ThaSauce Development Update

What’s going on with VGMix? OverLooked ReMix? ReMix:ThaSauce? Compoverse?

Hi. Hello. Is this thing on? It’s been a while since I’ve made a post on this site.

The days of using ThaSauce.net as a news portal have been behind us for a while, but development on ThaSauce websites has been active for some time. Over the years we’ve inherited a lot of your favorite sites and with them a lot of responsibility. We get a number of questions from time-to-time about the status is of a particular website. The answer is always the same: It’s…coming along. There’s a larger, overarching plan we’re working on and I think I’ve explained it enough times in enough places to finally sit down and write it out. So here it goes…

A bit of history…

Before we can talk about everything that we plan on doing, let me take a short moment to talk about how we got here. What originally started out in 2005 as an idea to make a VGM news portal, eventually tacked on “yet another arrangement site” and then a compo portal? Now things are just out of control.

As mentioned above ThaSauce Network currently consists of this site “ThaSauce.net”, ReMix:ThaSauce, Compoverse (our rebranding of Compo:ThaSauce), OverLooked ReMiX (officially handed to us by richter), VGMix Archive for all known files from former VGMix sites, and a version of VGMix (currently called VG(Re)Mix) based on the vision of the would-be new site as laid out by virt.

The story of OverLooked ReMiX is a pretty short one: richter is just too busy these days and wanted to hand it off to someone who would maintain it. We control the hosting, domains, the full gamut. Future development of the site is…difficult as it’s so closely tied to a particular version of PhpBB and software updates have gotten even harder. We’re describing the current status of the site as “archival,” which basically means it is in a read-only state for the foreseeable future.

The story of VGMix is a more complicated one. In 2013 we started development on what we were initially calling “VGMix 4”. Users had been asking when a new version of VGMix would pop up, and some had even tried to roll out their own, but we decided we’d take the responsibility onto us. After reaching out to virt and getting his ideas for what a new version of VGMix would look like, we went to work. There were a lot of details about VGMix that virt had envisioned, but the basis was this:

  1. Users should be able to upload their own tracks, freely, whenever they want. This includes completed tracks and works-in-progress (or WIPs).
  2. Users should be able to provide feedback to each other for the above tracks.
  3. Users should be able to host impromptu compos on demand.
  4. Users should be able to fully host and release album projects on the site, including submitting applications, WIPs, and feedback.

Much of our vision for the future development of all the sites revolve around these goals and, ultimately, VGMix will likely be the center of this “network.”

The Vision

So VGMix is the cornerstone of the future, but where does that leave all of the other sites? In the current vision for the future, each site plays a role in a sort of “music development pipeline”. A process to take a beginner musician to, potentially, a full video game music composer. Here’s the breakdown:

Compoverse

Everything starts with Compoverse. For the uninitiated, Compoverse is where we host “compos,” or music composition competitions. As the site explains:

Compo is a slang word for “composition competition” commonly used by the arrangement community. It is derived from the demoscene competitions by the same name.

Contrary to this, compos are less of a competition and more of an exercise in composition abilities. Each compo has its own unique format and guidelines and while some are as short as 1 hour, others can last anywhere from a month to a few months.

It’s important to remember that the primary purpose of compos is to hone your skills and abilites by working within, sometimes very constricting, guidelines. These techniques have proven essential to the growth of countless musicians.

Remember: the only way to lose a compo is to not participate.

The site currently hosts about 7 compos on weekly or monthly schedules. One particular compo, One Hour Compo, has been hosted every week for over 10 years. During these compos, users work on tracks, following a particular theme, under a constricting time-limit. In many cases after the compo is completed we host a live listening party on our community Discord server, and users can get live peer review. This process has been invaluable to the growth of countless musicians throughout the years, including VGM composers virt and Danny Baranowski.

Compoverse offers new users an opportunity to develop experience with new tools and techniques and receive live feedback. Additionally, it challenges veteran users to try new things and streamline their workflow.

Compoverse will continue to offer a small number of “ThaSauce-hosted”, regularly scheduled compos. Additionally, the system will be expanded to offer a number of new features to admins that will also allow us to white-label the service to other compo communities. Making it easier for admins of all compos to host and administer regularly scheduled compos anywhere they desire.

