Recent events has led me to post about something not strictly vgm-related, although still related to OverClocked ReMix. This hardly updated blog has been a watchdog for the site featuring teenagers posting diverse electronic remakes of the music in their favorite daily time waste, but now it’s time to take a step up and cover something else. Namely, gaming force. dot org.

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’ve been busy with court, but thanks to my lawyer, I have internet access at the detention center. 

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.