61 Frames Per Second : yuzo kushiro

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 3

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:10:00 GMT

Donkey Kong Country – Snow Barrel Blast

Donkey Kong Country isn’t the most fondly remembered SNES game out there. It was marketed to hell and back in 1994, its pre-rendered characters shoved down millions of gamers’ gullets as a final grasp at technological relevance before the dawn of 3D gaming’s rule. At heart, it’s a simplistic and fun platformer whose visuals have aged poorly. But certain stages in DKC still impress fourteen years later, thanks to a combination of inspired graphical presentation and deft sound arrangement. Snow Barrel Blast is the best DKC has to offer. An ice level that seems simple enough when Donkey and Diddy Kong emerge from an igloo at the start but soars when the sky starts to darken and the level goes from sunny winter landscape to brooding driving snow storm. It’s purely aesthetic, not informing the game’s basic platforming at all. But its beauty makes it the one thing memorable about DKC besides the hype. – JC

Super Mario Bros. 2 – World 4

Traditionally speaking, ice is the bane of platforming. As soon as you see blue ground, slightly shaded to a reflective sheen, you know that the rules you’ve been operating under up to that point are going straight out the window. You will slip, you will slide, and, so, you will miss many, many jumps. World 4 in Super Mario Bros. 2 turns icy surfaces into an exercise in speed and timing, setting up a first level that’s less about jumping across tiered platforms than it is about running as fast as possible and expertly sliding beneath/over oncoming enemies. It’s the speediest stuff in any of the original Mario trilogy. World 4 gets downright weird by the second stage: yeah, those are whales in between the ice-platforms and snowy outcroppings of rock. Why are there whales? Why not! Go spit some eggs, or something. – JC

Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts – Ice Forest

Though it came out at the same time as Actraiser, as one of the first fantasy epics for the fledging SNES, Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts could hardly be more different in tone. Where Actraiser is an existential epic, SG'n'G is a macabre romp; it plays as if Tim Burton and Danny Elfman designed a platformer and let the Marquis de Sade balance the difficulty. Stage 5, the Ice Forest, is a glimmering nightmare full of wolves, frozen ghost knights and spore-spitting snowdrops. In its lurid way, it's awfully pretty, but if you stand around admiring the ambiance, you will soon find yourself without your pants. – PS

Metroid Prime – Phendrana Drifts

Come on, you knew it was coming. Ice in Metroid recalls Samus’ arsenal more immediately than the series’ sprawling environments, but it also defines the most evocative and beautiful space in Prime’s Tallon IV. The Phendrana Drifts has a quality rare in Miss Aran’s adventures: it’s a tranquil place, almost soothing in its stillness. As the camera pans when you first arrive, and Kenji Yamamoto’s eerie, still score begins to play, the ice flows, icicle laden cliffs, and crumbling Chozo architecture come off as a place that’s safe to explore, free of bloodthirsty space jellyfish or insectoid pirates. It isn’t until Ridley’s shadow glides over Phendrana’s surface that you feel a literal chill and remember: Tallon IV isn’t a safe place. The frozen water kills and the ice blocks your way. Best to get bounty huntin’ before your suit freezes up. – JC

Part 1
Part 2

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 2

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:05:00 GMT

Lost Planet – The Whole Game

Lost Planet, Keiji Inafune’s attempt to make Halo for Japan, is one of this console generation’s most underappreciated games. The shooting is tight, the levels are impeccably designed, the automated-grappling-hook platforming is neat, and the Starship Troopers-bug baddies are some of the cooler looking HD threats out there. Sure, it has some clunky parts, but the good far outweighs the bad. What’s more, the entire game is all about snow and ice. The initial stages, wandering the frozen wastes of E.D.N. III, are still jaw dropping. It isn’t even the swirling snow or the ice-bound cities; it’s the sound, the crunch, of stomping through snow drifts. My teeth grit just thinking about it. The snowy setting is also behind Lost Planet’s health system. Your health is constantly draining because of the cold, so you’re forced to constantly collect the body heat of felled foes. That is cooler than crawling inside a Taun-Taun. – JC