VGMix (Part 1: WIPs/Compos)

Once users gain some confidence and experience it’s time to move on to VGMix. Here, users will be able to submit WIPs of more full-featured game arrangements and receive feedback. Additionally, users can join, or create, impromptu compos. These compos can be created by anyone, at any time, and is a great opportunity for a few friends to quickly jump in, create some constraints, host their files, and even have a live on-site listening party.

VGMix (Part 2: Releases)

Once users are comfortable with the feedback they received from WIPs, users will be able to convert their track from a work-in-progress to an actual released track. Once released they can continue to receive private critique, or simply receive public comments like “This song is great!” Users will receive on-site “Achievements” as they progress as artists to help encourage them to keep working as well as try new things. Additionally, VGMix will provide templates to allow for easy submissions to other arrangement sites including ReMix:ThaSauce, OverLooked ReMix, and even OverClocked ReMix.

ReMix:ThaSauce

ReMix:ThaSauce will maintain a similar position to where it has previously been: a bridge between self-released tracks and submission to a curated platform. Users will be able to submit tracks, that will be evaluated by panel, for an opportunity to be included within the curated collection. Consider this to be a badge of pride for user growth.

OverLooked ReMiX

OverLooked ReMix will continue to do exactly what it excels in: provide ridiculous interpretations of video game music and video game culture. Users that want to create joke, parody, or just simply outlandish tracks will be able to submit them here. Again, songs will be evaluated by a panel of passionate administrators for an opportunity to be included within that collection.

OverClocked ReMix

Though not within ThaSauce Network, OCReMix’s existence can’t be ignored. It has long been the center of the video game arrangement community and it too is included within the overall vision of our future development.

As it has always been OCReMix remains the “pinnacle” of achievement within the VGM community. A mountain for users to climb, and conquer along their journey. As previously mentioned, VGMix will work to not only prepare but also help facilitate users’ transition to OverClocked ReMix releases by hosting their tracks and providing them with formatted submission templates. This will, hopefully, make the process easier not only for users of both sites, but also administrators at OCReMix.

VGMix (Part 3: Albums)

Once users have confidence, experience, and prestige, they can move on to creating and participating in full album releases on VGMix. These can be solo albums or collaborative albums. VGMix will facilitate gathering of private feedback, providing consistent MP3 tags, and of course file hosting. Users will be free to host these final releases anywhere, but VGMix will hopefully make the process of collaborating on, and creating full-length albums much easier.

The Process

Whew. Now that we have all that outlined, how do we get there? Over the years we’ve amassed a number of incredibly talented developers, musicians, graphic designers, and other experts to help outline and flesh out our goals. We have a very clear process in mind and we’re confident we can achieve it. It all starts with what we’re calling Akatosh in development.

In the Elder Scrolls lore Akatosh is the name of the Dragon God of Time. The chief deity of the Divines. In ThaSauce development Akatosh represents the backbone of our infrastructure. Users, songs, albums, compos, all exist on Akatosh.

Under the hood, most of these sites follow a very similar structure:

  • A song is posted on the site
  • The song is “owned” by a user or a group of users (bands, etc)
  • These songs can be organized under a grouping (album, compo round, etc).

In the Akatosh system, a song on VGMix isn’t very different from a song on Compoverse or a song on OverLooked ReMix. The difference is the flourishes, and the presentation. All sites will be powered by Akatosh, and users of all the sites will have a single, unified, ThaSauce Network login account. One big community, spanning a number of websites.

Where are we now? What’s the timeline?

Given the nature of the system, it doesn’t look like anything has been done, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most of our time up until now has been focused on the underlying Akatosh system and structure, so there isn’t much “front-facing” progress. Admittedly as well, we are all employed full-time and very busy with our personal lives. So where are we actually and what are the next steps?

Right now, the Akatosh system is in a pretty solid place as far as structure and efficiency. We’re comfortable with the foundations we’ve laid out, and we’re ready to move on to incorporating actual, useable sites into the system. Compoverse is currently our most active site and, as a result, will be one of the first sites to be integrated into the new system. If you’ve followed the site recently you know that it has been in active development for a bit over a year. The current iteration of the PHP site is at the end-of-life for new features and any new development for the site will be moved to the new platform. This also includes the conversion of all the existing songs, compos, and users to the new system. This will take time as we’re rebuilding the site from scratch, but the timeline here, realistically, will be months, not years, as we continue.

There is also a chance you will see a version of ReMix:ThaSauce pop up soon after, or even before Compoverse. R:TS is one of the simpler, smaller sites, and would be a very straightforward transition. It’s also a great opportunity to test some of the data migration with a small, static dataset.

