Paul Kuliniewicz

Amy, you had asked for some suggestions on what to download from OC ReMix. Here you go.

Please note that this is in no way meant to be an exhaustive list of what songs are good. For one thing, by my count there’s over 1100 songs available; my brain simply isn’t capable of sorting that much music by how much I like it. Also, it’s been a while since I’ve followed the site particularly closely. Not that I don’t still download stuff as it shows up on the RSS feed, but most of the stuff that sticks out in my mind will tend to be older material, typically at least a year old. But since the average quality seems to have gone up over time, largely due to stricter standards for what gets posted nowadays, so I’m sure there’s gems in there too.

In other words, here’s some good starting points, but you ought to explore the site and try a bunch of different stuff. Whenever I come home next, I’ll be sure to sync my music collection on kryten so you can leech all you want off of there.

Anyway, here’s some quality material that sticks out in my mind:

• Punch-Out!! ‘Little Mac’s Confession’ — A rockin’ rendition of the Punch-Out!! theme with original lyrics. It’s really good.
• Mega Man 3 ‘Wily Metal’ — A nice metal-ish take on the second Wily Castle theme.
• Final Fantasy 6 ‘DeathontheSnowfield’ — A guitar-based take on Terra’s theme that really captures the emotion of the character.
• Final Fantasy 8 ‘Eyes on Me (Obsession)’ — Takes the sappy, vocal love song from FF8 and twists it into something dark and disturbing. How can you not like that?
• Chrono Trigger ‘No Time’ — I like this one, so I’m putting it here.
• Mega Man X ‘Airbased’ — The original rocked. This one rocks harder.
• Mega Man 4 ‘Cossack Hot Steppin” — Not as elaborate as a lot of the other songs I’m linking here, but I like its groove.
• Final Fantasy 6 ‘TheAtomizer’ — If this doesn’t depict a maddening battle of good versus evil, I don’t know what does.
• Chrono Trigger ‘Team Gato’ — Remember the five seconds of music that plays when you talk to Gato? Here’s five minutes of it, with very original lyrics, done in a variety of goofy styles. Classic.
• Earthbound ‘HotelRhumba(IWantToGoHome)’ — I like the game, and I like this relaxed rendition of its music.
• Zelda ‘Rabbit Joint Cover’ — You already know what this is, but I couldn’t not put it on this list.
• Mega Man ‘Cutman Sonata’ — I’m a sucker for a good piano piece.
• Zelda ‘The Music Of My Groin’ — What it lacks in quality, it makes up for in needless use of the word “groin.” You think I’m kidding, don’t you? (OK, this probably shouldn’t be on the list, but I feel like pointing out one of the, um, odder offerings.)
• Zelda 2 ‘Thelonius Temple High’ — Hey, another great piano-based piece. Told you I was a sucker for them.

(Wow, that list turned out to be even more old-school than I expected. Is there anything post-2002 up there?)

On top of those, it’s hard to go wrong with anything by Ailsean, Dale North, Disco Dan, McVaffe, mp, Mustin, or Protricity.

And like I said, this is just the stuff that sticks out in my mind. I know I’m forgetting lots of other stuff you should listen to.

So there you go. Enjoy.