Actraiser – Northwall

Let other developers go the way of stock level design. Quintet was always too good for that, giving their levels in Actraiser a pre-human quality that went far beyond the usual D&D boilerplate. That sense of a vast natural world haunted by gods and demons was perfectly captured in the two Acts that take place in the frozen land of Northwall. In the first, you enter a pristine wasteland to clear it for your subjects. Despite the substantial amount of combat that takes place therein, the austerity of the snowy background and the chilly beauty of Yuzo Koshiro's score gives the whole scene a sense of peace.

Things are different in Act 2, which finds you scaling a collosal frozen tree to rid your now-colonized land of monsters. This climactic moment finds all the forces of the arctic landscape rallied against you, with Koshiro's appropriately frantic music spurring you ever upward to destiny. – Peter Smith

Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow – The Lost Village

Castlevania is a series about place, but its range is often limited by the requirements of its title. Each game has its unique spaces, but they’re inevitably tied to Dracula’s castle and the Transylvanian countryside surrounding it, which is why franchise entries that mix things up are the most memorable. Of all the ‘Vanias to release after Symphony of the Night’s complete genre realignment, the Soma Cruz adventures are the most distinct, their near-future setting lending much needed modernity to the usual gothic ramparts and libraries. And given Soma’s snowy appearance, it’s not surprising that his second outing, Dawn of Sorrow, is home to one of gaming’s best ice levels. The first screen of The Lost Village plain makes you want to put on a coat. Snow falls lazily on a rickety wooden fence, dense forest obscures an enormous moon, and the only sound is wind. The real star is the central room, a multi-screen series of German-styled village buildings stacked on one another, frozen and abandoned. Unforgettable moment: landing a jump on a broken-down VW bus and seeing the snow slump off onto the ground. – JC

Part 1
Part 3

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

The Ten Greatest Ice Levels in Gaming History, part 1

John Constantine — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Autumn may only be a few weeks old, but, as it is with all seasons, you can feel its successor growing during the increasingly long nights. It’s getting cold and the chill has got us thinking about cool things, here at 61 Frames Per Second. As a result, we’re doing two things. One, we’re quoting Batman and Robin far more than we should. Two, we’re thinking about ice levels. Ice levels, like fire levels, refers to a theme more than a specific element. An ice level is more than ice. It’s freezing water, driving snow, strong wind, and grey skies. It’s gaming that makes you want to wrap up in a giant bearskin rug. Naked. Or not, to each their own. Here, we present to you, the top ten greatest ice levels in gaming history. – John Constantine

Chrono Trigger – Death Peak

*Spoilers. Big Ones.*

The snow-capped peak is not an uncommon locale in role-playing games. You’ve been there before: there’s a giant monster, typically abominable, waiting for you at the summit, and the journey to him is guaranteed to entail solving an ice block puzzle or three. You are also guaranteed to find some convenient Ice Armor or even, if you’re lucky, a Fire Sword. Chrono Trigger’s Death Peak, the lone natural environment in the Lavos-ruined 2300 AD, is different. It is, ostensibly, optional. Like everything else in Trigger’s end game following the silent hero’s death, you can skip the mountain entirely, though ascending it is fundamental in reaching the plot’s true conclusion. Death Peak is the physical embodiment of everything at stake in Trigger’s conflict, a frozen place inhabited by stray creatures, cold, and Lavos’ offspring, growing fat on decay, waiting to leave the dead planet to claim others as their own. Its challenge is both environmental and emblematic: your surviving heroes must push against snow and wind, against nature, to both save the world and also their fallen friend. No boss waits at the pinnacle, just a dreary sky and a chance to use the Chrono Trigger itself. When Crono is resurrected, the wind and snow cease, the sun emerges from the clouds and is eclipsed. If you choose to see it, it is the turning point in the game, the moment hope overcomes despair. – JC

