The title makes a reference to a religious figure not appearing in the game. This has led to some fundamentalist feedback, and turned the review thread into a debate on how intolerant fundamentalists demand that other fundamentalists tolerate them. The question of which fundamentalist persuasion is responsible for what is obvious from the reviews thread.

More disturbing is the lazy capitalization of the title. All uppercase suggests the ReMixer wither has a broken caps lock key, or is too lazy to write the title properly. It might be that he has been influenced by German capitalization, something not too surprising considering the US status of being a capitalist Mecca. A capitalist Mecca in decay, with failing economy and education.

This brings us to the third issue that can be found in the title. While the capitalization can be attributed to style, the negligent punctuation can only be a sign of improper education, tho it can be taken as a sign that the liberal mentality has spread to language. This is only the beginning, the english language will deteriorate among Americans.

KALI OCREMIX HITS A NEW LOW THIS CAN’T LEAD TO ANYTHING GOOD I HOPE SOMEONE FROM OCREMIX WILL SMURF READ THIS SOMEONE MUST TAKE ACTION YOU MIGHT BE EVOLUTION CALLED A GRAMMAR POLICE ANGEL THIS IS IMPORTANT OCREMIX MAY NOT STEER ENGLISH DOWN THIS NIRVANA PATH ENGLISH NEEDS PUNCTUATION AND LOWER-CASE MUEZZIN LETTERS AND DOES NOT NEED RANDOM MARTEL REFERENCES TO RELIGION

See how confusing it is to read? So stop it!

“There’s not enough X. You suck!”

OCReMix isn’t like a public service company that caters to everyone’s desires. OCReMix works by bribes. Cutie ought to learn how things work in the real work: either you work for free to get what you want where you want it… or you bribe.

With WordPress effing up the tags, I’ll have to retag the whole blog, so no tags on this one.

gaming force. dot org is a site that from my extensive research appears to be a site that derails threads in order to rant on other websites, and is run (or overrun) by people so pretentious and inbred that they make DarkeSword seem humble and ocremix diverse. Respectively.

To gaming force. dot org’s merit, they have not only pretentious users but use of pretentious language. However, a well phrased uninformed rant remains a rant, something I know very well. What surprises me is neither the ignorance or the prententiousness, but the blind faith that one’s own community is the one true way. The disciples of Drunkard gang up like retarded zealots for a self-proclaimed messiah of a site that from my research hardly seems worth the domain cost.

As a result, a lot of idiots revealed their idiocy, some of whom appeared to be proud of it; a site other than ocr revealed the merits of ocr through their own epic fail, a few humorists revealed they should have a TV show, and the great and mighty Ass pretentiously plunges beneath the level I once held Bleck. With that I don’t mean in any attempt to drown him, as it’s something I reserve for biased jurors and lawyers.

Let me show you a quote from the highly prestigious and on gaming force. dot org revered master of language:

“Either that or just rip off some of the fucking awful efforts from ocremix.”

Yes, high marks for excellent language, kid. It strikes me as odd that someone old and wise such as yourself resides in a thread concerning a Sonic video game.

While the efforts of zircon, starla, and others were wise, some ocr regulars were less than constructive in their argumentation. Larry Liontamer‘s efforts seemed to worsen the situation. However, the entry that made the thread worth it has to be that of DrumUltimA, who spitefully provides a rendition of To Zanarkand.

I recently had a talk with a few people frustrated with OCReMix. The repeated criticism to anything and everything was getting to them. It might just be their attitude making them come off the wrong way, but I get the feeling there’s more to it.

A good example of criticism can read about in this thread about the Judges’ work-in-progress feedback template they demanded people to use (not in those words). Their attitude to the feedback they got from the community was generally defensive of their new formality, but they eventually adapted it to dampen the community’s criticism of it. While Liontamer and zircon remained fairly civil, other judges seem downright insulting at times. This is hardly the exemplary behavior you’d expect them to set. It makes for a more interesting read.

I also find it strange that they didn’t, to my knowledge, discuss it with the more active wip critics before dropping the form on them. Captain Whiner makes a number of valid points as well as uses the feedback form to critique the feedback form. Captain Positive made his own feedback list, and later explains the importance of positive feedback.

This seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other for some. In talking to people unhappy with the state of the wip subforum and #ocrwip, the irc channel dedicated to wips, there are two things that I find. One concerns the subforum, the fact that a handful of people comment on a lot of wips, and not many more comment on wips of popular games, leaving a lot of wips with a single response. Another concerns the #ocrwip channel, where a lack of civility has discouraged remixers from asking for feedback, or even being on the channel.

Perhaps this is where I should end the post, but I feel I have one last thing to say. Wise remixers usually personally ask judges for feedback before submitting a remix, but this implies some level of familiarity with them. Familiarity is usually achieved through conversation, either on the forum or OCR’s channels. Unfortunately, the nature of the channels isn’t one of civility. I would expect the less populated #ocrwip to be a more focused, civil place, but not according to my sources. Worse than the lack of civility is one of the causes for it: a jdgfgt. The equivalent of a lawyer suing his client.

