ReMix:Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "Smoke & Marbles" 3:32

Making lemonade out of lemons, quite a nice result for a last-minute Game Set Mash!! 2 compo scramble! Or did they make whiskey? Emunator & ZackParrish got smokey & smooth with their jazz club mashup of themes from Symphony of the Night & Metroid Fusion (with a voice cameo by Lucas Guimaraes)! According to Emunator, there were a lot of speedbumps and pivots, but nothing that could prevent 'em from showing up and showing out:

"This is our submission from round 2 of the Metroid vs. Castlevania Game Set Mash!! competition. Obviously, because nobody in their right mind would ever willingly choose to mash up these two sources. The real "mystery" is why the hell we picked this source in the first place.

This piece was a bit of a rush job. The original concept for the mashup came from JSABlixer, who wanted to arrange a multi-instrument insaneintherain-style jazz piece. Lucas also contributed a rough MIDI skeleton expanding on the idea (as well as the voices and ambiance you hear in the intro!), but after playing with it, we realized we didn't have the time or resources to do something so elaborate, and the approach just wasn't going to be feasible on a deadline. So, we essentially started from scratch with roughly 2 days before the deadline.

I've never written a jazz piece before, or really performed piano extensively on an arrangement before. That said, I wanted to honor the original vision from JSA and Lucas as closely as possible, even though we were starting the arrangement from scratch, so I dove in headfirst anyway. Zack quickly joined on to save the day with his mindblowingly-realistic bass and drum programming, and laid down some guitar riffs over the track as well. We worked closely together to polish everything up, and, with a combined 40 hours of work over 2 days, mustered a buzzer-beater of a track that we submitted within a few hours of the final deadline. The source usage is loose and interpretive but present throughout most of the track, so, for the millions of die-hard fans of the perennial VGM classic "Environmental Mystery" from Metroid Fusion, you're in for a real treat here."

OH, BE NICE, Emu! "Marble Gallery" is an absolutely treasure of a theme, we all know this, but taking potshots at other source tunes... someone give him a glove slap for the VGM disrespect! :-D OK, OK, this other theme's a cool, albeit VERY repetitive vibe -- admittedly, not a lot to work with there, yet... it *does* work here. Judge Hemophiliac respected the whole presentation, and said as much, yet he also noted just how cohesively Emu and Zack managed to integrate "Environmental Mystery":

"So much to love here. Actually love how free flowing this is and how loose the playing/tempo is. Letting Marble Gallery be the main shell that contains everything was a wise choice, especially considering the misery that is Environmental Mystery. Speaking of...did I hear Lucas say "Environmental Mystery" and "Marble Gallery" in the intro talking? Is that like the remix version of a rapper calling out their name in a track? XD

Everything is very forward into the mix, but feeling like they occupy the same room. Very clean sound, excellent work on that mixdown. [...]

I like how Environmental Mystery was worked in a B section because it's so dramatically different from Marble Gallery. The transition and development into bringing us into Environmental Mystery is so important in getting us ready for such a big change, great job there. It's just a huge contrast no matter how you look at it."

Though I don't make music, I can feel the artists' pain having to weave in a source tune that [CLAP] don't [CLAP] wanna [CLAP] be [CLAP] woven, but props to all of the GSM participants for navigating common compo pitfalls: source tunes that fail to inspire, collaborators getting busy or sick, getting overly ambitious/needing to pare back, genres outside of one's comfort zone, and so many more. Because when that deadline approaches, all that matters is producing SOMETHING. And in this case, according to judge MindWanderer, the "something" made under all that pressure and duress still turned out pretty damn good:

"For never having written a jazz piece, this sounds pretty fantastic. A little less cerebral than people who do a lot of jazz often get, but that's a plus for me. Fantastic sample usage that could fool most listeners into thinking it was a studio recording; it doesn't quite sound like a live lounge like the crowd noises suggest, but it still sounds great. The integration of Environmental Mystery can never be anything but a weird choice, but you at least made it sound like it was your weird choice and not that it was forced on you by the compo format. The last couple of measures really made it work. Fantastic job."

MW said it so well, this truly punches above its weight in sounding intimate and plausibly recorded live, the usage of "Environmental Mystery" doesn't feel shoehorned at all (even though we knew from the background info that it was), and the interplay of the piano & guitar for the last minute was the epitome of classy, just a beautiful conclusion. Kudos to yet another example of compos and deadlines bringing out the best in talented creators! Emunator and Zack's musicianship was supremely jazzy and sophisticated. :-)