ReMix:Corpse Party "Heavenly Horrors" 5:47

Okay, it's STILL the first of the year and we've got five more mixes to go!! Up next with our very first arrangement of survival horror adventure dōjin title Corpse Party are DigiE (Maurice Willems, Sanjay Sampatsing), taking things in an upbeat, electronic-orchestral direction with some Eastern instrumentation & a deadly downbeat:

"After countless sleepless nights, we've decided to act our ages and tackle a game (soundtrack... haha, I've yet to beat Corpse Party, actually) that we've been wanting to do for the last five months or so! xD This game is really something else for a PSP game and its rather basic tile-based gameplay. But the story, characters, setting, atmosphere, and just absolutely gruesome writing make it absolutely, gut-wrenchingly painful to play through. Especially when you hit a bad ending. It was refreshing to actually play a game that settled itself into my brain again, even though it was very disturbing given what happens or can happen to characters in the game, and the music definitely helped the cause. It had it's upbeat moments, terrifying moments, and outright explicit-words-are-required moments that really helped bring the atmosphere and/or tension up even more.

But the music really hit all the right notes, all the time. I've always doubted our ability to actually pay tribute to it, but if you never try, you'll never know. And, with that in mind, we gave it our best! It's amazing to try and remix a song in such an upbeat fashion like this, and I'm really happy we were able to at least give it our best we've ever had for a remix. All in all, it's been really fun working on this. I hope our excitement for the game and its music come across as well as I hope. There's also a few homages to other games in there, but this time they're not very well hidden at all, haha.

We appreciate the great feedback on submission no. 1 of the remix, and decided to touch everything up bit as per your suggestions. The arrangement definitely sounds a lot clearer now, and we're looking forward to your reaction on this resub. Happy listening! I hope you guys enjoy it! <3"

I'm really glad the artists took the time to incorporate panel feedback, as this is such a unique source, and Maurice & Sanjay always pour their heart & soul into each arrangement. I loved the winds & plucked elements towards the end, coupled with them BIG HUGE TAIKO; the energy level remains pretty high throughout, but there's definitely an ebb & flow to the whole thing, and at close to six minutes, it's one heck of a ride. Larry sums it up well:

"Corpse Party games have some SUPER violent imagery, but if you're into Snatcher or Battle Royale, it's nothing you haven't seen before. That said, it's not a game series for the easily scared whether you're playing the mid-'90s PC-98 version (more spooky than gory) or the mega-bloody PSP edition (is that an eyeball on the floor?) That said, you don't need to endorse the decapitations of hugely unfortunate student to move to this groove by DigiE. It definitely goes bump and thump in the night!

I ended up direct posting this after DigiE resubmitted it, since the only qualms we had on the judges panel with the first version were about the mixing. This is just a nice, aggressive dance mix. While it still gets a bit crunchy at times, there's nothing you can't work with unless your musical tolerance is at grandpa status (though there are some cool, open-minded music-loving grandpas out there!) Big props to Maurice & Sanjay for giving OCR some more PSP representation to join Mattias and Dave, AND for giving us our first representation of any kind from the PC-98!"

The PSP was/is a seriously great system, especially for fans of JRPGs, and part of the reason I recommend the Vita to anyone & everyone is because it's the best way to enjoy those games, on a bigger & brighter screen. I'm hoping we'll see more PSP mixes this year - Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, anyone? - because a TON of great soundtracks have graced the platform. I'd like to echo Larry's props to DigiE; corpses or no corpses, this is one party that's worth attending!