#OverClocked ReMix

[coelii]

Dusting off an old gem from my teenage days. I loved Shael Riley’s nonsense XD

[iffylogic]

Wake up babe, a new Final Fantasy VIII remix album just dropped :O

Final Fantasy VIII: SeeDs of Pandora is the 78th FREE community arrangement album from OverClocked ReMix. In the theme of a world ravaged by war and strife, the goal of SeeD is to bring peace to the world, unite its people and defeat the sorceress. To that end, this album arranges music from this classic, dark-horse entry in the Final Fantasy series in a wide array of cultural elements, unique styles and sheer passion for Nobuo Uematsu's work. It features 80 tracks arranged by 97 artists and was released on May, 8th, 2023.

[thenightstroll]

Znakiem czego, wpisałszy cokolwiek.

[jasper-rolls]

Song: Casino Lounge Artist: Mattias Häggström Gerdt, GSlicer Composer: Go Ichinose Album: Pokémon: The Missingno Tracks Producer: OverClocked ReMix

[brennacedria]

ocremix is so fucking good

[thepolicewanttostealmythoughts]

i'm gonna delete this soon when I finish it off to make an official release, but it's so darn cool so for now you can live on my secret tumblr uwu

[giriduck]

*goes to OverClocked ReMix for the first time in over a decade*

Oh wow, I recognize some of these recent contributors from their work in the early 2000s. They’re still making music! Good for them!

[thedyf]

OC ReMix #486: Donkey Kong Country 'Christmas Cave' [Ice Cave Chant] by ...

[mcb3k]

OverClocked ReMix: Theme of Frog by Select Start

[mortifiedandawesome]

OC ReMix #2319: Castlevania 'Juese Belmont' [Vampire Killer, Stalker] by...

[shibuyashotos]

Underrated Remixes: Slow Moon Groove by Avien

I've talked about some of my favorite video game music in the past, but I don't believe I've shared anything in regards to remixes. What I've got today is a lovely remix of "Slow Moon," from Streets of Rage 2. Now I can't say if the remix is truly underrated to most, but I feel like it is personally. This might also be a blast from the past for some people, given how old this mix is.

To me, Slow Moon Groove lives up to its name. Something to chill and groove to while you watch the waves at night. Something short and sweet to calm the nerves.

[bltngames]

Mod Spotlight: Sonic Forces Overclocked

So this is an interesting little thing. For those of you not aware, Sonic Forces Overclocked (if I'm remembering right) was originally an attempt to "fix" Sonic Forces by expanding all of the levels and even completely rewriting the story. Obviously that's a big task, and the developers eventually realized that, scaling it down into what could best be described as an "Encore" of sorts -- an epilogue story where the villains make one last desperate final push, spread out across remixed versions of eight of the game's best levels. All told, it's about an hour worth of content.

Which is... actually totally fine. With eight (technically seven, but the final boss still counts) levels, there's plenty to see. Actually, pacing is probably Overclocked's strongest suit.

The original Sonic Forces was a pacing disaster; levels often felt like they were cut off at the knees, usually ending just as they were getting started. That's never true in Overclocked, as each level took me a good 3-5+ minutes to finish. Levels in Overclocked are also massively improved in other ways, too -- all that extra length is put to good use with Sonic's trademark alternate pathways, new enemies, and new interactive elements. Interactivity is up across the board. Sonic Forces loved to lock you into long, obnoxious scripted set pieces but Overclocked keeps you firmly in control most of the time.

Which brings me to something I'm not entirely sure is a complaint: difficulty balance. If you've been reading this blog long enough you know I can be pretty picky about difficulty balancing, and the way its handled in Overclocked is interesting.

Generally speaking, Overclocked treats the boost like "expert mode." It's there for people who know the levels already and want to push themselves to do it faster. At first it's fine -- boosting means you'll miss some alternate paths (shortcuts, most likely) but you can still bumble your way to the end of the level and coast by on C ranks. The further you get into the game, though, the more it starts to punish you for trying to go fast without knowing what you're doing. The safety nets that would catch you in earlier levels go away and Overclocked tells you to either slow down or get serious.

Which... I think I'm fine with? The thing it brings to mind for me is the two Sonic Rush games. My favorite one is Sonic Rush Adventure, because it's more accessible (read: easier to learn) than the first Sonic Rush. At the same time, the first Sonic Rush ends up being the more replayable of the two games, because it's a lot harder to master. The higher skill ceiling has kept me coming back to Sonic Rush long after it felt like I wrung all of the gameplay out of Sonic Rush Adventure.

So the idea of a Sonic game not only facilitating a higher skill ceiling but maybe even encouraging that? Not the worst way to balance things, as long as you keep the less skilled players in mind and communicate things correctly. Which, at least for me, I feel like Overclocked does. It started to kick my butt at certain points, but never in a way that felt too mean or unfair. And that's exactly the way it should be, though it should be noted I haven't exactly put myself through the hell of trying to go for higher ranks.