Metal Gear Solid (1 and 4) – Shadow Moses

Most of the levels here made the list because they do two things: they are artful and the ice defines how you play through them. Shadow Moses, that forlorn little island north of Alaska where so many bad, Metal Gear-y things happened, fulfills both those criteria and then goes a step farther. Shadow Moses, and the very first post-opening-credits play sequence in MGS, defines the entire series. It sets the overdramatic tone, it bookends the franchise narrative, and it quickly establishes the stealth gameplay. It isn’t a real stunner now, but finding out that enemies would notice footprints left in the snow was exciting stuff in 1998. The return trip to Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid 4 is less exciting for its gameplay – it comes in MGS4’s limited-play back half – and more just artful. Approaching the base from outside, literally navigating through a white-out blizzard, provides a visually stunning moment in a game full of them. When I saw that giant bi-pedal robot lumbering through the snow, only barely visible through the torrent, I damn near threw my controller at the screen. – JC

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 – Ice Cap Zone

Okay, okay. I've never much cared for Sonic, but I will admit that its cartoony, distinctly '90s environment design is distinctive, and Ice Cap Zone probably deserves a place on this list. It's cool how you snowboard in, and it's cool how half the level breaks around you in big chaotic shards of crystal, even if the gameplay remains duller than toast. And the much-beloved music is pretty catchy, although it evokes a night of strip-mall dance clubbing more than an arctic wonderland... Okay, Sonic fans? Okay? You win this round, you hear? Now stop sending me those horrible pictures! – PS

Part 2
Part 3

Previous Top Tens:

Ten Reasons Why Secret of Mana Sucks
The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels
The Ten Videogames That Should Have Been Controversial
The Ten Greatest Opening Levels in Gaming History
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History
The Ten Greatest Fire Levels in Gaming History

The Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack - An Inside Look

Peter Smith — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:00:00 GMT

In this exclusive follow-up to our interview with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix soundtrack producers David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, djpretzel himself gives us a breakdown of four tracks from the game:

E. Honda 'Dosu-Koi'
djpretzel

"This was the track that I set my sights on early in the process. McVaffe has had an excellent mix of this track on OCR for a long while, modeled after Madonna's song 'Music,' but Capcom weren't feeling it for in-game usage, so I decided to take a shot. My initial version was way too aggressive, and got the hundred-hand slapdown itself, but I went back to the drawing board and did something mellower, with more of an emphasis on Asian instrumentation. There's shamisen, koto, shakuhachi, AND taiko in there, so it's got the 'big four' of Japanese instruments (more or less) and is more appropriate to the sumo bath house setting."

Guile 'Combat and Service'
Big Giant Circles, Justin R. Coleman

"Jimmy Hinson, alias Big Giant Circles, put together a really kicking take on Guile's theme, which is definitely one of the classics off the soundtrack. Capcom generally dug what he was doing, but were iffy on the lead synthesizer sound, and wanted something different. Jimmy got Justin to lay down an electric guitar lead that added some rock edge to the more electronic backdrop, achieving a good blend that Capcom gave the green light."

Ken / Online Menu 'Clamato Fever'
AE, Prozax

"While Sixto Sounds did the version of Ken's stage that's actually used in the game, Capcom wanted something special just for the online menus and the title screen, since users spend a good amount of time setting up matches, checking rankings, and tweaking options. Alex Esquivel (AE) and Dan Orosz (Prozax) put together an alternate take on the Ken theme that works perfectly for this context. The first time I fired up the beta and heard it, I just smiled — they nailed it! As an interesting side note, AE learned about the game through other channels and contacted Capcom directly, and was a little surprised to be redirected to Shael, Malcos and I to coordinate his involvement. Everything worked out, though, and I'm glad Alex and Dan were included in the long lineup of OC ReMix artists."

