ReMix:Mega Man 3 "The Blue Bomber" 5:36

This month, we've had a lot of great ReMixes to showcase, with several from indie games and a nice clip of new titles represented. As much as I champion those tracks and have repeatedly affirmed that those kinds of submissions are what I most look forward to, sometimes, especially on the weekends, you just want some yummy, comfortable musical comfort food. :-) PsyNES brings the goodness we're craving with his hearty psytrance soup-up of Bun Bun's title theme to Mega Man 3, a track that used to get covered allll the time in ye olden days of OCR! It's all that and a bag of chips (another comfort food o' mine), according to PsyNES:

"Aww, yeah, the MM3 intro!

This time, I have a Mega Man 3 intro remix for you all, in the usual style of PsyNES, which is psytrance, NES chiptune stuff, and sometimes some hard NRG/freeform mixed together.

Mega Man 3 is one of my first games I ever played and probably completed as well. It is also my favorite Mega Man game, so it has a special place in my heart. The soundtrack is awesome too, which has inspired me to try remixing all the songs in it, so hopefully more are coming soon. :)

I can't say for sure when I first started doing this remix, since I lost my old versions when my HDD died. First version that I thought was good enough to share with everyone seems to be January 2015 when I uploaded it to my SoundCloud. I did have a video version of this on my YouTube too, but I unlisted it because I want an updated and better version of this in there. Got more inspiration, so continued making it a little bit better, hoping this is the final version now. :'-D

Like always, this is made with Renoise and a bunch of VSTs and NES samples, etc."

Much like PsyNES's "Hard Man" ReMix that we posted last month, it's always a treat to have anyone's long-dormant track get resurrected, properly polished up, and have its potential fully realized! Since this one stays melodically faithful and hinges on timbral beef-ups and compositional expansion, it's time for another excellent prophetik music play-by-play:

"intro is definitely cribbed straight from the original. the beat hits right at the 30s mark, and it cycles through some filtered builds until we get the actual melodic content at 0:53. interestingly enough, i don't get a ton of bass content outside the kick, so it sounds like kick/bass and then a bunch of much higher synths.

there's some falling action at 1:42 and it noodles through the initial riff quite a bit with other bits thrown in. there's some really fun sound design in this section. at 2:32 the main ensemble is back in, and after a bit it goes through the main melodic content for a while before another dropoff at 3:15, this time with new noodles so no copy - nice work.

4:00 hits with a full ensemble playing the main melodic content from the start and it's a nice payoff. after this section, it cooks through a slow instrumental fade as different elements start to drop over time. i think i would have been fine if it ended at 5:00, but the remaining 23 seconds serve as a fine sendoff.

this is an obvious pass. tons of arrangement evident, lots of variety in the approach, it sounds good, and the synths work. nice job."

Variety's the spice of life, and it's certainly the spice of this track, as PsyNES's changes in the instrumentation, effects, and textures of the title theme mean you never get tired of the presentation here, all echoed by fellow judge Emunator:

"Wickedly lush chiptune arrangement with an amazing sense of movement and progression - I never feel like we're treading water at any given point. There's truly a great sense of movement on a macro and micro sense, with some perfectly-executed filter sweeps and transitions to jump from section to section, as well as a tasty array of arpeggios and rhythmic bits to keep your heart racing."

The original segment at 3:20 is a legit highlight for me, BTW; seamless integration here. Full of energy; just a big sound and a driving tempo for some effective urgency. And, very surprisingly -- I genuinely would have bet my life otherwise before checking the site -- this is our first coverage of this theme on OCR in more than 15 years. :-O In the best way possible, listening to PsyNES's version makes me feel nostalgic for my introduction to the VGM arrangement scene. Very nice work, Jari!