ReMix:Mega Man X4 "I Am the One Who Designed and Built Mega Man X" 5:02

Next up we've got BONKERS with some crazy X4/X5 Dr. Light prog rock/metal action off the mega-giga-ultra-uber MMX album Maverick Rising:

"I got to work on writing out the initial plan in Overture as sheet music. It was a crazy blend of prog type stuff, rock, synthesized madness with an ambient breakdown. I used my previous concoction of a melody to craft structure in which the melody flowed in the song like it would in Dr. Light's theme in the two games, with a funky switch of Gm to Am midway with tons of chord variations based on the melody being chordal tones on different triads eventually pulling what I call a "Dun-dun-!-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUNNNN!!" Or in Time-signature speak. "1 measure 2/8 + 1 measure 3/4 back in to 4/4" which bridges my melody with that part I told you to look for earlier (the melody of X5 Dr.Light). Not running short on nifty chord changes either, that winds down into a straight cover of X5 Dr. Light (mostly, though sometimes I feel like it could've been better) ending in a strange flush of pedal'd notes of fury that lead to the ambient, mellow mid section of the song.

...In closing, Mega Man X is one of my favorite game series, but what I enjoy most about is the music. I generally am good to terrible at the games themselves and X1, 4, and 5 in particular are special to me. Their atmospheres, designs, music, art and gameplay chill me to the bone. I've been playing MM as long as I can remember , though I was born in 91', my first MM games were MM2&3. I was 6 by the time X4 came out and it must have just been the right thing at the right time because it just blew my mind how perfect it was. To this day X4's music by the Musical Mastermind Toshihiko Horiyama (known for various MM ost's and Apollo Justice's OST) is one of my absolute favorite soundtracks of any kind (OH THE SYNTHS, THE SYNTHSSSS)! The same could generally said about every MM' game's OST really!

PS: Thanks to Bahamut and everyone else for encouraging me to submit this and absolutely everyone who helped and provided feedback along the way over on KNGI. I am absolutely proud to be a part of Maverick Rising, it is IMO one of OCR's most fitting and amazing albums yet! (Srsly, Electronic music+MegaManX+electric guitars and billions of other awesome instruments? SCORE!@)"

Those are just EXCERPTS from Mr. Perry's submission email, which was itself as epic as the mix it describes. This arrangement definitely fits squarely into the "opus" category; while just over five minutes in length, there are a lot of changeups & in general a large amount of musical ground is covered on this journey. Judges were fairly unanimous in being on the fence (okay, behind it) about some of the more abrupt transitions; OA summed it all up quite succinctly:

"I didn't really dig the transitions, but everything else was the hotness. Cool parts, a nice soundscape, it's all here."

It's odd - I've listened to this a few times, and on some listens the transitions bother me, and other times not as much. I suppose YMMV, but while it's certainly likely to be the most salient aspect of the mix that folks either dig or don't, there's tons of awesome stuff going on in between those transitions, and that's what makes up the majority of the track. Album director Wesley "Bahamut" Cho writes:

"Nick goes prog crazy here with the Dr. Light themes from Mega Man X4 & X5, creating a journey through the cyber Wild Wild West. I feel it is one of his strongest songs, and hopefully you all will agree!"

Maverick Rising really packed a massive wallop & struck an impressive balance between quality and quantity at the same time. A big part of that was high-energy tracks like this that creatively blend themes and create mini-universes of their own. Solid stuff & deserved props to BONKERS!