serious Monkey Business was released. That was the first album I remember seeing on the front page. From that point on, I checked OCR daily. I didn't join the forums though until I decided to start remixing as a hobby, in September of 2011. My main reason I wanted to start remixing is to give tribute to my favorite VGM. OCR seemed like the best place to do that, I haven't regretted that decision. Since then, I've done a bunch of competitions, and stirred up some controversy in the PPR forum.

I'm seeing a bunch of familiar and new faces in this thread, it's interesting to hear all these different stories of how people found OCR.

@Amy, thanks for sharing your story! That's an awesome scenario, running into DJ Preztel (or should I say Singing Pretzel?) at a karaoke night! I'm glad events led you to OCR, I've really enjoyed your remixes. I hope to meet you in person at a con someday!

2005 when I found Zelda remixes on Zelda Dungeon. The bread crumb trail led me here. Wow. It's really been 8 years.

I just discovered your really cool YouTube page, glad you posted here! Now I have another YouTube person to follow!

[Diodes]

@Amy, thanks for sharing your story! That's an awesome scenario, running into DJ Preztel (or should I say Singing Pretzel?) at a karaoke night! I'm glad events led you to OCR, I've really enjoyed your remixes. I hope to meet you in person at a con someday!

Thank you And thanks everybody for the shout outs. <3 you, OCR friends! Cash, if you do ever see me at a con, please say hi.

Very glad I started this. I'm enjoying everyone's OCR origin stories.