Conclusion

Still with me? Ok, good. Whew, that was a lot. So I guess what I’m trying to say is we’re still here. We’re still alive. We’re still passionate about the community, and we’re still working really hard to help the community continue to grow, evolve, and thrive in the modern, post-YouTube/Soundcloud internet. It’s been a long road, with a lot of changes and iterations, but we’re not going anywhere any time soon. Hopefully, hopefully, we’ll have some of you along for the ride to see everything through to the end. We’ll get there, and we’re getting closer every day.

OverClocked ReMix’s Pilotwings: Take Flight Released Today

 

OverClocked ReMix has just released its thirty-fourth arrangement album in tribute to Nintendo’s game series Pilotwings and the original score produced by the various composers involved throughout the series such as Soyo Oka (Pilotwings), Dan Hess (Pilotwings 64), and Asuka Ito (Pilotwings Resort). The album itself features seven tracks from Indianapolis-based arranger Drew “halc” Wheeler, who humbly takes his time in Pilotwings: Take Flight to combine “nostalgic chiptune instrumentation with modern electronic sounds and production techniques”.

Insert Rupee, a collaboration between Benjamin Briggs and halc, also make an exciting appearance, arranging two pieces from the later installments in the Pilotwings series. It is also worth noting that the album’s concluding track, “Depth Perception,” is OC ReMix’s first arrangement representing the Nintendo 3DS console.

While you can download the album for free at http://flight.ocremix.org, old-schoolers can also get and share Pilotwings: Take Flight by torrent as well. Comments and reviews for the release itself may be given and seen in the official OC ReMix forums here.

Announcing ThaSauce Presented by VGMix; Launches VGMix Archive

[The following is an April Fools’ Joke and is satirical in nature. None of it should be taken seriously EXCEPT the launch of VGMix Archive, which is an actual website that serves it’s advertised purpose.]

After an unfortunate turn of events we regret to announce that ThaSauce has ended our relationship with OverClocked ReMix indefinitely, active immediately. This is a really sad day for all of us, but after months of discussion and preparation, we have to call it off. Negotiations broke down soon after our announcement after we reached unresolved circumstances between ourselves and the OverClocked ReMix staff, particlarly Stevo “Level99” Bortz.

Things aren’t all bad, though. As we realized we were reaching an impasse we began exploring our other partnership options. With that said, we are now proud to announced new relationship between ThaSauce and Jake “vert” Kaufman and his VGMix team. Jake has been very understanding of the circumstances between us and OCReMix, and as a result we have decided to join forces to make the best online community that video game arrangements have ever seen!

As a celebration of our new, hopefully long-lasting, partnership we are proud to announce the launch of VGMix Archive. VGMix Archive is a large, searchable index of every VGMix 1, 2, and X song we could pull together. Preview and download your favorite tracks, or download the whole collection via BitTorrent! We hope to keep VGMix Archive a constantly updating archive, so anyone who has any tracks that we might be missing, feel free to let us know!

We apologize for all the preceding drama, but we are dedicated to moving forward and making the internet a better place one video game remix at a time, no matter how many beards try to stand in our way!

ThaSauce Presented by OverClocked ReMix

[The following is an April Fools’ Joke and is satirical in nature. None of it should be taken seriously.]

 

ThaSauce is proud to announce a new partnership with OverClocked ReMix. As an official subsidiarity of Overclocked Remix ThaSauce will now be covering exclusive OCReMix news as well as adopting OverClocked ReMix level-standards across all of ReMix:ThaSauce. Soon you’ll notice many R:TS songs being removed as part of our first lockdown efforts to meet the overall quality of our sister site. An estimated 275 songs are current up for review with more possible in the future.

To celebrate our new union we’re proud to present you with the FIRST Official OverClocked/ThaSauce Arrangement Project from one of the most popular games on the internet today: ReMixville! A Cityville/Farmville Arrangement Album.

Russian Website Sells OverClocked ReMix Albums for Profit, djpretzel Urges Cease & Desist


Earlier this week, the OverClocked ReMix community revealed that a Russian website identified as Legalsounds.com has been selling various albums from OCR artists, which has been shown to be a clear infringement of OverClocked ReMix’s Terms of Service.

