Favorite Overclocked Remixes

So, Drek and I were having a chat the other day online, and we started sharing favorite songs from this website called ocremix. It’s a really awesome site for free fan-made arrangements and remixes of video game music, and it’s really cool because so much of the music comes from REALLY old games–I mean, games that me and my friends grew up playing! In some ways, they have the same appeal to video gamers as soundtracks from movies and musicals have to other people–it can really bring you back to the game, bring back memories and good times…it’s just generally very awesome. And even if you haven’t played the game before, the music is still usually of such a good quality that it’s fun to listen anyways. I mean, most of the music I listen to on OCR is not from games that I’ve actually played, but I still like it anyways.

So, without any delay, here is my top ten:

• 10: Bluelightning (Mega Man 3) by Disco Dan. I found this one just yesterday, and I’ve been listening to it ever since! I especially love the beat and the subtle yet awesome sound of the electronic organ!
• 9: The Dark World (Crystal Abyss Mix) (Final Fantasy III) by Ubik. This one is a little bit dark, but I like how the soft melody and the harp transposes over the electronic beats. It just seems to give this feeling of yearning for something. Also, I have some good memories of this, because I listened to it constantly during my first playthrough of FF Tactics.
• 8: Guile’s Mile Long…yeah (Super Street Fighter II Turbo) by Trenthian. (let me know if the link doesn’t work) I really like this one, because it seems to really give the sense of someone on a quest, and how that quest is such a struggle.
• 7: Clash at the Mountains (Zelda: Link’s Awakening) by Zircon. Zircon is just such an awesome remixer on the OCR website. He’s got a lot of good stuff. This one is just a way cool electronic interpretation of the classic Zelda theme! It really energizes me to just get up and do something!
• 6: JENOVA Celestial (Final Fantasy VII) by bLiNd. bLiNd is another really amazing remixer in the OCR community! I think that his techno is some of the best on the site. He contributed a lot to the recent Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream project, and this has got to be my favorite remix from that album (and I have copies of all four cds in my car). The JENOVA theme is one of the best pieces of music from Final Fantasy VII, and this is imo an excellent interpretation of it.
• 5: Before Time (Jurassic Park) by Daniel Baranowsky. I love the guitar on this one! Also, just how everything seems to be so well balanced. This is one of the first songs that I discovered on the OCR site, and I still really like it!
• 4: Thirty-Plus Mix (Tetris) by R3FORG3D. Man, this is some really hard techno! It zones you out from everything and just hits you over and over again like an electric surge to your brain! Just makes me want to move!
• 3: Dream of Zeal (Chrono Trigger) by bLiNd. The time circuits song from Chrono Trigger just took me to another world when I first heard it! I remember playing Chrono Trigger and getting to the part right before you go to the magical world in the sky, when you travel forwards in time to the ancient age, and the whole world is nothing but an icy wasteland. You think to yourself, “hey, what’s going on here?” and then you find this really strange looking ancient building, which opens up a conduit and takes you up above the clouds to the magical floating kingdom of Zeal, and you just think “whoa!” for, like, the next five minutes! And this song was definitely a big part of that! This is the best interpretation of time circuits that I found on the OCR site, and I definitely believe that it does it justice!
• 2: Flying Heaven (Super Street Fighter II Turbo) by Zircon. Another impressive one by Zircon! This has got to be one of the best martial arts-ish songs that I’ve heard, on or off of OCR! Man, it really makes me want to get up and do some jujitsu! And I really like the whole Eastern feel to it!
• 1: White Skies (club mix) (Final Fantasy X) by bLiNd. This one has got to be my favorite. I think that the defining characteristic of good techno is that it gets you really excited and calms you down at the same time. The result is music that zones you out and lets you focus intensely on the task that’s right in front of you–and if you don’t have anything in particular to do, it just makes you want to move and dance without caring about what’s going on around you. Awesome stuff! And this has got to be one of the best techno pieces on the OCR site. Man, good job! This is AWESOME!

I could put a LOT more up here, and I’m sure that if I thought on it a lot harder I’d say to myself “no, wait! Number 8 should be this remix, not this one!” or “what about this really cool one? I really like this one! Which number should it be?” But I hold by my choice for number one; that one has got to be my favorite piece on the OCR site, hands down. bLiNd just makes awesome music!