OverClocked ReMix
is a website and musical community "dedicated to the appreciation and promotion of video game music as an art form", focused on making remixes of video game music. All its music is free to download. In continuous operation since 1999, it is one of the Internet's Long Runner and has accumulated some three thousand remixes which cover games on everything from the Amiga to the Xbox, and every genre of music, be it hard-rock, classical, trance/electronica, whatever. Besides hosting individual tracks, the site also allows artists to collaborate on remix projects, starting with the Super Metroid album Relics of the Chozo in 2003.
The people behind these remixes include professional musicians who do this on the side; a few have gone on to do work in the video game industry after getting exposure, most notably in 2008 when some were tapped to handle the Remixed soundtrack for Capcom's Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix. A panel of judges is charged with assuring quality control on every track offered by the site.
There was a general bias towards techno remixes early in the site's history, but due to advances in samples and decreasing costs for quality home studios, it has since expanded to include other genres, even orchestrated symphonic mixes.
The site has its own YouTube channel for those who prefer to stream instead of download, with every track mirrored there.
The list of recommended remixes has been moved to the Awesome Music subpage. Please put your recommendations there.
OverClocked Tropes:
- Affectionate Parody: Has one of its own in OverLooked ReMiX. It even has a judges panel and a small but dedicated community.
- Celebrity Endorsement: Among OCR's contributors are veteran game composers George "The Fat Man" Sanger, Jeremy Soule, Alexander Brandon, David Wise, and Grant Kirkhope.
- Chiptune: This is specifically defied by the judges, who will reject any straight chiptune arrangements. However, you can get away with using 8-bit synthesizers as long as they're not the only instruments. halc in particular is known for using a chiptune + drums style he calls "9-bit".
- Defeat Means Friendship: In the Sonic Zone Remix Competition, one of the finalists collaborated with three of his defeated opponents for the last round.
- Long Runner: DJ Pretzel originally founded the site in December of 1999. By internet standards, this site is practically ancient.
- Product Placement: The site ges mentioned at least Once an Episode on the video game music podcast Nitro Game Injection, which also plays at least one OC Remix on almost every episode. Larry Oji (the site's Head Submissions Evaluator) is a co-host of the show, by the way.
- Spin-Off: OC Remix has several. There is the aforementioned OLR; ReMix:ThaSauce (in itself a Spin-Off of the video game music news site Tha Sauce, and originally began as an April Fools joke); and VGMix (now defunct), which had an open song submission system and began as a Take That! against OCR (but later reconciled). OC Remix itself is a spinoff of a webcomic called OverClocked (which was silently discontinued in 2001).
- With Lyrics: A fair amount of vocal-oriented remixes do this, in everything from Piss-Take Rap (ever wondered what it would be like to hear a cactuar or tonberry rap a few lines? Wonder no more!) to epic One Woman Wails.
- Word Salad Lyrics: The lyrical content of this remix of Paperboy by Navi consists of nothing but this.
- Word Salad Lyrics: The lyrical content of this remix
