Mr. Hu

I made a list of 25 ReMixes I really like. Certainly not a favorites list (but many of them are favorites. Maybe it's a partial favorites list.). There's something special about each of them to me. Can't put it into words for many of them. They just resonate, you know? 137: Super Mario 64 – Liquid Mario (MkVaff) 469: Final Fantasy VII - Seven Degrees of Judgment (Rosencrantz & guildensternN) 511: Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Mud Mix (Scott Peeples) 814: Final Fantasy IX - dubnofantasyaloneman (DJ Pretzel) 821: Perfect Dark – Air Force One is Down! (Danny Baronowsky) 1008: Final Fantasy VII - Of Transformants and Brevity (zykO) 1403: Pac-Man – Glass Cage (Israfel) 1527: Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – Walk on Water (housethegrate) 1642: Super Mario RPG – Leafcutter (Radiowar) 1657: Shadow of the Colossus – Wanderer on the Offensive (Live Edit) (B33J, Cerrax, Juan Medrano, nonsensicalexis) 1759: Donkey Kong Country - Lost in Jungle (Johan Krafft) 1770: Super Metroid - Samus Bubblebath (Shnabubula) 1984: Secret of Mana - Step Off My Flower Bed (Nase) 2000: Donkey Kong Country 2 – Re-Skewed (David Wise, Grant Kirkhope, Robin Beanland) 2982: Metroid – Cancer (Redg) 3068: Super Smash Bros. Melee – S-Tier (Flexstyle, OceansAndrew) 3119: Dark Souls II – Like a Dream (RoeTaKa) 3203: Donkey Kong Country 2 - Ocean Lanterns (Emunator) 3393: Skies of Arcadia – Undervalued (Kylok, Bree) 3831: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - Pajarito Paiso (Audio Mocha) 3851: Sonic CD - Dream Current (Rebecca E. Tripp) 4118: Power Drift – Velocity: Fueled by Sake (Katajun, Manny, Sagnewshreds, Trohnics) 4429: Mario Paint - I have Seen the yellow paint (jmr) 4585: Pokemon Red Version – Look at All the Ships! (ZackParrish, Pearl Pixel, Jeff Ball) ????: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Animal Counterpoint (prophetik music; not on OCR mix technically but it's on an album so I count it)

Agreed on the original four games on being superior. There's a big generation gap though, as you said - a lot of younger Sonic fans don't even consider S3 and S&K to be different games (I guess in part because they're too young to have held two separate cartridges in their hands). Mania did a fantastic job at recreating that style

This one, Arena, and Nanman are forever part of my DNA. Very cool medley here.

Interesting idea, and as a sketch you have a lot of cool ideas here (although the marching snares a minute in need some groove tweaking to sound a lot less stiff). The staccato bass towards the end fits especially well.

This is the best. I don't even know this song but your arrangement/embellishment of it is enthralling. Fantastic job on emulating hardware, too.

Might be my favorite Pokémon mix on OCR. Sublime.

I'm really enjoying the "ear candy" here, especially the close sounds. But the whole piece has a nice breath to it, and there's a lot of nuance to every element.

Cool idea. I'd be down to do something from Neon White (I'm "old").

It's funny - from an OCR fan's perspective who has been listening since ~2001 but not submitting music to the site until 2019, I kind of saw djp as this VGM Morpheus, the leader of a secret circle of super cool musicians/programmer people. I guess that's what the early Internet was like to a kid before social media. But obviously people are just people who are pulled in this direction and that throughout the chapters of their lives. Still, it was a surreal moment to finally see my first OCR mix posted 4 years ago with a cool writeup from the man himself. That was very exciting and very validating, even more validating than getting approved by the judges panel, if I'm being honest. A full-circle moment for me. I always appreciated the care that he put into his write-ups for each ReMix, going back the early-mid aughts when I started downloading every other track this site would publish (sometimes I would read them and not even listen to the song because I liked the writing that much). Very happy to hear that there will be no retirement from music. Even if that wound up being the case, the existing djp catalog would speak for itself. Some of those ReMixes were parts of my formative years of being a music listener, and years after I go deaf from mixing my mids too loud I will still be humming them in my head. I can recall listening to "Love Hurts" on a burned CD on the school bus in I think 9th or 10th grade. I think he set the standard for OCR music in terms of creativity and quality (along with a few others) very early on, which helped OCR legitimize itself. So, thank you for all of that.

The idea of the noise gate activating a verb send I got from reading about the recording of Nirvana's "Scentless Apprentice". When recording the vocals to the song, Steve Albini (the engineer) put a noise gate in front of a chorus & distortion combo effect, so when Kurt Cobain's voice hit a certain loudness, the effect would kick in. That's why the screaming in the chorus sounds blown-out but the rest of the vocal take (which is quieter) doesn't. I also think this was used on Mark Hollis' self-titled album, except instead of distortion, the vocal chain noise gate was in front of the reverb. If you listen to that record, the verb kicks in only when the singing reaches a certain level. I actually haven't confirmed this but the verb swells sound too smooth to be a manual punch-in to my ears.

I definitely did! All the positive feedback I've been getting on this mix in particular is somewhat surprising, admittedly, but I'm glad that others are into it.

Never heard of this game until a few years ago but it's no shock a Sunsoft title is getting so much love recently. Cool OST and cool mix.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading the feedback for this, thanks. Glad to hear DJP has bounced back, as well. ?

Restating my appreciation for the sound palette in this one. Wouldn't have guessed they're sourced from a hardware chip.

Very nicely polished track, and great write-up.