Administrator David W. Lloyd, also known as djpretzel, disclosed that this is the not the first time that LegalSounds has attempted to sell the same albums and has urged a cease & desist:

Please proceed; clearly they didn’t get the message the first time. This pisses me off just as much, if not more, but what really aggravates me is that any time I spend dealing with it is time better served working on the site & releasing more music… which they’ll then turn around and try to profit from.

I think perhaps we should propose a three strikes rule to them – this is the second time our free content has surfaced on their site, for sale. If it happens again, or if they fail to remove it this time, some sort of petition may be in order. I don’t want to inadvertently publicize their “service,” though…

Further investigation marks Legalsounds.com’s involvement in selling these albums as an ambiguous legal status in its own country, adding to OverClocked ReMix’s dilemma. The ambiguous laws underlined by “License ЛС-3Ðœ-05-09 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society” enable the Russian website to sell these albums, as Legalsounds.com pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation “On Copyright and Related Rights”.

By creating a C&D e-mail template to Legalsounds.com, moderator Stevo “Level 99” Bortz has encouraged action for artists who have been unfairly taken advantage of through the illegal distribution of these albums. With a few simple clicks of your mouse, you can contact Legalsounds.com and let them know that they are infringing upon and violating the endless amount of time and effort that these artists have utilized to create the music we have all come to love.

OverClocked ReMix’s Unsung Heroes Tribute Just Released

 


Yesterday, OverClocked ReMix released their thirty-second official arrangement album in tribute to the unsung heroes of role-playing games throughout the years, many of which have great merit but have received less musical attention than bigger names and franchises. Appropriately titled Unsung Heroes, the album features many overlooked titles such as The 7th Saga, Ghouls’n Ghosts, The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1, Suikoden, and Persona 3. Unsung Heroes also showcases the talents of prominent artists who have been consistently featured on both OCRemix and ThaSauce, from the likes of DragonAvenger, OA, Rexy, Brandon Strader, Avaris, Scaredsim, Nutritious and much more.

Director Andrew “OA” Luers had much to say on the underrepresented themes that permeated much of the titles touched upon in Unsung Heroes:

We both agreed that while it is great to work with many well-known and often mixed themes – which are so loved for good reason – there should be no reason not to extend our hands into those games that have been overlooked for so long, but have genuinely beautiful themes as well. I’m proud of the work that these gentlemen and ladies have presented in this album, and hope that others will be able to appreciate the beauty of these tracks as well.

While you can get a small preview of the album above, Unsung Heroes is available for free download at http://unsung.ocremix.org. Have something to say about the album? Leave your feedback here.

MAGFest Recap: OverClocked ReMix Live @ MAGFest X


Even in the midst of exciting news such as website redesign and official project updates, OverClocked ReMix really knows how to go all out.  Between  these special highlights, stimulating workshops on the basics of making VGM remixes, and the crazy camaradie of the OverClocked After Dark show at MAGFest X, you would feel inclined to think that nothing could really top the usual excitement of OCRemix’s panels. However, we’d be doing OverClocked Remix a disservice if we didn’t talk about the OCR Live performances, which were absolutely off the hook this year. Just to give you a little taste of OCR Live, we’ve managed to include a brand new arrangement of Donkey Kong Country’s “Aquatic Ambiance” with live instrumentals  by OA, Level 99, DragonAvenger, and diotrans at the OverClocked ReMix Panel.

In Retrospect: Mirby’s Year in ReView

As another year comes into place and the one we just finished slowly slinks into the past, so too comes the time when Mirby must stop being lazy and start writing articles again instead of letting the release dates of albums fade into the obscuring mists of time. With a new year comes new articles, and there’s no better article to bring it in than a retrospective of 2011. A lot of things happened this year, even more than in 2010, so I’ll keep it brief. And so, here begins the retrospective.

ReMix: ThaSauce kicked things off on January 4 with three mixes; two from the Sonic games and one from Super Metroid. OverClocked ReMix posted their first mix of 2011 on the following day; this one was a mellow rock track from ilp0, remixing “Gold Mine” from the SNES game Wild Guns. With the mixpost came a call from djpretzel. “If there’s one theme I’d like to personally endorse for 2011, it’s ReMixing unmixed games.” We’ll see if his endorsement held up through the year. And then, on the tenth of January, the world got… The Answer.

THE ANSWER: An Armored Core Tribute Album by Mattias Häggström Gerdt

No, not the self-help book, the Armored Core Tribute Album. Mattias Häggström Gerdt headed up this album, featuring Jillian Aversa and DragonAvenger as well. And then, on January 27th, SEGA called OCR out for having zero SEGA Pico remixes.

