ReMix:Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike: Fight for the Future "Remy Is a Rave Dad" 4:55

Evo just announced Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike as this year's throwback title in the tournament lineup, so we're extremely excited to debut a newcomer who's big into both VGM *and* the competitive fighting game scene! Remy expert Dagger_G (Kyle Okamoto) tag-teamed with fellow fighter Don_Bozzi on guitar for their interpretive, club-ready psytrance & synthrock rendition of Remy's SF3:3S theme, "The Beep"! For Dagger_G, the COVID-19 pandemic meant rediscovering a hobby in music originally inspired by the goal of having OCR announce "You win!" and featuring his work:

"Hello! I've been a long-time fan of the site since I discovered it via an RPGamer remix contest back in the early 2000's during my high school days. It had been a goal of mine to get a song on the site, which is what kicked off my foray into music production. Those were simpler times.

I had always been an arcade rat growing up, so it was only natural that I would get involved in the competitive fighting game community. Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike was my first serious competitive game. And, over time, I would work my way up to being the top Remy user in the USA. Imagine how many times I had to hear that Remy theme, haha!

A lot has happened since then. Fighting games and music have come in and out of my life over the last two decades. There was a point where I stopped "hearing the music", if that makes any sense... It was during COVID that I realized how unhappy I was due to silencing that creative part of my soul. Fighting games had always been a sort of anchor in my life to prove to myself that I had some kind of control. I felt like I could have gone much further in those endeavors. So, long story short, I started playing again to see if I could reclaim that part of myself.

I had forgotten how diverse and talented the fighting game community could be. A good amount of the new friends I had made online were musicians. One of the guys I met, Don_Bozzi (the guitarist on this arrangement), was working on a track for a Garou: Mark of the Wolves online tournament trailer. Being a part of the community Discord, and not really knowing what it was for, I booted up my trusty Acid Pro 7.0 (because I had lost my key for Ableton, LOL) and collaborated to help finish the track. And wouldn't ya know? I started to hear the music again! I hit up Don_Bozzi to see if he could lay some guitar for this track, which he was more than happy to do, with us being in the same boat when it came to keeping music in our lives."

It's amazing and affirming to hear from anyone who directly had OC ReMix inspire them to pick up music. Any one of y'all reading this could be featured here, no matter how long the journey may take; the bar here is at a hobbyist level, but it's high, so to put together something we'd post these days, you've gotta bring the creativity and execution; you've gotta bring the goods, which Dagger and Don have done here, no doubt! This is a very liberal arrangement, so after several judges who loved the track in a vacuum either voted "NO" or "?", we reached out to Dagger_G for his breakdown so we could better understand how "The Beep" was referenced:

"I'm sorry for the wall of text! Didn't mean to give you my whole life story or anything, but I felt it was important. Anyway, enough about that stuff! I should be talking about the track! As I mentioned before, it was done on a very old and limited DAW (Acid 7.0!), which led me to rely a bit more on my hardware (especially for the sequencing). That being an Elektron Monomachine synth/sequencer/drum machine, and a Novation UltraNova. The Monomachine was used for the drum sequencing, digital-sounding arps, and voice generator sounds. The UltraNova was used for the pads, and more standard synth sounds.

The original track itself is quite simple, so it took some time to figure out how to twist it without losing its soul. One thing to keep in mind is that I took inspiration of both the original and the official arranged version, since it was different on arcade and on console. As a Street Fighter track, it morphs as the rounds progress, with three rounds being the max. I was inspired by the aesthetics of Remy's stage, with those weird steampunk-looking skulls and the bright lights, which offer an air of mystery as to what exactly is going on inside that club. The arrangement is my interpretation of a sort of DJ set with the various electronic styles you might hear in that place.

Oh yea, and throughout the track, listen for that whistle-sounding scratch, as that is something that occurs throughout both versions of the original and, now that I think about it, that must be what makes it sound... BEEPY.

• 1:06-1:55ish is kind of a transitionary section, but the flanged synth from 1:30 is the bass from the source (starting from 1:00 on the arranged OST, and 1:30 on the original OST).
• 1:41, I used the reverse hat + portamento lead from the original to bring in the next section.
• 1:55-2:00 also uses this as a backdrop to those techno stabs.
• 2:00-2:13, again, the synth is the bass from the original.
• From 2:13-2:37 is where I'd say the meat is. The guitar is playing a modified version of the main synth lead you'll hear in the original OST (:16).
• 2:46-3:13, the glide synth is also playing a variation of that main lead and accents the guitars from above that come back in at 3:14.
• 3:33-end, the guitars are playing a variation of the "singing" guitar from the arranged soundtrack (1:28), and the synth-ish guitar from the OST (1:30).

Keeping the idea of the three movements, it starts from a slower-paced, midrange/bass-heavy piece to warm up the crowd that you might hear when you first walk into the club (the first round). The second section moves to a higher energy psy-trance variation with heavy guitars inspired by the buttrock goa of the early-mid 2000's like Infected Mushroom. Things could end here, as one does not always make it to the final round. The third round is always a true battle of wills, as each player must respect that their opponent has taken a round. For this last section, I started with a break and pad chords to portray that emotional release. The guitar starts to rebuild the tension, along with the digital arps. Finally, the square synth gives way for the rest of the guitars to come in to close the show with a climax (the final KO). And as everyone knows, police sirens can always be heard after a wild night!"

After all that, I dug into the Dreamcast mixes 1, 2 & 3 of "The Beep" (the Dreamcast version is my favorite version of the SF3:3S soundtrack), and really dug into how Dagger_G referenced so many different elements of "The Beep" in more of a piecemeal way, rather than the melodic structure we'd typically expect. That was enough elucidation to collectively shift us toward approving this, with judge DarkSim doing a wonderful job articulating where we all ultimately ended up (though he got there way before the rest of us):

"OK so I've listened to the original and the source many times each now, and it's definitely got plenty of source in there if you really dig for it. The timestamps are helpful, but there's never too much of the source playing at one time, and it's always masked by the (excellent) sound design, so it's really a struggle to identify for the casual listener. That said, I do feel like after the first couple of listens to the remix, then one to the source, it did feel familiar.

The track itself is excellent. The three clear sections are each individual, yet connected with smooth transitions, and all packed with detail. I like the slow start, leading into the intensity of the middle section, and then my favourite part is the smooth, synthwave-esque finale. The sound design is delicious throughout, and the guitar work chunky with some awesome harmonics. Production is great, even if you said your DAW was old!

It seems like you've heard this theme so much through playing SF3 that it's almost become something else, but the theme is there in spirit."

I completely get where DarkSim was coming from in that Dagger_G may have heard this theme so many times that it morphed around in his head! It may not sound like what I'd expect an arrangement of "The Beep" to be, but Dagger_G's in fact referencing a lot of different elements from the different mixes. Clever! We've got other ReMixes that employ similar tactics, with Navi's Final Fantasy X-2 track "Chauffage au Gaz" being another strong example of this subtractive & nuanced approach, along with another pending Dark Souls track from Michael Hudak that we're looking forward to rolling out. Very cool to have an FGC'er arrange their main's theme; a warm welcome aboard to Dagger_G reppin' Remy in style! :-)