The one real complaint I have about the levels is something I've been observing for years, and unfortunately my fears came true: the lighting.

I've talked about my monitor in the past. I bought it somewhere between 2011 and 2012, so it's getting up there in years. I believe it was the first thing I ever purchased with my Youtube Earnings. It's starting to get kind of dim in its old age, and it's exacerbated by the fact I like to keep it on its "Theater Mode" setting, which gives me really good black levels (for an LCD) and amazing color. But it's an aging monitor, so those amazing black levels end up feeling a little dark, depending on the game. For those of you who caught my halloween streams this year, you know I ended up switching my monitor to its "Standard Mode" because it flattens the contrast and makes the darkest darks more visible. It could be argued that I should just leave the monitor in "Standard Mode" at this point, but I can't stand how Windows looks with it turned on.

To cut to the chase, I had to turn on "Standard Mode" for Sonic Forces Overclocked. In keeping with the theme of this being an encore, a lot of levels have wildly new lighting applied to them, with many levels set later in the evening or at night.

This blankets a lot of levels in a single color and lots of high-contrast shadows, which makes character, enemy, and hazard visibility incredibly difficult. In some levels with a lot of high-frequency noise (like Chemical Plant) it can be difficult to tell where your character even is on screen sometimes. In other levels, like the revamped Mystic Forest, the blue-on-purple-on-teal color scheme makes for a readability nightmare (as does the Death Egg Core level with Buddy, with a red character navigating a level full of orange fog, lit by pink and yellow lights).

When you're running through these stages at a couple hundred miles per hour, it all blurs together into something that's sometimes either too dark or too muddy to parse. At one point Sonic jokes that Infinite's aesthetic is "monochrome colors" but I'd rather have the levels be readable at a glance than hanging a lampshade on it. Things just need to be a little brighter, with a little more diversity of color to highlight the edges of roads and incoming hazards.

The story is... fine. It's not incredibly deep, and it doesn't need to be, so it works well enough. There's actually a surprising amount here, though, from mid-level chatter, map screen debriefings, and even full on cutscenes. Voice acting duties seem to be handled by Adrenaline Dubs, who I subscribed to last year for their surprisingly good dubs of Archie and IDW Sonic comics. They turn in some pretty high quality work here, often rivaling Sega's official dubbing efforts. My only real complaint is that Sonic's dialog is a little too referential; his call-outs during levels often reference other infamous lines from different Sonic games ("The whole city's on fire!", etc.), and sort of like how the game pokes fun at the monochromatic lighting, there's a line where Sonic even cringes at his own dialog a little bit. "We're admitting it's bad, but still doing it anyway" is not a healthy design ethos.

Earlier I mentioned cutscenes, and rather than the complex, high-budget cutscenes Sega had in the original Forces, Overclocked instead opts for motion comic videos. Artistic duties for these cutscenes are shared between a handful of 4 or 5 different artists, each bringing their own art style to their scenes. Generally, I think this is a good move. A little more consistency between artists would make it feel a bit more polished, but seeing the art style change between scenes has its own charms, too. It really drives home how much of Sonic Forces Overclocked was not only a team effort, but to some degree, a community effort. Many different hands touched this project, and it is better for it.

It's easy to focus on the negative things I said about Sonic Forces Overclocked here and think I came away not really liking it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think this is a genuinely impressive mod, with significantly better level design than the base game. It has a few problems, sure, but the overall product, when taken as a whole, is absolutely wonderful. This might be a bit incendiary and hyperbolic, but this close to the top of the list as the most fun I've had with a Sonic game this year. If you own Sonic Forces on Steam, it's not to be missed.

Download: https://gamebanana.com/mods/485051

[facelessoldgargoyle]

Slugblaster is like a remixed Forged in the Dark system. Some of the changes make it easier to use and some make it harder.

Changes I like:

- instead of effect prior to a roll, you assume standard effect and the players can choose to add a Kick resource prior to their roll to increase the effect of their action if it succeeds. This means there’s less discussion prior to a roll, and they happen faster

- Devil’s Bargains (called Take a Dare in Slugblaster) put the onus of proposing a problem on the player. Since the GM is constantly coming up with problems as a consequence of rolls, this is a nice way to balance the load.

- everyone gets a “signature” item—a shapeshifting jacket, a negafriction sword, etc. They can pend downtime to mod them in weird and powerful ways.

- instead of having a set number of downtime slots to fill, players can purchase downtime activities by spending stress (called trouble) and style (a resource earned by taking risk). They can purchase “beats” in a character arc, which provides some great player generated plot ideas! One of my players got into a battle of the bands!

- when they overclock their stress, instead of just taking trauma, disaster strikes. The GM can be creative with ways to punish the characters - once I implanted a portal that spits up CD’s in a characters throat.

Changes I feel neutral about:

- No skill blocks. I kind of miss having characters that are specialized with skills. Then again, these characters are teenagers, and it feels appropriate that they’re not particularly good at things yet. They can’t add dice to their rolls from skills they’ve practiced, they can only dip into resources.