On February 3, OCR posted their first Pico remix courtesy of zircon; it was a mellow mix from Tails and the Music Maker. Just four days later, Heroes vs. Villains was released. Pitting the Bad Dudes against OCR regulars, it took hero themes and villain themes from various franchises; OCR took the heroes and Bad Dudes took the villains. The result was a delight; the pairs of tracks work well on their own, but combined creates a melodious melee, one where each track plays off its companion. Near the end of the month, another original soundtrack was released on OCR, this one for Missile Master Episode 1: Invasion; it was composed by Kunal, one of the Bad Dudes. Fitting for the other album release that month.

March started off immediately, with the long-awaited Pokémon album, The Missingno Tracks, dropping on the first. Paying tribute to music from the series so far (except for the then-unreleased Black/White), it was two discs of remixes ranging various styles. On the 25th, OCR released another pure Joshua Morse album, this one for the Mega Man series. Entitled The Robot Museum, it took a single track from each of the first 8 games (along with the Data Base Accessed theme from Mega Man and Bass), and got the JM touch applied. Finally, on March 29, Benjamin Briggs released his Attention Deficit EP, an eclectic mix of styles all containing his chippy touch.

April started off with another OCR prank, this time a “reveal” of the full year’s album lineups, totaling thirty-eight new albums. Some gems included “Hers – Female Character Themes by Female Artists,” “Up, Up, Down, Down Lower – Porn Grooves of Game Tunes,” and “Beyond the Beyond – Beyond the Beyond the Beyond,” among others. Alongside the revelation of all of OCR’s albums for 2011, ThaSauce released the soundtrack for Fasto the Speedhog 2. The long-awaited follow-up to the original Fasto the Speedhog, it blew away listeners, many preferring it to the soundtrack for Sonic 4: Episode 1. In more realistic news, Sonic the Hedgehog: The Sound of Speed was released on the twelfth, completing the trilogy of Sonic albums on OCR. Though it was a single disc, the entire album was full of gems. Or should I say… emeralds?

May was a relatively quiet month. Support OCR Month, which usually happened in April, got off to a late start and carried into May. Though the goal was set at $5,000, people went abobe and beyond to bring the total for 2011 to an amazing $7,514! Incredible rally from supporters to get that much to OCR in just a month. halc released his Pixel Perfect LP on the 16th, which fit perfectly with his EP from the previous year. Together, the two create a complete album, and a good one too!

Malcos releasing his It Started in 2012 album in June. Equal parts orchestral and electronic, the album takes the listener on a quest as it details future events that will occur in a universe separate from our own. And while not strictly music-related, everyone’s favorite person to blame Liontamer AKA Black Dynamite and his long-time girlfriend Paige became engaged this month as well. WillRock also released his own EP on the 19th, entitled Refractions of a Dream. Loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s classic “Alice in Wonderland” and possibly also “Through the Looking Glass,” the album is comprised of some pretty trippy songs. Seriously, I blame this album for all my sleeping problems (not really). Also of note was the general public’s introduction to the OverClocked Plaid Muffins, through the mixpost of “Ska Buffet (All You Can Eat: Clean Version)”, a clean cut of their track on the upcoming Milky Way Wishes album.

July may not have kicked off with a “Four for the Fourth” as in 2010, but it give us NiGHTS: Lucid Dreaming on the fifth. Worked on with love for the game, Stevo Bortz, aka Level 99 or he of the awesome beard, the track featured two discs that took the listener on a journey through the game. Except guided by music instead of some flying jester. This was also the first album I reviewed without being familiar with the source material; doesn’t really matter, as the album is fantastic either way. Also in July, YouTube favorite FamilyJules7x began a hiatus from his weekly game music guitar covers; after a year of releasing a song weekly, he felt the need to relax. He ended Year 1 with a cover of the Super Mario 64 Credits theme.

August happened to be Metroid’s 25th anniversary, so a bunch of Metroid music was released. First it was Harmony of a Hunter on the 7th, and then Theophany’s Crystal Flash EP later that same day.Shnabubula and a friend also made a tribute song for the anniversary along with a video, which was later featured on IGN. The song itself was posted on the 12th. On August 14, Mazedude revealed his self-proclaimed opus American Pixels, the long awaited follow-up to 2006’s American Album. It will remix a bunch of songs from American composers, including Jake Kaufman and Danny Baranowsky. August 15th brought the release of Amphibious’s debut EP, Oceans. A soothing aural trip into the ocean, through its deeps, and back out once more, it was an excellent effort. Nario released an EP on the 19th, entitled More of Me. A chippy mix of a bunch of different songs, it’s a rather nice listen on the whole.