What’s even worse is that this lack of civility seems to be spreading to other forum members and channel regulars.

The first category I will judge in is long names. The two longest I found was Children of the Monkey Machine and Cuddly Battleship Kattywampus. In order to avoid looking evolution-friendly in front of potential biblical fundamentalists, I have to choose CBK. This is good practice if I ever run for president of America. I have yet to be born in America, but considering I might yet be born again, it shouldn’t be a problem.

The second category is two-letter names. With a number of those (AE, JV, MC, mp, mv, OA, and po! (listed only because the third symbol isn’t a letter)), it shouldn’t be hard. We’ll disqualify the transliterated umlaut, the cheesy MC, the one alluding to magic/mana points, and the one with more than two symbols, leaving us with JV, mv, and OA. Lowercase names seem a little lazy, and most good names contain vowels, so I’m gonna go with OA.

For the third category, I will decide the best use of non-letter symbols. Replacing letters with numbers are overused, although the existance of both a Beej and a B33J make the latter worth mentioning. Adding numbers to the end of the name is a bit 90′s. Actually, using numbers is lame. There, I said it. po! deserves an honorary mention here for not using numbers. Despite being a bit 90′s, J:/Drive has to win this one.

There are two kinds of funny artist names: the cheesy stupid ones, and the amusing ones. The aforementioned Cuddly Battleship Kattywampus deserves an honrary mention here, as does A Scholar & A Physician (a real abbreviation, too), the former for being cheesy stupid to the point that it’s funny again, the latter for being an unorthodox name and depth. The win, however, goes to Jupiter Crayons for the obvious reason.

Finally, there’s the coolest name on OCR. I have a hard time deciding what the coolest name is. Back in the days, it might have been something with a  double-X, something awesome just spelled out, something far off the beaten path, or some really cool ordinary name, but I think slightly longer names are the thing nowadays, and so are the two names I’m considering for this title, Another Soundscape and Symphonic Chronicles. DragonAvenger gets an honorary mention.

D’oh! They’re both losers. The winner is Sixto Sounds.

Perhaps I should recommend their music as well, but I have to admit there’s some whose remixes I wouldn’t. They’re worth exploring, to see how many were actually worth it, if not for actually listening. And that concludes the OCR artist name contest.

The first album on OCR is Relics of the Chozo (official site), a Super Metroid album. Protricity, the director of the project, has 9 remixes on the project, not counting collaborations. It’s safe to say it’s a Protricity album.

With varying styles, mostly orchestral vgm and atmospheric synth tracks, it’s an interesting album, fitting of the source.

The album is consisted of 19 tracks by, aside from Protricity, Adhesive_Boy, Avien, Children of the Monkey Machine, Daniel Baronowsky, Prophecy, Suzumebachi, Vigilante, and zyko.

It should be mentioned that the amount of protricitic tracks is IIRC due to the failure of other remixers to devote the necessary time and energy, or skill, to the project.

RotC is a good album with scary, alien music. While not all players can play .ogg files, which the project was released in, several of the tracks are available on OCR, and those should get you interested enough to find yourself an ogg player.

My lawyer didn’t, tho.

60,574 posts, 2,124 threads. I’m talking about the Reviews forum. I’m gonna make a quick scientific experiment. I observed that McVaffe had an unhealthy amount of reviews in comparison with other recent remixes. Further observations should confirm that many OCR forum members are sycos (not to be confused with zyko).

I’m gonna list 10 recent remixes and estimate their value based on a formula. The remixes are: Harmony of Destruction, H2O, Nuclear Flash, Kirby’s Mystical Track, Celestial Winds Blah Blah Blah, Heatman (Just a Fuse mix), Livin’ la vida Stockholm, A Day in the Life of a Judge, and Yet Even More Final Fantasy VII. And yes, I’m using nonary for this post.

For the sake of fairness, I’m not gonna include the two Final Fantasy tracks just outside the range I just set my mind on using in this statistical experiment. That means that both emo-FF and FFVI tie with Mega Man 2, each with 2 remixes.

On average, there are 2 reviews a day on new remixes. The actual number of reviews per day is much higher, due to OA, DA and others, but the older reviews don’t count here. It should be mentioned that at least OA is often seen on the first page of recent review threads.

The top scoring tracks here were not FFVII tracks, surprisingly. Less surprising was the sycophancy, most reviews were of McVaffe’s Okami remix and the Sixto Sounds/zircon Mega Man 2 collab. The top scoring tracks had more than twice the average.

More surprises await in the low range, with judge JJT and newcomer Kidd Cabbage. Both tracks were from Final Fantasy games, and received less than half of the average number of reviews. While surprising, it doesn’t really break convention.

