2013: The Year in ReView

[Mirby]

Another year has gone by, and the next is rapidly coming around the corner. For some of us, it already has. At a time like this, it's always nice to take a look back at everything that happened this year. Sometimes it was a rather boring year, and sometimes it can astound the mind at how much took place in that 52-week span. Whichever it is, having a handy summary of key events each year is always handy to have. And so, as with the years before, I bring you 2013: The Year in ReView.

C-jeff kicked the year off much like he did in 2012, except this time slightly different. And by that I mean Preschtale Variations dropped on January 1st, an arrangement album of the album that released on the first day of 2012. The album featured quite a few unique takes on various parts of Preschtale and adds a beautiful epilogue. Three days later at MAGFest XI, OverClocked University had their first official show as OverClocked ReMix's house band. That same day also brought the first mixpost of 2013. Numbered OCR02573 in the internal catalogue, "Innocent Deception" was another collaboration between Dj Mystix and Claire Yaxley, this time taking on several tunes from across the Metal Gear Solid series.

On January 11th, Apex 2013: Straight to the Top released, marking the first time OCR made a partnership with a competitive gaming event. Flexstyle also released his fifth album, Don't Try This at Home, that same day. January 15th came and with it, Danimal Cannon and Zef collaborated and released Parallel Processing, made with just two Game Boys. In a similar vein, halc took a Game Boy and dropped his first true chip album, Legitimacy, on January 20th.

February came and went rather quietly. 9-Bit Records, headed by halc, released 9-Bit Blizzard on February 10th. It really matched the season with its wintry sounds by several different artists. At the end of the month, the popular Arecibo Radio show Touhou Tuesday celebrated its first anniversary.

March proved to be much more eventful than its predecessor. March 8th brought with it Ubiktune's 60th release The Black Box, the fantastic result of Aivi Tran and Surasshu combining their talents. On March 11th, the long-awaited Milky Way Wishes finally released after many years being in the works. Paying tribute to Kirby Super Star, the album was a collaborative effort that did more than enough justice to the original soundtrack. The Bad Dudes followed suit the following day with A Tribute to Yasunori Mitsuda, arranging songs from multiple soundtracks he worked on. Phonetic Hero didn't pay tribute, instead being in a battle as the art for Sliced Bread: Uncrusted appears to show. The album, which released on March 16th, is Phonetic Hero's first solo effort.

April kicked off with Final Fantasy III (meaning VI): Unbalanced and Ruined, the long awaited album from OCR. Featuring 19 tracks by over 10 artists, the album spread quickly and was even mentioned on some Japanese blogs. Of course, it was just the April Fool's joke for 2013, but it was still funny while it lasted. In terms of real releases, Joshua Morse released his Ridge Racer Arrange 2013 album on April 2nd through GameChops. On April 10th, popular YouTube personality Smooth McGroove released his first VGM Acapella album.

The following day, Noisechan & Nugget: Adventures in Chiptunes was released, celebrating the birthday of Nugget, the puggle who lives with Noise Channel host Kristina Kaufman. All proceeds from this album also went to the charity Child's Play. On the 16th, Ben Briggs released Mystery Gift, an album meant as the soundtrack to a hypothetical Pokémon game. I actually made a small custom trainer sprite that is included with each download of the album, so check that out.

May kicked off with a bang, with GameChops and Koopa Soundworks collaborating to release World 1-2, a collection of both original songs and remixes. That same day also kicked off the start of The Blue Bomber Blue Blur Collision Competition (or the B4C2 for short) which tasked entrants with combining tracks from Sonic and Mega Man into a cohesive song. The idea was actually spurred on by the year long crossover event Archie Comics had for both comics, but sadly never reached a conclusion unlike its inspiration.

Five days later brought the release of OCR's 39th album, Deus Ex: Sonic Augmentation. Though the album had been releasing in pieces on the game's Facebook page, the 6th brought a more combined release via OCR itself. Chiptunes = WIN released a new albumthat same day, titled Chiptunes = WTFLOL, which took tracks from previous releases and reimagined them with live instruments to amazing results. Then, on May 14th, Anamanaguchi released Endless Fantasy to much acclaim.

June 6th brought with it Blitz Lunar's Triptunes, a wonderfully chippy adventure. Ben Briggs and ectogemia combined their forces and released K.K. & Friends, which arranged songs from various Animal Crossing games and released on the 9th, the same day as the new game, Animal Crossing: New Leaf. halc and Miearth let loose the result of their collaboration, When Late Becomes Early, on the same day as well. OCR released their sixth original album, Perfection, on June 11th. Omni-Psyence's endeavor into game soundtracks proved rather successful, as this album aptly demonstrates.

The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet returned in full power on June 17th, this time with a bit of a twist. Instead of simply combining one's source tune with that of a Wily Stage from a random Mega Man game, this time teams were tasked with tackling sources from various Capcom-developed Disney games from the 80s for the first three rounds. Future rounds would feature songs from the Game Boy Mega Man games, the X series, and ultimately Wily stages once again, albeit with more sources mixed in.

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[Mirby]

July kicked off with Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin, the long awaited album from OCR. Unlike the April Fool's joke, this one was the real deal. Featuring 74 tracks from 57 artists, the album is over six hours long and spans five discs, the last of which is a DVD. Many people agreed: OCR's 40th release lived up to the hype and was well worth the wait. July 15th brought with it Chiptunes = WIN: Volume 2, another 51-track compilation of some of the best chiptunes the community had to offer. Big Giant Circles released his soundtrack to the game Pocket Mine on the 24th, with songs that perfectly evoke an emotion suited to each scene in the game they play in.