Then in September, Danimal Cannon released a video. It was a rather hilarious video (explicit too, I think), but it led to a bunch of people calling him out as racist and homophobic. The best part about all the hate? The video itself was making fun of rap, and thus was created specifically to mock those who’d complain. On the 7th, an album that often had questions about its status asked was finally released. No, it was not FFV: The Fabled Warriors – WATER. Instead, it was Mega Man 9: Back in Blue. The song arranged the majority of the soundtrack. Unfortunately, all the songs on a Mega Man soundtrack are rather integral, especially the stage themes. And this album completely neglected to have a Concrete Man remix. Sure, there were two Jewel Man mixes, but no Concrete Man.

This was even referenced in the album’s trailer, and remedied shortly thereafter with Rockin’ Sockin’ Cinder Blockin’ – A Concrete Man Remix EP. Spurred on by this grave injustice to the most concrete of ‘bots, DarkeSword arranged an emergency mixing round. Calling on all mixers via the forums, DarkeSword challenged everyone to make a mix in one week’s time. The album was posted a week thereafter, album art and all. A great tragedy was indeed averted (and the also neglected Castle of Evil got a mix from Jason Covenant, formerly known as Prophecy.) Jimmy Hinson, aka Big Giant Circles, also released a chiptune album on the 12th, entitled Impostor Nostalgia, with virt’s Bloodrayne: Betrayal Official Soundtrack released through Ubiktune the following day. Shnabubula also released his Game Genie album, a marvelous collection of original songs. The Binding of Isaac was also released at the end of September, with a soundtrack by Danny Baranowsky. The style was similar to his Super Meat Boy soundtrack, which is to say it, too, was excellent.

October was nowhere near as busy as the previous month (though that was mostly due to Concrete Man’s omission), but it was a good month nonetheless. The tenth heralded the release of Super Dodge Ball: Around the World, another of OCR’s albums that had been in the works for several years. It’s never planned that way, but there’s a few where that has happened (such as 2010’s Threshold of a Dream or 2009’sSummoning of Spirits). A lot of great tracks were to be found here, including two mixes of the Versus Play theme (appropriate for the 2-player motif of versus play itself). And on Halloween, the oft-loved Castlevania mix “Juese Belmont” finally made it to OCR. Albeit it was by Shael Riley and the Double Ice Backfire (who covered the song as part of the Kickstarter campaign for their album “Ultimate Songs from the Pit”) and not the original Disk Mastah Smokabitch. Longtime OCR members may say otherwise though, and for good reason.

November kicked off with “Cover Your Light,” a remix of the main theme of the Commodore 64 game Deflektor. OCR had been holding it for the German hard/glam rock band Zero Division since August of 2010, wishing it to be released after their latest album was released. However, since that took longer than expected, this mix sat around for 15 months. It’s fantastic, and sounds just like it was ripped from the ’80s. The 6th heralded the release of Ultimate Songs from the Pit, the album of which the Kickstarter campaign that produced the “Juese Belmont” mix mentioned above was for. I hope that made sense…

The first R:TS mix of the year saw release as an OCReMix on the 17th, giving JH Sounds his first mixpost and Cyril the Wolf another one; the mix is an emotional acoustic rendition of Final Zone from Sonic 1, entitled “Finality (Radio Edit).” It’s an edit from JH Sounds’s album Hedgehog Hysteria, releaed in 2010. On the day of release for the latest Zelda game also came a surprise album: 25YEARLEGEND: A Legend of Zelda Indie Game Composer Tribute. Released on the 22nd, the album took composers of various indie games and mixed them with songs from across the entire franchise and its 25 years of captivating minds of all ages.

