ReMix:Pokémon Crystal Version "Spacious Beauty" 4:01

Pokémon series champion timaeus222 brings us along for a jaunt through Johto by way of his visit to its lavish-sounding National Park! timaeus was inspired to polish up this theme from firing up an unofficial fan-mod of the original Pokémon Crystal:

"Ah, "National Park"... a truly iconic theme I had hesitated to do for years. I was actually re-playing Pokémon Crystal recently in July 2024, but using the game mod called Polished Crystal, which had quality-of-life changes, but also a few custom mini-stories, added evolutions, and convenient map changes. My team towards the end was Dunsparce, Gliscor, Houndoom, Ampharos, Sylveon, and Suicune. Since it was probably my 4th playthrough at this point, I had some fun with it by going into the Memory Viewer and hacking the hexadecimal code to make my favorite team members shiny and to optimize their DVs and natures. *gasp* Yes, essentially created my own manual cheat codes. :-)

That playthrough, ectogemia's prior take, as well as the fact that downtempo is my least appreciated genre on my phone, inspired me to arrange "National Park" this way. In terms of workflow, I convinced myself to just write things out and fix them later, finishing this in about 18 hours across 3 weeks. Something that had always slowed me down is just refining production a ton before I wrote more, but it's been less problematic lately!

While downtempo isn't the furthest stretch from the original, I strived to be as creative as possible through new chord progressions and inner voice movement (such as 1:21-1:26, 2:02-2:08, and 2:24-2:27), and just achieving harmonic clarity and precision. The simplicity of the original offered room for more colorful chords. I'm also pretty proud of the original section at 2:32-3:16, as I did not think it was in the same key as what I had earlier, but then it lined up really well with the iconic descending motif at 3:15, adjusted to the new, brighter mode.

The central instruments were electric pianos (3ee's Zebra2 presets), acoustic piano (4Front TruePianos), gamelan bells (ISW Resonance: Emotional Mallets), and the Chapman Stick (Spectrasonics Trilian), amongst the usual Zebra2 synth palette, some ISW Juggernaut sweeps/impacts, a few ambient impacts from ISW Celestia.

The title is pretty simple - National Park is known as "a spacious and beautiful park", so I called it "Spacious Beauty". Hope you enjoy, sit back, and relax! :-)"

We judges certainly did enjoy, evident from the blissful results conveniently run down by prophetik music:

"opens with some great EPs and organ. there's a really organic feel to this due to the timing being pretty loose initially. i'd recognize that chapman anywhere - one of my favorite sounds in Trillian! - and some fun bell elements. we get a beat at 0:43 and the melodic material to the fore. this is a really deep, low representation of the chorus material which is fun. there's a point at 0:58 where the melody is on an A and the bassline is on a Db, which is a little weird-sounding but is supported by the chord structure.

there's a break right at 1:05 to recap the opening a bit. the sweeps through here are really nice. this builds up through some fun flute-adjacent noodles to the melody again at 1:49. i like the shift at 2:11 to a more upbeat feel as well, as we'd kind of done the other stuff for a while now. there's again some funky chord structures at 2:19 - i'm not going to analyze them since they sound roughly correct to my ear, but they're funny as a transitional element!

we get through some original material as a transitional element. there's a half-time groove here that i didn't see coming but really like, and it builds into 3:15 where we get some taikos or toms alongside the main melodic snippet. this floats through a bit more of that snippet and then it's done.

what a fun track! there's all sorts of interesting ear candy going on in here as i listen. you do a great job taking a fun and straightforward original and exploring some really varied elements."

I can't help but say the overall sound design and dynamics feel reminiscent of Quinn Fox's stuff, which is a wonderful comparison, IMO. (Check out the cadence and tone of the beats of his old Phantasy Star II VGMix, "Slick Uniforms".) Nothing at all wrong with setting a mood here, and I was still getting Quinn-esque vibes from this when it was all said and done. Cool approach, exactly the same sentiment from fellow judge Emunator:

"Oooohhh, this is so cool! It's immediately recognizable what source you're covering, but that makes all the changes to the chord progression and harmonies feel all the more engaging. I don't know enough to break this down from a theory standpoint, but it all goes down smooth all the same. Everything finally breaks wide open at 1:49, and I agree that it couldn't have come at a more perfect time. The first 1:45 is just enough to lull you into a sense of security before hitting the listener with some much more powerful beats and more of a rhythmically-charged focus. It's all paced wonderfully, even if it feels unconventional.

Love this so much, great stuff!"

With so many lush Pokémon ReMixes under his belt as evidence of what he can do, we're glad timaeus got that successful extra nudge to tackle this source tune; as advertised, it's indeed a beauty! :-D