ReMix:Brave Fencer Musashi "Me and My Game Boy" 4:18

More from Hometown Heroes: Town Themes Arranged as DDRKirby(ISQ) [Timmie Wong] hits us with a familiarly-invigorating dose of chiptune pop/funk; he writes:

"Wow, I didn't realize this until now, but it's been *16 years* since Beatdrop's "Diet Thirstquencher" remix and the Brave Fencer Musashi OST still hasn't gotten any love! Well, I'm here to change that!

This mix comes at the behest of DaMonz, who recruited me to write a track for the Hometown Heroes project. I settled on the town theme for Brave Fencer Musashi because... well, it's really got such a great "town music" vibe! Peaceful and fun, with a hint of nostalgia... you can really just imagine yourself strolling through the village and visiting all of the townsfolk. Definitely one of the highlights of the OST.

When setting out to do a rearrangement, I often try to start with some key directions in which I'll try to differentiate from the original source, as that helps me avoid auto-piloting into just doing a straight cover. For this mix, I wanted to first and foremost translate the song into chiptune instrumentation, but also wanted to play around with a swung rhythm, as I felt like that could be fun (spoiler alert: it works really well!). I actually ended up going back and forth between swing and straight rhythms in the different sections of the remix, as I liked what both styles had to offer.

For the instrumentation, I really wanted to roll with the nostalgia vibe that I associate with this song and tried to evoke an image of "the good ol' days" of just carrying around a Game Boy and jamming out to some chiptunes without a care in the world. Most of the arrangement is done in my usual lush "9-bit" style, but I also wanted to have some sections where I dialed things back a bit and made it sound more like a traditional 8-bit arrangement to specifically evoke the Game Boy imagery. For example, the little rhythmic "blips" at 1:32-1:50 along with the "confirm sounds" are supposed to be like sound effects from text boxes in an old RPG.

This was a fun one for sure!"

Fun to make & fun to listen to; I think Timmie & I both had the notion to swing/funk up some more traditionally peaceful tunes, to give the album just a smidge of swagger. Obviously "hometown" has a comfortable/warm connotation, but you can keep that in play, as he does here, while still mixing it up with some more energetic components. Larry writes:

"Whenever someone takes VGM from one system and adapts it to another platform's soundset, my ears perk up. If you didn't know better, you'd think this was a grade-up version of an original Game Boy soundtrack rather than a ReMix of a PlayStation one, so Timmie's got me hooked with what's always a fun & intriguing concept. I loved the various filters (e.g. :29) that altered the sound quality for that rough throwback feel, and the varying textural densities, rhythmic changes, and stereo effects kept the piece flowing, allowing DDRKirby to creatively iterate on the source melody. Great stuff here, but it's Timmie, so that's a guarantee! Thankful to have something to finally provide Beatdrop's classic BFM mix with company. :-)"

Nothing to add; cool to see this relatively unusual chapter in Square's history again represented on OCR, and DDR's staple strengths shine through for an upbeat & positive contribution to the album!