August 11th brought Joshua Morse's Waveform 4, making that series a tetralogy. The fourth installment uses both Super Nintendo sounds and some FM synthesis for a truly wonderful listening experience. The 15th came along and brought with it The Briggs Effect 2 from Ben Briggs. Consisting of past releases, songs requested by fans during a fundraiser, and others, the album proved to be a worthy follow-up to 2012's The Briggs Effect. He was also featured with 8 other artists on OCR's The Eevee EP, which created a theme for each of the 8 evolutions for Eevee along with Eevee itself. This included the Fairy-typed Sylveon, whose type was unknown while the album was being made, but had been revealed by the album's August 20th release date.

On September 1st, GameChops final boss Dj Cutman collaborated with Spamtron once more to release MeowMeow & BowWow, a collection of Link's Awakening remixes that is billed as the "unofficial sort-of sequel" to 2011's Bagu and the Riverman. OCR's 42nd album, Be Aggressive!, released on the 9th. As a tribute to Gunstar Heroes, the album is fittingly an adrenaline rush in audio form, filled with hard-hitting tracks full of energy and ending on a satisfying note.

The 15th brought with it World 1-2: Encore, an album that was released independently by Koopa Soundworks and followed up May's original with more fantastic tracks. Finishing the month off, the colossal Spectrum of Mana dropped on the 28th, bringing with it fantastic art by project director Nate Horsfall and 3 discs of music from many different artists. To call this album a labor of love would be an understatement, and literally everything about this album demonstrates that and more.

October proved to be quite a busy month, starting off with BadAss: Volume II on the 1st. Following up on the first installment from December 2012, even more boss themes were covered and it proved to be even more, well, badass. The Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet also reached its conclusion on the 19th, with The Beat Masters (a team comprised of Amphibious, SuperiorX, and Gario) taking the crown with 79 points overall. The Handsome Devils (Phonetic Hero, Theory of N, and Hylian Lemon) came in a close second with 75 points, and Flying Dog Platform (Sir_NutS, Brandon Strader, and Jivemaster) followed in third with 52 points. Tuberz McGee and halc also released their first collaborative album on the 19th, titled Menagerie, a fun little chiptune jam. Bionic Commando ReMixed: OK, We'll Groove released on the 22nd, arranging tracks from the NES original.

October 29th brought with it the release of OCR's first commercial album, For Everlasting Peace: 25 Years of Mega Man. The result of a collaboration between Capcom on OCR, the album covers 3 tracks from each of the first games of the various Mega Man franchises and proved to be quite successful. As usual, Halloween brought some album releases. Vampire Variations II, the sequel to the 2011 album, proved to be a worthy successor. 9-Bit Records also released 9-Bit Nightmare, a wonderfully spooky album interspersed with some humor.

November wasn't nearly as busy as October, but it still brought some great releases. The 10th had Alex Roe release his SNES Generation album, a collection of various medleys based on recent games he remade using the limitations of the Super Nintendo. C-jeff released his next original album, Big Steel Wheels, on the 14th. halc returned to remixes on the 19th, releasing Nostalgia Canon, comprised of five all-new tracks and various other competition entries and other songs.

The 19th also brought the release of crashfaster's first full album, further. The following day, DDRKirby(ISQ) released Love Everlasting, an album arranging all 11 songs from aivi and Surasshu's The Black Box, which released in March. OCR ended the month by releasing Sonic CD: Temporal Duality on the 25th, covering the soundtracks from both the original Japanese version and the US version. Much like the star of the series, this album was completely rather quickly, taking only about a year from start to finish, which is impressive considering its size.

December started off a bit warm, with Ben Briggs released Mario Kart: Bonus Beach on the 2nd. Though it was a small 3-track EP, the album took tracks from Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Super Mario Kart, and Mario Kart 64 and mixed them into an album with flawless transitions and even perfect looping capabilities. December 19th brought with it WillRock's Welcome to the Real World, an album that is everything good about the 80s mixed into an amazing aural adventure. Coincidentally enough, OCR founder welcomed his first kid into the world that same day. What a fascinating coincidence there.

Anyways, Christmas came and with it Ben Briggs ended his incredibly prolific year with The Briggs Effect III, filled with new tracks and arrangements of his older tracks from his friends. The following day, coda released Minimap, a 16-track collection comprised of extended and remastered versions of various sketches created in the previous year. Then, on the 30th, the last OCR mixpost of 2013 came. Numbered OCR02803 in the internal catalogue, "Oh Traveler from an Arcane Land" comes from Homeslice and tackles the ever-popular "Secret of the Forest" from Chrono Trigger.

All in all, 2013 was a rather exciting year. Many fantastic releases from many wonderful people along with a bunch of newcomers really making their mark showed that the community continues to grow and bring in plenty of talented people, along with plenty of people who come and have their potential revealed and grow. OverClocked ReMix also continued to grow, posting 231 remixes. That's 22 more than 2012 and continues the trend of having more songs posted than the previous year. 10 albums were also released on the site this year, 4 more than last year. As usual, there are plenty of great releases I might have missed but if 2013 was this fantastic, I can't wait to see what 2014 brings. Until next time, and next year, game on!