Roots by Danimal Cannon

Danimal Cannon started December off with the release of Roots, a collection of chiptune originals. He was even nice enough to include the project files so that others could experiment with them. OCR released BadAss: Boss Themes on the 6th; this album was just boss themes from a bunch of different games, mostly rock and metal but with a great orchestral track and a couple others too. This is also only Volume 1; the Volume 2 thread’s already up and running in the projects board. The Bad Dudes released another album on the 20th, the Metroid Arrange 25th Anniversary Album. I’m working on getting a copy of this to review with the other two for a Metroid Triple Review, don’t worry. Also released on the 20th was the long-awaited Wild Arms: ARMed and DANGerous. This album took the the soundtrack of Wild Arms and arranged it in a multitude of styles, all of which worked wonderfully for them. And on Christmas, ProtoDome released his album BLUESCREEN, a follow-up to June’s BLUENOISE. This begs the question… is this the dangerous formula he saves Christmas with? Possibly, but it’s awesome regardless of that. As for the theme DJP set at the year’s start… I think that with all the albums released, it was more than met.

December also happened to be Reviews Month at OCR. The premise this year? OA had attained the Power of the ReMix and was poised to destroy OCR. Thus, King djpretzel and his ReMix knights had to review mixes to deal damage. Each remix dealt 50 damage to him, but each remix OA wrote healed 50 HP. Rexy and Bahamut annihilated OA, with a lot of help from many other members. However, that was but OA’s first form; the ground began to rumble… and then his true form awoke. A tentacled beast bearing the facial likenesses of other judges (including Jooj-cat) revealed itself and challenged the community to review 200 tracks to finish him off. Everyone kept doing their best, and I even got involved, doing 16 reviews a day on the 23rd and 24th, and then 16 more on the morning of Christmas. By Christmas night in my time zone, Final OA was down to needing a mere 20 reviews to finish him off. So I took the initiative and reviewed 20 more songs (bringing my total to 36 for that day alone; 78 total) to finish him. What were the spoils of battle, you ask? Well for every review written, a raffle ticket would be entered to win one of three $35 eStarland gift certificates or one of three custom avatars on the OCR forums. Rexy finished the month with a grand total of 200 reviews, and Bahamut with 118. It was a noble effort from all!

And now we find ourselves in 2012. The final tallies for the previous year are 206 mixposts and twelve albums on OCR, and thirty-nine mixposts for ReMix: ThaSauce. That’s twenty-one more songs and four more albums than 2010 for OCR, and nineteen fewer for R:TS. Regardless of that, there’s plenty more to come, just as there is plenty I’ve missed (I know for a fact there’s stuff I haven’t mentioned here). If you know of something else great from 2011 that wasn’t mentioned here, just post it in a comment! It was a wondrous year for the community, and I know that 2012 will be even better! So until next time, game on!

PROTO·DOME Releases Second Album BLUESCREEN


UK-based jazz artist PROTO·DOME  has recently released his second album, BLUESCREEN:

From the creator of the hit chiptune album BLUENOISE, comes the exciting all-caps sequel, BLUESCREEN! This time around things get more varied with a touch less wah synth, a little more crazy hi-hat jamming and 100% more live sax on 1/10th of the tracks! Statistics! You know it’s going to be good.

Following his wonderful debut album BLUENOISE, we’re pleased to announce that PROTO·DOME’s latest head-bobbin’ tracks are as catchy as ever. Creatively dubbed as ‘chiptune jazz micro-music’, BLUESCREEN gracefully borders the line of classy overtures and bold, saxxy tunes.

BLUESCREEN is available now on Bandcamp and Ubiktune. We’ve taken the liberty to embed a few of our favorite songs below for your listening pleasure.


OverClocked ReMix Releases New Policy for Private Album Projects

 

OverClocked ReMix overlord djpretzel has recently released a new policy to announce the source material and directors of private album projects in order to tackle problems with other potential projects of the same game:

We’ve recently decided (duh) that it’s not fair to the community to have these private projects be COMPLETELY private – at the very least, we’re going to announce the names of games being worked on, so would-be directors can decide for themselves whether to start their own projects from the same games. Again, to be clear, these are private albums being run by directors who prefer to do things that way, which IS an option that we respect & allow, so we’re not going to release any additional information about these projects OTHER than the game name, and we ask that everyone respect the wishes of the director(s) who choose to run their projects this way. By the same token, though, we decided that keeping the actual names of the games private was problematic & not transparent.

Currently, the two private projects  that have been approved by OverClocked ReMix are Final Fantasy VI and Banjo Kazooie. To keep up-to-date on the list of current OCR projects that will be released , you can view the thread here. If you happen to be interested in the starting an official project for OCR and/or project approval,  guidelines are also available here.