The Final Fantasy Legend "Door to the Unknown" 3:00

When I told her this one was going up as our first-ever FFL1 ReMix, Lauren the Flute thought it was cool that even some old school games still don't have official coverage on OCR after all this time! I'd love to eventually organize something around mixposts from legendary games still lacking OCR representation. :-) As noted, we've got a fine example of that right here with judge prophetik music's lush & mysterious treatment of Nobuo Uematsu's title theme for Final Fantasy Legend! proph explains how the theme took hold of him as an impressionable, young game boy:

"Final Fantasy Legend was one of the first games I ever played. The simple soundtrack to this GB classic was the target of one of my first VG arrangements I ever did, as well - I "transcribed" the three melodic channels to saxophone parts and got some friends from my school's band to play it. =) I haven't listened to this track in over a decade, but I only needed to check one or two notes against the original vs. my memory, surprisingly.

My focus here was to take the original theme (which I always felt was very mournful) and do what I could to enjoy the beautiful melodic elements. I got a little bored and switched to a shuffle to give it some more verve halfway through.

I used Omnisphere almost exclusively for this, with some elements coming from Elastik. Thanks to Hemo and paradiddlesjosh for letting me bounce this off of them and for the actionable feedback where provided.

This got rejected due to feeling incomplete and needing some glam. [...] I ran this by Kris for a second set of ears and she felt that the changes were significant, so here's hoping this has a better shot. =)"

We judges are so mean, so callous, we'll reject one of our own when we have to, even if it's our legitimate most active workhorse judge. :-) All that's to say never overthink the evaluation process, just submit what you have and we aim to be as impartial as possible, no favoritism. proph's adjustments were numerous to give this more flow and more color, which was picked up on by fellow judge Emunator:

"This one starts off with some classic Omnisphere bells and synths that gel together flawlessly. Everything is buttery smooth about the pads, bass, and melodic elements. I can see how each of the decisions you made in the reworking process contribute to this feeling. Then, around the 1 minute mark, you slide in some incredibly fun shuffle rhythms that feels completely different from the intro, but goes down smooth all the same. No chaser needed :) [...] Nice work!"

The beautiful, delicately-handled intro immediately locks in your attention. I love the brief dropoff at 1:38 (the sustain, listen to it!), then beats return at 1:49 to give things more direction & drive with subtle, authentic-feeling chip accents. There was a nice lil' transition sound at 2:20 to the sustained synth line, and I love the subtle dynamic here. Emu's super on-point saying how smoove these textures feel, especially with the bookended intro and outro. Judge Gario particularly dug the mood shift here:

"Well, isn't this an interesting twist to the theme - what an effect switching from major to minor can bring. It's not a difficult change to make, but I don't see people making the switch and really capitalizing on it very often, so nice work taking this idea as far as it can go. The swing beat in the middle is a very nice way to spice it up, too [...]

This is a short and sweet judgment, itself, but if my biggest complaint is that I could've listened to this longer on a three minute arrangement that's not at all a bad thing. Send it up!"

I'd hate to have caused any potential stress or grousing for Brad in asking for a resubmission of this, but the proof's in the pudding on what happens when you ask to give it that extra push over the cliff. As this piece plays repeatedly for me, I couldn't have said it better myself than Gario's POV; it's a short runtime, would have loved for it to play longer, so you're absolutely gonna want to fire this back up to sit in this attention-grabbing yet low-key soundscape. A gorgeous intro & outro, great beats in the middle, and cohesive ornamentations by prophetik, all very transformative while feeling very reverential to Final Fantasy Legend!