ReMix:Sonic the Hedgehog "Sonik Cosmotronik" 3:27

Last but not least, SPECIFICALLY to celebrate Sonic's 25th bday, we've got a very creative GHZ ReMix from the judge panel's own Sir_NutS (Paul Michael Molina):

"This remix was made in celebration of the 25th anniversary of Sonic! A lot of people know me for my Sonic remixes, so I really couldn't let the date go by without a remix. It's weird really, I never owned a Genesis (though I did borrow one from time to time from a friend). The only Sega console I owned was the Dreamcast, but when I started remixing, Sonic music felt the most natural fit for me, and it still is some of the most fun music for me to remix.

The name of the song is a homage to other artists well known by their Sonic remixes too, analoq and Rayza, who had a few Sonic remixes named this way. This is a synthwave remix of Green Hill Zone; and I know I've made my fair share of synthwave, and that's why I took a different path this time, as this is a different type of synthwave that I see labeled often as "Outrun." It's much faster and energetic than spacesynth or synthpop, which fits Sonic because gotta go fast. Heavily influenced by synthwave artists like Vanello and Everdune. It may seem very interpretive, and it is, but that may be in part due to the fact that I transposed the whole thing to a minor key, so that gives it a different feel and tone.

This remix is also 90% Roland JU-06. Only a few of the synths were made with Serum and Tal-U-NO, and they're mostly background. One of the leads which has a sync quality to it was doubled with Serum because the JU-06 can't do sync, but most of this was made in my JU-06. I had wanted to make a song using mostly this hardware synth for a while and this was a challenge too given the time constraints and the fact that I program all my synths and that takes time. But it was worth it in my opinion because this little baby is FAT.

I'm very happy with this one and I hope it is a good companion to the anniversary celebrations!"

Very cool! I love the titular homage to other Sonic mixes/mixers, vocoded lyrics lend that spacey/future aesthetic, the hardware synth timbres are indeed obese, but it's the arrangement itself that hits me the strongest; it's an unintuitive but very creative approach to the core GHZ progression & melody. While both are recognizable if you think about it for a second, you can also get lost in this track and forget it's a ReMix, so it strikes an unusual balance of being familiar and completely new; very cool! I'm short on time, but I think Mr. Molina said what needs to be said, and he's crafted a very unique, totally fresh take on the FIRST stage BGM from the FIRST Sonic, 25 years later... a great birthday gift for a hedgehog who, while he may have seen some rough times, has always represented a series with some amazing music!