The other day, I was surfing my favorite tech site, www.arstechnica.com, when I stumbled upon an article of particular interest. It was a feature story on how a group of music hobbyists with a penchant for video game music formed a website to house fan-made arrangements. The website was so successful that Capcom, a video game company, took notice. Impressed with the arrangements, they enlisted the fan community to create new mixes for their new Streetfighter 2 remake coming soon to Xbox Live.
This might not seem like much for those of you unfamiliar with the workings of the video game industry. But to put this into perspective, it would be like Spielberg asking a bunch of amateur filmmakers to assist on a major motion picture (hmm, maybe that’s what happened with Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull).
Incidentally, I visited the website cited in the article a few years ago. At the time, I thought OCRemix was just a bunch of cheesy MIDI arrangements, but I really didn’t do a good listen to all the stuff on the site. Based on the mp3s available now, I actually wish I’d joined the community from the very beginning. Oh well, live and learn I guess.
The piece I’m uploading today is something inspired from my OCRemix visit. It’s an arrangement of a theme from Final Fantasy VI (or Final Fantasy III as we know it here in the States). When playing the game way back when, I remember enjoying the “in town” theme that played. I knew it would make a pretty piano piece. So, here is Kids Run Through the City Corner (originally composed by Nobuo Uematsu) arranged as a piano lullaby.
City Corner Lullaby, by Jared Ong
p.s. I sent the submission to OCRemix, so we’ll see if it makes it past the judges and on to the site.
Thanks for the mention, Jared, we appreciate it. You wouldn’t be the first person to think we were a MIDI or ringtone site off a glance, so I’m glad the Ars piece encouraged you to take another look at us.
If you haven’t signed up for our forums already, go ahead and do it. You can post “City Corner Lullabye” in our Works area and try to get feedback on it. I haven’t checked out your FF6 piece yet (we have a pretty big queue that I’m always trying to thin down), but once we judges get to the piece, we’ll be glad to offer criticism and advice if you need it. We’re all just about trying to tribute game music with creativity and skill. Looking forward to hearing what you have!
Larry “Liontamer” Oji
Head Submissions Evaluator, OverClocked ReMix
Creator, VG Frequency
Staff, VGMdb
http://www.ocremix.org
http://www.vgfrequency.com
http://www.vgmdb.net