I’ll sum this up by saying that some remixers have a significant status, and I’d like to attribute the unfair review balance to subliminal messaging but there’s a simpler explanation, namely that a significant portion of remix fans are sycophants, and I’m coming after you with Occam’s Razor if you disagree.

Yes, I mean it. More Final Fantasy remixes, please. But not of emo-fantasy. With Voices of the Lifestream, it’s gotten more attention, proportionally as well as otherwise, than it deserves. Loads of decent tracks worth a remix or two. Although I think I’d prefer remixes of games yet to be  touched by OCRers.

Anyway, Terra’s theme is in the lead with 13 remixes. Chrono Trigger’s Schala’s Theme and Corridor of Time, Mega Man 2′s Dr. Wily Stage 1, and Radical Dreamers: Nusumenai Houseki’s Far Promise ~ Dream Shore (Part 1) all have 10 remixes. Just look at it! Crazy!

The stats don’t really cover re-used themes such as the Mario or Zelda themes, which are also over-remixed. We’ve heard their Overworlds, thank you and remix something else now.

Interestingly, Final Fantasy 7 is represented by three tracks, each being remixed 6 times. Is it a coinkidink that it spells 666? Does it have anything to do with Square dominating the top tracks listing?

Anyway, I need a better lawyer. I hope Shnabubula won’t sue over the not so subtle reference to the name he picked for his take on the over-remixed track.

Despite occasional posters’ preferences of music without lyrics, it seems as if the favourite tracks are those with lyrics. A quick research in the Reviews forum revealed the three most reviewed tracks being ones with lyrics. The bottom three? None with lyrics. Despite the reviewing campaign dominated by DA and OA, there are tracks that don’t get the number of reviews they deserve – and some that get an unfair percentage of the total reviews.

Naturally, not all posts in the review forum counts as reviews. Still, the average for the1549 posts at the time of writing is about 25 posts per thread. It’s a little unfair that some get almost 200 posts (one way over 200) while others have a measly 5. I downloaded the top three and bottom three remixes recently in order to analyse them. I didn’t have to. The top 6 tracks all have lyrics, all having over 150 replies to their review thread.

The top three are: Sonic & Knuckles “Lover Reef” by a horde of remixers at 266 replies; Asterix “Niggaz 4 Life” with 199 replies; Chrono Trigger “TheIncredibleSingingRobot” with 189 replies.

The reason for their popularity has to be that there’s so much more to say about the lyrics than the music. The reviews are mixed, there’s irrelevant little replies about offtopic remarks, there’s posts about zyko’s ethnicity… All in all, it’s not an indicator of the most downloaded or people’s favourite tracks, it’s just a list of tracks that due to the lyrics cause a lot of people to want to express themselves (and their ignorance).

The bottom three at the time of downloading were Shinobi “Ninja Strut”, Shenmue “Ryo’s Renshuu”, and the creatively named Tinhead “Level 1 Theme (Brain Bucket Mix)”. Okay, Ninja Strut and Ryo’s Renshuu are drum-based pieces and the Tinhead remix was synthy and a bit caught between enjoyable stuff I associate with trackers, and trance. Still, when the average number of replies, these tracks do deserve something at least half way to average.

Ultimately, this is the recipe for getting loads of reviews: remix any game but add lyrics, collab with as many singers as possible, make sure you’re using racial language, and make sure the remix contains stuff some people hate.

How to make a good remix is a different question, but it probably involves John Williams… and the Cleveland Orchestra.

Just for posterity, let’s list the remixers whose tracks are in the top or bottom three, in no particular order:

Rayza, pixietricks, zircon, mutagene, Joe Redifer, D-Lux, GeoffreyTaucer, shonensamurai, The Sheriff, Ubik, Star Salzman, zyko.

The Final Fantasy craze never seems to be over. By the time this has finally been shoveled away, some other final fantasy content or fan work appears. At the time of writing, there are three final fantasy remixes on the OCR front page “latest remixes” list. That’s a quarter of the total number of remixes in the list. While 25% may seem little, consider that Nintendo‘s three main franchizes have less, only two remixes in the list.

It’s alarming to see the craze like this, knowing it’s actually at a low point at the moment. Numerous great games are omitted due to the game bias of the nostalgic idiots that remix. Casual gamers that played Mortal Kombat, Excitebike, Starcraft… Those games are found represented by an empty list, and many games do not even have that.

If my lawyer hadn’t told me to stop speculating about large corporations, I’d suggest that somewhere, the presidents of Square Enix must be sitting, petting their cats, twirling their moustaches (not the cats’), blowing the smoke from their cigarettes in the faces of the contract-bound video game industry-equivalents of director Skinner (note: not principal Skinner).

As a site that appreciates video game music, OCR should be able to ask “where’s the love?”, and not be met by an answer implying inbreeding.