Zangief 'Red Cyclone'
The Grammar Club

"Shael Riley's been mixing humor, VGM, rock, and anything else he cares to throw in for a long time now, and his latest project is The Grammar Club, a band that's been making waves with their album Bremelanotide. The fellows put together a rock arrangement of Zangief's theme that's unique on the soundtrack for being a little less refined and more in-your-face, New York garage style. When I think Zangief, I certainly don't think 'refined,' so this ballsier type of production worked really well."

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 2)

Peter Smith — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

What are some of your favorite game soundtracks? Favorite composers?
djpretzel: Yuzo Koshiro, Dave Wise, Yasunori Mitsuda, Tokuhiko Uwabo, and Koji Kondo are all amazing... Super Castlevania IV, Revenge of Shinobi, Lunar (Sega CD version!!), Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Final Fantasy VI , Mega Man II, and Super Mario Galaxy are my favorite game scores at the moment.

Larry Oji: Favorite soundtracks and composers tend to go hand in hand. I'm a big fan of Koji Kondo's work on the Super Mario series, Masato Nakamura's on the Sonic the Hedgehog series (Sonic 3 & Knuckles, though not his, was excellent too), Alph Lyra for the Street Fighter II series, David Wise for Donkey Kong Country and Battletoads, Kazunaka Yamane for the Double Dragon series, and Yuzo Koshiro for the Streets of Rage series. That covers a lot of the games I played as a kid. Since learning more about the history of game music, I love so much stuff now, I can't even rattle it off. But my second-favorite composer, little known in the States, is Yasuhisa "Yack" Watanabe. His stuff is a lot more known in Japan, including as a member of Taito's Zuntata group, but almost no one tries to arrange his material; it's pretty far out there, so I can understand why. Sometimes his stuff doesn't resonate with me, but he's put out some incredible compositions. Then my personal favorite is British composer Tim Follin, whose nearly two-decade career composing for games was unparalleled, as far as what I've personally enjoyed. Check out his compositions for Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Solstice, Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge and Silver Surfer. He always strove for creative techniques and cool textures with his chiptunes. Plus, his modern soundtracks like Ecco the Dolphin: Defender of the Future and Lemmings for the PSP were equally impressive. I've been slowly plugging away at a small OC ReMix album project paying tribute to his work, so before the end of this year, Dirge for the Follin should finally be out there, lamenting the fact that he retired from the industry.

Do you prefer the old-school chiptune style, or are you more into the CD-audio present?
djpretzel: I prefer the melodies and compositional approach of the 8-bit and 16-bit eras coupled with more modern production aesthetics; in other words, I like slick production, but only when it's paired up with a great melody. Which is not to say that game composers of today aren't writing great melodies, just that the limitations of earlier consoles meant that almost every piece needed to survive on compositional strength as opposed to production values.

Larry Oji: I've got no major preference. The only bias I have is that I grew up with chiptunes, so there's going to be some nostalgia pushing me to those. But modern stuff holds up a lot better to active listening. Either way. [pauses] Was that a cop out? ... All right, let's go with modern stuff. I actually prefer the melodies that were written in the chiptune days. But modern music has the potential for great writing as well, combined with higher quality sounds. Some fans feel there's an inherent compositional quality trade-off in newer videogame music compared to the older stuff, but I believe the best of the modern stuff is simply more elusive. Besides, people tend to gloss over the fact that not every chiptune was amazing back then either.

What do you think of the recent trend towards contextual music? In old Zelda, you'd just have a melody looping for the whole time you were in a dungeon. Now, you often just have ambient effects and then an "action" motif when you approach an enemy.
djpretzel: Well, I think most good game music, even very old stuff, is still contextual on some level — it still makes sense for the environment. But more recently the focus/buzz has been on making that contextuality of a more real-time, responsive nature, as opposed to the loops you mention. In essence, this makes the experience more cinematic, with the score reacting to players' actions just like a well-cued Hollywood soundtrack would. For FMV sequences in games, obviously, this is nothing new and has been the standard for years. The challenge is in maintaining that very polished interactivity once a user's actions become unpredictable. There are different ways of accomplishing this, including triggered motifs like you mention. I think it's all very interesting and exciting, but I also think we need to take a step back once in awhile and remember that games are a different medium from movies, and that emulating them is an option, but not the only option. Who's to say that looped melodies a la Zelda and older 8-bit titles don't make complete sense for certain games or genres? Game creators are creating interactive worlds... those worlds can resemble a film experience, and if that's the goal, then responsive, interactive scores are perfect. But the true art of game creation, to me, is remembering that there aren't any limits, that conventions of all other mediums can and should be bent or broken, and thus I think too much emphasis on targeting a cinematic experience could be dangerous. In essence, I think this trend is very positive, so long as it expands the arsenal of approaches to music in games, rather than narrows it.

