The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve "No More Games Now!" 3:54

Thanks to DoD's Mystery Month compo last year, Ace Attorney fans have been eatin' good around here! The musical feast continues without objection with judge jnWake & crew resolving to rev up The Great Ace Attorney 2!

"An acoustic-oriented rock style remix of "Partners - The Game is Afoot!" from The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve. The original is a banger!

This track features a ton of collabers:

• minusworld on all forms of guitars, and also bass
• Shea's Violin on violin lead and string ensemble
• Kev Ragone on percussion (drums, claps, and more!)
• Gamer of the Winds on flute

Thanks to all for awesome performances!"

Congrats to jnWake for being a part of 25 OC ReMixes! Through his constant Dwelling of Duels entries and penchant for collaboration, Wake's majorly leveled up his all-around game since he started in the scene, with the initial version of this piece making it to that month's podium:

"Another DoD month, another OCR submission (sorry for making you guys listen to me every single month, but, hey, at least I don't submit as many tracks as Emunator!). Anyway, this one was made for Mystery Month, where it got 2nd place out of 25 songs! Ace Attorney is one of my favorite video game franchises, both in terms of the actual games and the music, so I knew I had to cover one of the (many) games of the series for this DoD month. I picked the theme "Partners - The Game is Afoot!" as it's one of my favorite VGM tunes ever since I played through the Great Ace Attorney duology. And also because I imagined no one would cover these games (and I was right), so I'm really happy I was able to cover it! The Great Ace Attorney games are set in 1910s Britain/Japan, so they have a unique approach to instrumentation and composition (compared to other AA games).

For my remix, I decided to go with an acoustic approach (well, mostly) since I felt it'd fit the original's rhythm and mood nicely. The structure of the track was a little inspired by PuD's submission to DoD's Free Month in February 2024 too (I now notice he also got silver, huh), in the sense that I had an acoustic ensemble kinda slowly building up to a heavier climax. Doing an acoustic remix with VSTs would've been a terrible idea, so I seized DoD's network of performers and managed to get a full team of live players, which really made this track shine! [...] I think the track ended up pretty good, so I hope you enjoy it!"

We liked it a lil'. ;-) This is a tremendous source tune, so it was wonderful to hear how Yasumasa Kitagawa's atypical Ace Attorney score in turn inspired jnWake to action AND that the unlikelihood of the game being covered by the rest of the DoD field provided that added boost of motivation. Judge prophetik music effusively praised these partners in crime:

"what a fun original.

some playing with time right off the bat - flute is an inspired choice as an element, it fits the instrumentation so well. the small ensemble has a real Atelier Ryza (thanks Ivan for introducing me to the music of that series!) feel to it to me. claps as a regular percussive element is also a fun choice, helps keep it more intimate than it might have been otherwise. [...]

there's a bit of a break at 0:52 and some good movement to keep it driving forward despite there being a bit less going on. there's a recap of the opening section at 1:11 and another bit of a break. i agree that you did a lot of lead switching, and it's good compositional technique! you do a great job of both delaying the payoff and keeping it moving so we're guessing.

there's what definitely feels like a bit build at 2:06 as we get into some soloing sections. easily the best flute solo i've ever heard from GotW - what variety! - and more building towards the big payoff at 3:11. adding electric here is fantastic, especially with some really fun backing elements behind the melodic material in the flute and others. and you do it just right - no extra repetitions! nice restraint =)

there's a big nine chord to finish it and it's done.

*what a ride!* this is a triumph. the arrangement and realization are just stunning. excellent work."

This IS a triumph; I'm making a note here, huge success. :-) Completely agreed that the instrumentation tradeoffs keep things engaging, which had to be a key reason this fared so well in DoD, on top of the impressive musicianship. This sounds joyous from the get-go, with CLAPS aplenty from Kev for some spicyness! Gamer of the Winds' flute solo at 2:05 was particularly fun, and it can't be understated how much elegance Shea's Violin provided with her strings. Quite an exciting theme choice, with good, personalized execution, and solid mixing where every element could be appreciated and, as judge Hemophiliac said, "really lets the live performances shine through". Hell of a fleshing out of this theme, y'all, it's both great AND ace!