Spelunker "Cave Diving" 4:03

An extremely surprising collaboration here from TSori, because he arranged a beloved title with childhood memories, yet the game mechanics were TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH, super unforgiving with brutal controls, so in retrospect people hated this one. But nostalgia's a powerful thing, which has landed TSori leading 10 total collaborators in a massive Spelunker 10-track medley!

"I'm thrilled to finally be able to send this one in! Spelunker (NES) was a game I remember playing a lot as a little kid. It was impossibly difficult, and beyond frustrating, but I kept coming back to it. Maybe I just liked the concept, maybe it was a need to face the challenge, maybe I simply enjoyed the music in the first level, maybe all of them.

Arranging "Stage 1" in this style was one of the first ideas for a ReMix I had, but I decided it was beyond my abilities starting out. Over the next few years, I kept coming back to it off and on trying out different ideas, but I couldn't ever seem to get past the first minute (rather like the game itself...). I actually came up with the title very early on, and liked the whole spelunking/tropical island pun so much that it helped motivate me to not give up. Last November, I tried bringing in some other sources and finally broke past that 1 minute barrier. Pretty soon, I had several sources involved and thought "How cool would it be if I could use all ten of the tracks from the OST in this in some way?", and it worked! While the majority of the ReMix is taken from "Stage 1", all nine of the remaining tracks on the OST make an appearance in whole or in part somewhere in this ReMix."

Proven once again with TSori, it takes a village, only this time the whole village is vibing as TSori gives the lowdown:

I'm joined on this project once again by a stellar cast of collaborators who brought this idea to life:

Classical guitar: GuitarSVD - Always a great guy to collaborate with. He took center stage here and turned out his usual great performance.

Acoustic guitar: Reuben Spiers - I hadn't gotten to work with him since the Golden Sun album.

Electric guitar: Siolfor the Jackal - Who did a great job creating a slide guitar sound without actually having a slide or having tried it before.

Hand percussion: Sean R. Hanson - I actually didn't write any hand percussion, I just told Sean roughly what I was after and he delivered!

Steel drum: MarimbaMatt - This is the second time Matt's given me a great performance on a hard-to-find percussion instrument that elevates the whole track.

Drum set: Kenny Jr. - I can't write drums to save my life. Fortunately, Kenny can. I sent him a part that approximated the style I was after, and he rewrote it into a real drum part, providing a great performance to boot!

Piano: Xander (ZeldaRocks) - Xander's bailed me out with piano parts on both this track and "Green Glade Groove" (actually recorded at the same time). There's no overselling how great it is to have someone who can churn out solid performances in short order.

Trombone: Dewey Newt - Frequently, he serves the vital role of being the bass anchor in my brassier tracks.

Bass, mixing: myuik - He put in a truly heroic effort mixing this track between other obligations and challenges over the course of many months, in addition to taking some time to shine on bass. He modified the bass part pretty heavily to give it that little something extra.

And, naturally, I rounded out the ensemble on trumpets.

A huge thank you to all of my partners on this track for helping me finally turn this concept into something real! It is always a blast working with each of them, and this track would be dramatically different (and not near as good) without their creative and performative contributions.

Without any further ado, I hope you all enjoy the sounds of subterranean submersion in "Cave Diving".

Is TSori sure this sounds like subterranean submersion? :-D This one's actually a great follow-up after Michael Hudak's GoldenEye "Caverns" arrangement, two drastically different approaches for handling cave music, am I right? No stranger himself to the wild world of cat (read: collaborator) wrangling, judge Emunator paid respect to TSori's ability to marshall his forces and achieve genuine synergy amongst the performers:

"There's a lot going on here but it doesn't ever feel like there's too much going on *at once*. Every instrument knows its place and how to step aside and share the spotlight when it's appropriate. This lends itself to the "live band, but not really" vibe - even though you've got a ton of different contributors adding their own touch to the piece, it takes a skilled arranger to make it all fit together tastefully, so props to you TSori for making that happen!"

TSori very helpful source usage breakdown (available in the MP3 comments) made the medley analysis easier for the panel. That, coupled with the spirited live performances like the bass, hard perc, and steel drum, left fellow judge Hemophiliac feeling like he was on vacation:

"All-star cast of characters! Well performed all around!

I particularly liked 2:27-2:42 and how the themes jump back-and-forth between instruments as a call and response. That was a great idea and works very well to bring separate sources together seamlessly.

Really cool how Siolfor managed to get the slide steel sound on the guitar. Also how cool is it to have some live steel drums? Get me drink with a little umbrella in it!"

Anything feeling like I'm on the beach, sign me up! (Tropico next, anyone? ;-D) This one's a vibrant medley with instrument trade-offs aplenty creating a bright, boisterous blast of island energy! Cheers to TSori and team for unexpectedly tackling a true terror of obscure 8-bit history, yet pulling it off in style. :-)