How about the shift from short melodies to more expanded or moodier compositions? The difference between, y'know, Zelda II's Palace theme and Ocarina of Time's Forest Temple theme?
djpretzel: This is totally natural; audio and music have progressed alongside graphics and other technical aspects of console hardware and gaming, and more ornate and varied compositions flow from those progressions. With Ocarina, you've no longer got a limited palette of bright colors on screen, you've got a fully 3D world, and it'd be odd if the music didn't match. This sometimes means the number of "hummable" tracks on a game soundtrack is reduced in favor of more ambient, atmospheric fare, but it's usually right for the game, and composers like Koji Kondo in particular can almost always hit a balance between "song" or theme tracks and more environmental, BGM stuff.

How did you meet up with Capcom on Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix?
djpretzel: OCR is mostly about individual mixes, but every once in awhile we release album projects, where artists get together and focus on a specific game, composer, etc. We've released albums for Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country and most notably Final Fantasy VII with our Voices of the Lifestream album in 2007. Shael Riley and Stephen Malcom-Howell (a.k.a. Malcos), two veteran OC ReMixers, put together an album of Super Street Fighter II Turbo mixes called Blood on the Asphalt back in 2006. Capcom found the album online and contacted Shael, who in turn referred them to me. At first we were actually suspicious of being Punk'd or something, since it was such an amazing opportunity, but once we confirmed it was legit, we obviously jumped at the chance.

The HD Remix soundtrack is based on Blood on the Asphalt, but it's not exactly the same. What are some of the changes?
Larry Oji: Firstly, I definitely need to stress that the remixers didn't do any mere drag-and-drop jobs on these. A lot of the pre-existing arrangements selected for inclusion on HD Remix were full-on, four-to-five-minute arrangements with original sections, solos and so forth, which doesn't fly in Street Fighter II. So everything's been edited down to a more standard sixty-to-ninety seconds and looped, focusing on the core of each theme to work like the old-school themes did. Dave had to handle relaying all of the desired modifications handed down by Capcom to the artists and got a variety of requests. This is where he gets music-nerdy!

djpretzel: In addition to length and formatting requirements, Capcom had some very specific feedback, and some comments that were more general in nature. In certain instances they wanted individual instruments changed out, tempo increased by a few beats per minute, or other modifications to production that were very easy for artists to implement. Other times, they were looking more for a different feel, or more subjective changes to texture, which were more challenging. We were blessed with a pretty long development cycle, so we had a lot of time to present different versions/permutations of each track and go through an iterative process.

Where are you getting the themes that aren't originally from the album? Are these all new remixes?
Larry Oji: Along with eight edits of mixes from Blood on the Asphalt, three of the seventeen character themes are modified versions of other OC ReMixes. That left six themes with all-new takes, as well as nearly all new material for the fast versions of all the character themes, character endings and other assorted themes, with everything provided by our crew of remixers. Gotta give props to José E. Felix (a.k.a. José the Bronx Rican) for coming through in a big way with nearly every ending theme besides providing both the Dee Jay and Vega themes!

