ReMix:Sonic Heroes "Sunshine Coaster" 2:45

Hoo boy, this month has been a celebration of Sonic here in my city of Atlanta, for sure. At the top of the month, I attended Sonic Symphony for the first time (a huge thanks to producer Shota Nakama, who put together -- and puts on -- a hell of a show). I've been to dozens of VGM orchestra shows and I've been to VGM rock concerts, but I've never seen the two combined ever, with the first half being straight up orchestral and the second half transforming into a rock super-show together with the orchestra in a celebration of Sonic vocal tracks! If Sonic Symphony's in your area, be sure to attend -- the merch game is on point as well, and the glowstick I bought for my daughter, who also came with, was a nice touch to a wonderful event.

Thanks to Shota giving me the heads up on the show, I was also able to have OC ReMixer PrismaticBlack and his wife join us alongside two families of my college crew who love Sonic and VGM, and I was able to share the story with the husband and son of my college friend Anna on how she was the catalyst and the reason we were all there together -- 20+ years ago, she let me be a guest on her WMRE student radio show at Emory University, which in turn gave me the idea to host a radio show featuring VGM, and being a DJ on WMRE led to me being told about OC ReMix in 2002, which has had an incredibly outsized impact on my life since then. A fun full-circle moment to celebrate this all-important hobby of mine; you never know where fandom'll take you! For musicians like Bentley Jones (known in his early days as LeeBro), his early VGM fandom as expressed on OCR eventually blossomed into writing official video game music, so how gratifying it was to be in the Sonic Symphony crowd hearing the orchestra play Bentley Jones' "Dreams of an Absolution" from Sonic '06 and witnessing the crowd pop huge for his theme! The only downside was catching a VERY bad cold that night, which can happen in crowded settings, and that delayed our featured ReMix here from going up. But it only meant that I could write about even more Sonic fandom fun!

More fun? YES, because tonight I stood in line for more than 6 hours to attend the grand opening of Atlanta's Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Cafe pop-up restaruant (a great job by the Won Kitchen team), and I'm overjoyed to say that it was worth the wait. :-) I thankfully had the company of OC ReMixer Ridley Snipes and his wife, and it was so wonderful to catch up AND also get to hang tough with them and finally make it in! (And thanks to Mrs. Ridley for promoting the OCR Discord - lovely ladies make better brand ambasaddors than old gamer bros, she proved that for sure. :-P) No lie, we were literally the LAST three people allowed in when the line was finally cut off for the cafe to close, and I loaded up on chili dogs, onion rings, fries, milkshakes, and a(n extra sugary, extra tasty) Blue Blur slushy to bring home for the family!

Of course, me and ya boi Sanic go way, way back. While I was chatting with Sonic fans tonight, we went around the horn on what everyone's favorite era of Sonic games was. Ever the old man, no shame, I'm like "Hands down, the Genesis games, Sonic 1-3 and Knuckles!" Give me 16-bit, 2D gameplay all day, which is no doubt why Sonic Mania's modern take on it did phenomenally well, an extension of (and labor-of-love tribute to) the classic Sonic games my generation grew up on (can't forget Sonic CD too!). But while my intro to Sonic was the first game on the Sega Genesis in 1991, let's show love to the modern games as well, which at this point are way more formative for the current crop of Sonic's fans. That makes me extra pleased to drop Michael Hudak's first OC ReMix for the year with his bubbly spin on the classic Casino Park from Sonic Heroes! With just one rental as a kid, the source tune stuck with Hudak:

"I rented Sonic Heroes from Blockbuster 20 years ago, played it for one weekend and never touched it again. And yet - the main melody from Casino Park has been in my head playing on a loop for a considerable portion of these last two decades. It's one of the ultimate earworms. Thus, this ReMix.

No deep dives down sound design rabbit holes here. This is the most conversative track I've ever made for OCR. I just wanted to not work on something for forever. Just get it a demo down, flesh it out with enough neat stuff to not have it be too vanilla, get the mix sounding good, and ship it out. I did end up spending triple the amount of intended time making tweaks to the drums and percussion. So it goes.

I had the most fun writing the bassline, which is original. My initial ending to the song was a cartoony tape-stop thing similar to how the source tune loops back to the start, but I replaced it with a bass hoedown jig reprise. I guess it's more of a jazz bass, but at 174 BPM (same as the source), it becomes something else...

The finished product sounds a little like a Smash Ultimate version of "Casino Park". I'll take it."

Indeed, this opens up super conservative to start, so it's certainly as advertised in terms of Michael sticking to the core structure. Judge Hemophiliac appreciated him going back to basics, in strikingly stark contrast to Hudak's arrangement catalogue here:

"Much respect to you. Being able to do something more conservative and simple instead of the usual unique approach you take is great. Especially when this was produced very well.

Arrangement is conservative but with plenty of your own personalization. I particularly like your part writing in the bass, those slides are super slick!

This goes to show that not everything needs to be off the walls crazy and over-produced. Sometimes simple can be a better approach. Nice work Michael!"

:32's chorus section took some liberties with the sound design, and then some cool bass stuff at :49. I dug the sound design of the verse at 1:08. In this instance, Michael really colored within the lines here with some solid sound design fundamentals to provide the arrangement's contrast, which is never a problem. I loved the bass-centric finish at 2:31 too, another instrumentation tactic that you really don't hear often in the scene. A sweet treat, not unlike attending the mass demonstration of franchise devotion that is Sonic Symphony OR that yummy Blue Blur slushie at the Sonic the Hedgehog Speed Cafe! :-)