- instead of killing characters or having characters immediately leave a scene, you can cause them to be magically thrown back into their bedroom from wherever they are. I like this as a mechanism to avoid doing atonal violence in the silly teenager skateboarding game, but I miss the way “flee a scene” added to the character. It’s an action a character does of their own agency which I prefer whenever a player has to do something they don’t want to do.

Changes I dislike:

- I miss setting position as a tool to be clear with my players about the stakes of their rolls

- I miss giving characters specific traumas instead of just doom points that will affect the epilogue.

[swiftthecardinal]

Jet Set Radio Redux!

So, this is the first post about the silly AU, aside from past drawings. Unlike other AUs, it's more like an AEU (alternate-expanded universe) and doesn't have a specific theme. It's more my weird remix of Jet Set Radio and whatever things I find neat I mixed in built up into a wild little alternate universe I call my own. So yeah, let's get to it.

The actual going ons of this world

This alternate universe is split up into a trilogy of theoretical games, each with their own sort of style and what I'm doing with them.

Jet Set Radio Milennium

The OG JSR of this universe. Sticks pretty close to the original game in the base plot and gameplay style and was basically the original sprout that resulted in the AU, but the fridge horror is very intentional and much more clear than in the real OG JSR, but it's still portrayed in a pretty comical way due to whose point of view it is exactly and keeps the sweet, saccharine, fairly simple artstyle of the source material. Gameplay-wise, it's much faster than OG JSR and isn't momentum-based anymore so the tagging QTE doesn't feel like it's slowing things down too much and you don't slow down on rails like JSRF. I'll explain further about it with the JSRM gameplay post.

Jet Set Radio Overclock

The replacement for JSRF and the sequel to JSRM! Why you're all teenagers still in 2024 needs a pretty damn grand explanation of the lore behind Graffiti Souls, rudies and related magicky hijinks, but we'll have to skip that for now as that'll be explained in a future post.

Basically, 23 years after the events of Jet Set Radio Milennium, Goji's successor and son, Masashi Rokkaku, has totally changed Tokyo-to, now Neo-Tokyo, to a pretty bland metropolis completely absent of real rudies, as in the type of haunted teenager that was present in JSRM. Now it's just a bunch of kids who think they're cool, paint on legal graffiti walls and call each other gay until you bust onto the streets once again in your fresh new bodies like the big damn spooky badasses you are.

Why did no rudies return before? Well, Masashi Rokkaku was using netrium, basically magical Graffiti Soul power as a clean energy source for his big awesome city. Thus, no Graffiti Souls could come around to make any teenagers spooky again because they were getting juiced. This is getting long, so I'll elaborate in a further post.

I'm not sure what to do for the actual gameplay, but it'll actually be momentum-based now. So yeah Jet Set Radio Overclock. This one's plot is... wild...

Jet Set Radio Retro (title in progress)

A prequel game in the 1970's shamelessly filled with OCs. Not done too much work on it, but I have ideas in mind and it's title won't have Jet Set Radio in it because the titular radio station in it at all for obvious reasons. So, this'll be one you get to watch and evolve in real time!

Other Video Games

Ollie King is canon, basically being rudie culture for non-haunted peeps, and lacks stuff like actual vandalism. The predecessor to the "rudies" in JSRO. It's more so me just thinking about the funny skateboard people tbh.

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is non-canon in all forms in JSRR to avoid even more comparisons to Jet Set Radio. It's a thing of it's own. Honestly, I would love to but this is more for the sake of Team Reptile's cool game not just being compared to JSR constantly even if it is a spiritual successor.

So yeah, beware and adore my abominable brainchild.

[jasper-rolls]

Dance of the Zinger - virt [Donkey Kong Country 2: Serious Monkey Business]

[1001paperboxes]

hello hello! 12 and 13, for your fics?:D

12) Do you outline your fics?  If yes, how detailed are your outlines?  How far do you stray from them?

I'm probably what you'd consider a plantser; that is to say, some planning but not a ton.

I'll often have very vague outlines on a scrap of paper—lately I've been using the back of page-a-day calendars a lot. But an entire fic may be a few sentences, or at least just one or two per section.

So I usually go in with a clear idea, but not plotted out to all high heavens. Which means... I generally don't stay too far as there's not much to stray from! But if a fic starts going in its own direction, I'm very glad to let it.

13) Do you listen to music while you write?  If yes, what have you been listening to recently?

Yes, I often listen to music while I'm writing. Lately, I've been listening to Rainwave a lot, because radio station of video game-related music? Yes please! (Usually it's the All or Overclocked channels for me.)

I often listen to the same things while working. It's just good concentration background noise for me, which I generally go for over specific mood music.

That said, around Christmas, I'll often swap over to my giant collection of holiday tracks (mostly instrumental, a lot _also_ video game remix-related). So I'll be listening to that as well soon, too.