Projects

• Game Music

  Chrono Trigger Arrangement Project Drops Preview Tracks

  August 23, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this Chrono Trigger Arrangement Project Drops Preview Tracks

  

  This year marks the 20th anniversary of Chrono Trigger, and thus some announcements of arrangement music projects have surfaced. One is from the same people who created the Secret of Mana arrangement album back in 2013, Spectrum of Mana. This project, called Chronicles of Time, will feature an obscene amount of tracks from some of the biggest names in the video game music arrangement community, much like Spectrum. Said to be spanning five disks, a 13-track preview for the project has just dropped, “A Premonition”.

  We’re still hard at work, but you can expect even more diversity than what Spectrum of Mana offered at the same level of quality.  In celebration of Chrono Trigger’s 20th anniversary in North America, we submit to you…a full 13-track preview of what’s to come!

  Join us as we wish a Happy Anniversary to one of the greatest videogames ever created and celebrate one of gaming’s greatest composers, Yasunori Mitsuda!

  Chronicles of Time is currently slated for a December release, with the preview being free to download (or throw some coin at, if you wish). We’ll keep you posted as news of the album is released.

• Doujin, Featured, Game Music

  Bananalicious Madness: Serious Monkey Business Review!

  March 14, 2010 | Audun Sorlie | 8 Comments Share this Bananalicious Madness: Serious Monkey Business Review!

  

  For many people, each time OCR announced a project, there is always a lot of excitement and buzz. OCR has for many years been a gathering point for most remix musicians in the videogame scene, and these projects always allow talent to come together to celebrate all these classic soundtracks. We recently interviewed the project leaders for the newest OCR project, Serious Monkey Business, and talked about the participation of well-known names and newcomers, and also about the hurdles involved with these projects. Donkey Kong Country 2 is a complex beast, but with talent such as David Wise, the original composer, on board as well as well-known names like Jake Kaufman, Prince of Darkness, Sixto, Joshua Morse, Zyko and many other talented remixers, there’s no reason to think they can’t succeed in doing a great album.

  But projects often fall into the same potholes in that the project leaders and musicians lose track of what they’re actually doing, as we’ve seen many times projects such as Summoning of Spirits being 5 discs and seemingly having no general quality control or direction leaving the project to be a huge mess. Without direction and quality control these projects become a big pile of individual tracks that don’t work together and therefore, as an album as we saw in the Final Fantasy IV project, if you give people too much creative freedom, they’ll go off and make horrendously unfunny hip-hop that is only funny to the four people who came up with the idea. It will be interesting to see if the Serious Monkey Business ends up feeling the same way.

  Find out after the jump! (more…)

• Doujin, Featured, Game Music

  Silly Baboons Discuss Serious Monkey Business!

  February 25, 2010 | Audun Sorlie | 6 Comments Share this Silly Baboons Discuss Serious Monkey Business!

  

  David Wise’s Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest is widely accepted as one of the very best soundtracks on the Super Nintendo, and rightfully so. The soundtrack is a huge complex beast, with eerie ambiance, melodic masterpieces and funky monkey disco which still holds up today, maybe even shining brighter than ever, showcasing incredible diversity in an age of bland orchestra epics. Even in doujin, the soundtrack has now become highly respected after Smash Bros Brawl brought it back into the light, and many doujin albums now feature “Stickerbush Symphony.”

  Now, OverClocked Remix is gearing up to release their newest project, Serious Monkey Business, honoring the work of Wise through some of the best arrangement artists around. I had the pleasure of seeing Geoffrey Taucer, one of the project leaders at MAGFest 8, and it was decided to shed some more light on the project. So here today you can read our chat about the project, and there is a very nice surprise in store for the fans of this soundtrack, so make sure you read on!

  Read the interview after the jump! (more…)

• Doujin, Game Music

  Contra 4: Rocked n’ Loaded Roundtable #2: Probotect & Rock

  December 19, 2009 | Audun Sorlie | 1 Comment Share this Contra 4: Rocked n’ Loaded Roundtable #2: Probotect & Rock

  

  A few weeks ago we had the first part of our discussion with the Contra 4: Rocked ‘n’ Loaded team about the development and production of these kinds of arrangement albums. It’s easy to take arrangements and remixes for granted, thinking it’s simply a deal of finding a MIDI or listening by ear and replicating it, but in reality, the process is quite a massive undertaking.

  In this part, we ventured into the topic of the music production itself, as we last time went into the topic of planning, signing artists and working together. Now get ready to really understand how long it takes to transcribe, learn and record these incredibly detailed melodies, and dealing with being a musical perfectionist.

  Come Get Some! (more…)

• Doujin, Game Music

  Contra 4: Rocked n’ Loaded Roundtable #1: Recruit Camp

  December 5, 2009 | Audun Sorlie | 7 Comments Share this Contra 4: Rocked n’ Loaded Roundtable #1: Recruit Camp

  

  It seems Konami’s classic franchises are everywhere these days. We reviewed Contra Rebirth last month, there was the announcement of Castlevania: The Concert, Castlevania Rebirth is set to whip some ass on WiiWare sometime soon, and even Sparkster is coming back to consoles next year.

  But what we are gonna do here concerns a gem that came out in 2007, Contra 4. You see, there is an arrangement project in the works for this game which is wrapping up, and anyone who’s played this game know it has an amazing soundtrack, composed by Jake Kaufman, better known as virt. We thought it would be fun to talk to the guys behind this project about the the process of getting a remix project together and discuss the reasons why they chose this specific game. We are proud to present part 1 of this roundtable, which should be highly interesting to any fan or musician out there.

  So please enjoy Part 1 of the Contra 4 roundtable after the jump! (more…)

• Doujin, Game Music

  Original Donkey Kong Country Composers Contribute to OverClocked ReMix’s Serious Monkey Business

  November 6, 2009 | Audun Sorlie | 7 Comments Share this Original Donkey Kong Country Composers Contribute to OverClocked ReMix’s Serious Monkey Business

  

  OCReMix is busy with their next big project these days, Serious Monkey Business, which is the follow up to the 2004 project Kong In Concert. As the first project covered the soundtrack of Donkey Kong Country, Serious Monkey Business will be giving Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest the OCR treatment, and they’ve assembled quite a list of artists to lend their talents. Sixto, virt, Joshua Morse, Prince of Darkness and zyko are a few of the names signed up for this project, but the most exciting artists might come as quite a surprise. Dave Wise, Grant Kirkhope and Robin Beanland are scheduled to arrange a song as well. That’s right, the original composers of the game will return to arrange their own music 14 years after the original release!

  The project leaders, Bahamut and Geoffrey Taucer, have expressed interest in printing physical copies this time for release, and are asking for donations to help cover for printing costs and other production aspects. While OCR projects in the past have often been a hit-and-miss deal, most recently with Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption, this seems to be most promising with a great cast of artists, and the involvement of the original composers. If you are interested in helping out with donations and read more about the project, head over to OCRemix’s official discussion board for the project.

  With that said, is there any game series you would like to see a remix project of in the future?

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