ReMix:Journey to Silius "Level Three (Pulse Mix)" 4:25

Time to journey to the club with MkVaff's synthwave-influenced journey to Silius! ;-) Ever since Sir_NutS shined a spotlight to this game with his OverClocked Records album Silius : 0373, we've had a respectable showing of JtS representation on OCR in the last few years. Despite being a classic gamer, and even being inspired by his old gold on OCR, it surprisingly turns out MkVaff was a late convert to Journey to Silius. Better late than never, as he details how this came to be:

"I was a bit torn on submitting this one, but my inclusion of the piano section in the breakdown and how much it reminded me of so many of my older OCR remixes pushed me over the edge. Hope you enjoy! :-)

As for the game itself, Journey to Silius is yet another in a long list of stellar NES games that I have no recollection of from back when it came out. I think that by the time the game was released in the fall of 1990 I was already playing Genesis games and only kept an eye out for the highest profile Nintendo games coming out on the NES at that point.

I only discovered the Silius soundtrack recently, but it's so good! Can't believe I only discovered it a few months ago, but I'm so glad it was eventually added to the Switch Online library so that I had an immediate and simple way to check it out. As expected, it was pretty fantastic, but my terrible platforming/run-and-gun reflexes were tested to the point of frustration pretty quickly, though I was easily able to see what a cool game it was. I do blame the release date and the system for its relative obscurity. If it had come out for Genesis or SNES a year later, I think it would've been more popular, but, regardless, it's a classic.

For a NES game, it looked great, and I could absolutely see the Terminator roots in the design. But from the opening screen, it was the music that grabbed my attention. It's incredible to be able to stumble upon games that came out over 30 years ago and still be blown away by the music once you start playing. The soundtrack was fantastic late-era NES fare, reminding me of some of the best Capcom music from the time. I definitely knew I wanted to cover some of Naoki Kakoda's excellent work for "Pulse."

I ended up selecting the Stage 3 theme music and decided to use sounds that are a little more associated with some 80's or more recent synthwave aesthetics. Something about 80's music and the soundtrack to a would-be Terminator game just seemed to go hand in hand.

For the breakdown, I added a piano section - partially as a nod to my older piano works and also because the melody was so simple and pleasant that I wanted to highlight it without a lot of other instruments in the mix. To me, this remix has a lot of fun energy, and the source material fit beautifully with the vibe I had in mind for this kind of upbeat track.

As always, please enjoy - and thank you so much for listening!"

Judge MindWanderer did a double take - and yes, we're in the 2020s as of now, not the 2000s:

"MkVaff submitting a Journey to Silius mix? What decade are we in?

Well, apparently the right one, at least for music. Mike's lost none of his touch; this is the same sort of EDM goodness that brought so many of us onto this site in the first place, nearly 23 years ago. Classic sounds, but some sounds are classic for a reason. Production is crisp and clean. The kicks are pounding perhaps a little too much for my taste, but otherwise everything is firing on all four cylinders, just as it should be."

DarkSim wasn't an OCR contributor yet in the early 2000s, but he knows a modernized throwback sound when he hears it:

"THIS is what we want. More techno! You've got a couple of verse/chorus type runs through of the source material, a breakdown, then a final chorus and outro. Classic stuff, but with more modern production. Read: loud as hell.

Immediately, it's a pumping groove. Love the synth tom fills, and the layered saw leads. That first 'chorus' at 0:41 sounds great, especially as the pad and arp begin to emerge around 0:55. The arp has some filter automation on it too, keeping the sound evolving as it plays through. The second verse/chorus run-through initially sounds similar, but there's a really nice countermelody running in the second chorus. [...]

A solid, slamming, synth symphony from Silius."

The piano from 2:44-3:25 was my personal highlight as well, so I'm really glad that soft touch was there to change up the energy of the track and prevent it from feeling too similar over time. Having been an OCR fan since 2002 and being wowed by MkVaff's music from the very first tracks of his that I heard, I love the fact that the piano section -- and its nod to his style of yesteryear -- tipped the balance to MkVaff submitting this too. Enjoy this lively Silius dance transformation with some more tricks beneath the surface. :-)