ReMix:Super Metroid "Red Harvest" 3:21

What did I say about the "can-do" spirit of compos bringing out the best in folks? Or was that the "have-to-do" spirit? :-D As part of Game Set Mash!! 2, Ridley Snipes channeled one of those productive spirits, unexpectedly yet valiantly leading his team to their Round 1 victory combining Super Metroid with Castlevania III! Let's drill down on this ReMix's Team Metroid lineup:

• Ridley Snipes - co-arranger, producer, engineer
• Xaleph - co-arranger
• Emunator - co-arranger
• ZackParrish - additional bits and bobs
• JSABlixer - additional bits and bobs

Ridley gave a pretty detailed accounting of how he wound up chairing this piece and how the imagery subtly steered away from aliens and vigorously veered toward vampires:

"My first GSM track! ...was kind of a messy ride seeing as I wasn't even supposed to be "leading" this one originally. I use that term loosely, because I really served more as the organizational hub/engineer and because "someone had to steer the ship, I guess", haha. I'm chalking that up to being just part of the learning curve of working in a high-pressure team setting (thanks, GSM, hate love you).

I wasn't starting from a completely blank canvas though; within the first day, Xaleph had already hooked me up with a slew of stems suitable for a suspenseful intro and the rising organ toccata. I immediately was inspired to grab a quote from Aliens and get to work on crafting some kind of drop. From here, I worked mostly with Wes, trying a few different hip-hop/EDM combinations before we settled on this weird spacey/worldy take on drill. But, it quickly became painfully clear that we were much more interested in just making a "Red Soil Brinstar" drill mix than a true mashup.

And don't bring any more vampires into my office!

So naturally, to remedy this, we called Xaleph back in and just started sampling the hell out of everything. Turns out Xal was sitting on a treasure trove of public domain samples from old movies (and Sesame Street) that we just couldn't resist using. I guess Ripley was talking about vampires, not Xenomorphs. :P About 80% of the material past the organ buildup was his design - he really saved us from this being a "Brinstar"-only mix. That and he was also able to recycle some cut parts from Zack and JSABlixer that had since been written out while me and Wes kept shifting gears.

All in all, it wasn't pretty, but we got the job done, LOL. Wes and I actually had more-than-half a mind to not submit this and opt to rewind and make it the "Brinstar" mix it always wanted to be, but I think the spirit of GSM got to us in the end and we thought it'd be more fun just to ship it as-is. Cheers!"

Praise be for these bros submitting this as is; why mess with a good thing?!? But would the Js like it? Oh, you knew we would! Time for a patented prophetik music play-by-play explaining why:

"opens with sfx and gets a beat around 0:13. a few ripley quotes (ridley? ripley?) and we're into a big, expansive, wide brinstar vibe with a ton of tempo-synced elements and fat pads. drum work is really nice, especially right before 1:15. 1:30 finally shows some castlevania - what a perfect dovetail there, and then following it with the organ and choir with the same drum concepts over it is great.

2:09 is a vibe change (admittedly i didn't see it going there!) and there is a ton of sfx in this section, as well as some really wild genre changes going on. 2:35 onward has some sections that feel very empty - by design, but it's almost too much - and then it hihats through to a filtered outro and it's done.

this is easy. arrangement is just fantastic as expected - the two themes really work well together, and the realization is fantastic. from a mixing perspective, the wildly different elements all fit together well and are mastered appropriately. great work."

Carrying itself with "a smooth yet spooky vibe", per Chimpazilla's call, it was easy breezy, vampire squeezy with the judges' YESes! Judge Hemophiliac took advantage of the title's invocation of color to put over Ridley Snipes:

"This should have been called "Gold Harvest" because I feel like everything Ridley touches turns into gold.

Extremely well put together and produced piece with personality and personalization everywhere. The quote from Aliens was a nice touch and fitting for Metroid (Ridley used Ripley, it's super effective!)

As you all had mentioned this is much more Super Metroid than CV3 in this, but it's not like balance is a requirement at all. Great work wrangling all the parts and everyone together."

Respect to Ridley Snipes for herding the cats and being the glue for this drillicious Metroidvania mashup. Ridley said "it wasn't pretty", but it WAS pretty good! ;-)