The Beginning

Wily Castle Remix Gauntlet reached the end of its fourth round this past Saturday with 12 entries. The Wily Theme selected, Mr. X Fortress came from Mega Man 6. Among other interesting developments, the round brought about a rare vocal appearance from Rexy, who did her best growl for her and Brandon’s metal take on the material. OLRmageddon LIV featured a sports theme for contestants to tackle: remixers could choose any sports game to remix, excluding fighters and driving games. Perhaps not surprisingly, considering the limited choices, zero entries were submitted. 

JHCompo on Tuesday had “The Grind” as its theme prompting participants to either get down to business, or be lazy. The SolidComposer founder superjoe submitted a quick musical piece with his usual pop-punk chord progression, this time set to a swung percussion. Newcomer LyokoFreaks melded distant lo-fi percussion with flute before laying down rock drums and guitar chords. Obtuse created a session of 8-bit, explaining that “This is how it feels when I check my email when i get in during the morning.” SonicThHedgog attempted to troll the listening party by starting quietly and bursting to maximum volume, not realizing that the waveform of the track was visible to all. Finally MandraSigma uploaded a chill electronic composition with a bit of record scratching, admitting that he was “Hardly Working”.

Thursday’s OHC made the unusual choice of a musical-specific theme: "Compose a song for an early 90s 2D platform game." On that note I appended my vocal narration with an 8-bit rendition of an old composition of mine, "The Beginning". On the flip side, dusthillguy avoided chips by submiting guitar strums under the title "sadsong". frkygp brought things back to form with a conceptual piece that goes from a happy-go-lucky vibe to a menacing bass line. CJthemusicdude entered a 16-bit cavernous zone that holds some mysticism, if not plagiarism. Doctor Arcana fired up synth brass and an assortment of elements for "Space Jump 16", raising the question of where the previous 15 installments went.

Forty-Two made a rough estimate of the length of his "2-minute-ish loop" entry, a driving electro tune laced with piano. sci took his chiptune leanings to epic heights as appropriate for being inside "the biggest space castle of the fleet." jarski had perhaps the most distinctive song description of the night for his dancefloor shaking chip music, consisting of a series of emotions. munchi's biggest selling point for his game was the "SUPER-" prefix, suggesting his product is merely a repackaged cash-in. MandraSigma sent along a chill composition defying the "Shred the Beast" title: maybe this was the edgy Americanized title of the game. 

Hapi-San succeeded in beating all the levels and reveled in his victory by using major-key arpeggios. Destroid dived into a sea of ambiance as well as a plot twist in the narrative description. ancara22 rushed in with bit of banjo enveloped in strings and broad piano chords. At the end of the listening party, the setting of DDRKirby(ISQ)'s headbobbing entry is vague enough to be placed anywhere between 2090 to 2099, explaining the various sounds that no early 1990s console could possibly produce.