What've your production duties been like on the soundtrack?
Larry Oji: I'm a detail-oriented person, more behind the scenes. Dave functioned as the lead producer and director for the soundtrack, serving as the point of contact with game producer Rey Jimenez and Capcom to keep things streamlined on the communications side. He handled the legal stuff, as well as ensuring Capcom had all of the remixers' latest work as things progressed. I handled contacting remixers that were difficult to get a hold of in order to secure some pre-existing tracks, recruited and provided critique for some of the new music, and helped keep track of smaller details with all of our personnel. Even stuff like preparing our credits list for the game and getting new track titles for all of the remixed themes, I enjoy making sure the finer things are in place at the ground level, while Dave works with the big picture. If you had told me back when I played Street Fighter II in my friend's basement that I'd be in the credits of a game in the series nearly two decades later, I wouldn't believe it. It's an honor to help coordinate something that will always be a part of a historic franchise, especially Street Fighter, the one that truly pulled me into game music beyond being a casual fan.

djpretzel: Working with Capcom was truly awesome. We brought our fandom — the way we express ourselves through mixing/arrangement — full circle, right back to a commercial product that is itself a remix of an absolutely classic game... it's very meta, when you think about it. I think it's something that could only have happened in a post-internet environment, with a company that was groovy enough to realize their fans could play a meaningful role. Mods, user-generated content, etc. have been around awhile, but I think there's often an artificial wall — "this is the official content, this is the fan stuff" — that segregates things. This project tears down that wall, at least for game music, and integrates the two, without emphasizing the distinction. I think that's a fantastic precedent to be setting, and I'm proud OverClocked ReMix was involved!

Click here for Part 1! And check back tomorrow for a detailed look at the four all-new themes on the SSF2THD soundtrack!

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 1)

Peter Smith — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Here at 61FPS, we couldn't be more excited about the upcoming Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. So it's with great pleasure that we present our in-depth Q&A with David "djpretzel" Lloyd and Larry "Liontamer" Oji, of the definitive game-music remix site, OC ReMix. In a deliciously fan-friendly turn of events, OC ReMix was tapped to produce the music for SSF2THD — and we've got the inside scoop on this glorious reimagining of one of the greatest game soundtracks ever. We also took the opportunity to chat with these gurus on a wide range of game-music-related topics. Enjoy!

David, can you tell us about founding OC ReMix?
David W. Lloyd (djpretzel): Way back in 1999, I was making a 3D comic strip dedicated to the emulation scene called "OverClocked" — a few episodes were actually pretty funny, and it played a part in popularizing the whole "All Your Base Are Belong To Us" craze, but it was also a way for me to get better at Photoshop and 3D Studio MAX. I wanted something I could work on for music as well, to get better at composing, arranging and producing; I had this idea to do videogame arrangements of my own, but also to open it up to others. At the time, there were sites which were specific to Commodore 64 games, and which focused on techno mixes, but nothing that was more open-ended. I wanted a website that encouraged jazz, classical, rap, rock and anything else, in addition to electronica genres, and which allowed arrangements from computer games, console games, handheld games and arcade games alike. There was nothing like that in existence, so I figured I'd start something myself. "OverClocked ReMix" started as a side-project to "OverClocked" the comic strip, but eventually became a hundred times bigger. In the early days, I was like a door-to-door salesman, emailing people asking for their permission to post their mixes on the site, but once it grew large enough, people started sending us stuff. Eventually there were so many submissions that we needed to create a judges panel and more official guidelines/standards, which really helped clarify what we're all about — interpretive arrangements, not just the original with drum loops on top. The rest, as they say, is history!

Larry, how did you get involved with the OC ReMix community?
Larry Oji (Liontamer): I love hearing stories on how people have found the site, and I share mine when I can in order to encourage people to check out everything OCR has. I did college radio at Emory University 's WMRE in Atlanta, where I loved playing video game music on my shows alongside mainstream music, mostly Britpop stuff. A friend of mind as well as a casual gamer and fellow DJ, Matt Kertz, saw that I played videogame music and recommended that I check out what was then remix.overclocked.org in early 2002. That was my first exposure to the site. The site was only two years old at the time and had more than 500 mixes by that point; I downloaded about thirty, sticking only with the few games I grew up with, and was extremely happy. But I didn't follow the site closely or try anything from games I had no history with, which was a huge mistake.

Luckily for me, I told my best friend Joe Mauri about the site and he downloaded everything OC ReMix had. If he hadn't done that, I wouldn't be where I am today. That summer, I sat down at his computer, listened to all the free remixes one by one over three days, and was simply amazed at how creative everything was. Even the games I wasn't familiar with had some amazing themes that were being remixed, and I ended up doing the research and downloading chiptunes of the original tracks to better understand what inspired the remixes. So it was a great crash course in the history of videogame music, and from that point on I was hooked. I shifted my radio show's format to videogame music exclusively, and volunteered for the site by filling in the database with info on remixers, composers and songs. I also grew as a music critic to the point where I was invited to join the site's judges panel in July 2004, where I help evaluate submitted material. Listening to music and spreading the word on OCR is one of the most enjoyable jobs I can think of.

Let's talk about game music in general. What got you into game music?
djpretzel: My earliest VGM memory would be the happy little tunes in Smurfs for the Colecovision and Dream House for the C64. The use of the Peter Gunn theme in Spy Hunter, also for the C64, was pretty classic as well. But it was really the Sega Master System that got me hooked — I loved the music from Alex Kidd, Shinobi and Space Harrier so much that I recorded the output of the console to tape and, sadly, did my own lame seven-year-old's version of DJing between tracks. To the best of my knowledge, those tapes are long gone, which I'm more than okay with from a human-dignity perspective, but they nevertheless represented my first steps into actually interacting with VGM.

Larry Oji: My earliest days of gaming were with the NES with a tiny bit of Master System. The SNES and Sega Genesis came a little later, so all of those systems planted the seeds. I didn't own too many titles, but I loved a lot of the soundtracks I heard. Super Mario Bros. 3 was the epitome of an excellent game and Koji Kondo's music from it was no exception. The first Donkey Kong Country on the SNES was amazing to me as well, and I loved the Streets of Rage and Sonic the Hedgehog series on the Genesis side. I can't forget Street Fighter II either. That was first in a long line of Street Fighter games that stuck with me, even when I didn't realize how immersed in game music I'd be down the line. It goes without saying, but the best games truly have a synergy going on between the gameplay and soundtrack that provides the total package.

What do you love about game music?
Larry Oji: The music from the games I grew up with had some of the best melodies and hooks imaginable. And the tunes had such range in terms of genres. As a kid, I obviously didn't think about it on a scholarly level, but I subconsciously latched onto the depth that videogame music possessed. Think about the range when you compare the soundtracks of Super Mario Bros. to Double Dragon to Road Rash. The 16-bit era, especially the SNES, was a big step up in realizing game music's potential, thanks to the wider array of sounds and more complex textures. The best composers really didn't put those extra resources to waste. The thing I love most is that game music is a medium and not a genre; game music can, and often does, involve any and all genres, so you get a flavor for all sorts of styles if you keep your ears and mind open. The fact that many game themes are malleable and can be reinterpreted makes me love game music that much more. Every time I hear an OC ReMixer take a theme and transform it into something fresh that I wouldn't expect, it validates being a fan of the medium.

djpretzel: ...what he said. It's worth mentioning that I'm a big fan of soundtracks in general — film, television, anime, etc. — and that contextual music that's part of a larger work always has a certain appeal for me. With almost all other mediums, though, it's a linear, non-interactive experience, so you only hear certain themes once or twice. With game music, because it's interactive, and because you can end up hearing the same piece ad infinitum, I think there's a much stronger mental association between the music and what it represents. A classic example for me would be the first town theme from Lunar for the Sega CD — every time I hear it, I can envision the town layout in great detail and feel like I'm there. You can get that type of strong association with film scores and even non-soundtrack material, sure, but I find it happens more often with VGM. This of course requires that you've actually played the game the music is from, though, which isn't necessary at all just to enjoy the music at face value!

Click here for Part 2!