Dec 16, 2009

OverClocked Remix turns 10

So, most of the people I know are familiar with OverClocked Remix, a website famous for hosting some of the best re-interpretations of videogame music out there. Its hard to believe that the website has been running for 10 years now, and that I've been part of it for a good 9 years and a few months.


I remember finding this little jewel back in 1999, it was this crude website which had this eye-burning orange background and where the only way to navigate through the songs was this huge combo list with the name of the songs, and you could only download the songs at certain times of the day because the songs were offline for a good part of the day everyday.

But all this really didn't matter, it also didn't matter that I had to download every song at a whopping 2 kbps, I knew I had to download every and each one. McVafee, AE, Joe Redifer, Disco Dan, Evil Horde, Virt, and the very owner of the website, djPretzel, were some of the remixers around in the day, that made some of the songs that I still listen to even today.

I've seen the website going from its humble beginnings to the big community that it is today, and I'm always happy when the website manages to go one step forward. Now this community is recognized by the very own artists they make remixes for, and has gone as far as making a soundtrack for a commercial game, which is also a remix of an older videogame, Super Street Fighter II HD Remix.

In the end I have a lot to thank OCR for. It gave me a motivation for learning music composition and software synthesis, which turned into one of my favorite pastimes, it gave me great music, and it also gave me some good friends. So although I'm not as active in the community as I was 3 or 4 years ago, I have to say thank you OCR, and thanks to David Lloyd and his staff.

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Dec 2, 2009

Awesome Trek

So, I got a bunch of movies to watch this week. Among them was the last Star Trek, which I wanted to watch when it was released but never got around to do it. After the disappointment that was the new Star Wars trilogy, I really wasn't expecting much when I popped this sucker in. Oh but I was pleasantly surprised.

This is just a good movie, period. The acting, casting, direction, everything was spot on, and really, for a reboot of an old, mostly campy space opera series, you can't really ask for more. It avoids the usual traps that remakes of old movies fall in, and also doesn't overdo it on special CG animation, the whole movie just felt really solid to me.

I never watched the original Star Trek as a child, I grew up with "The Next Generation", I was more of a Star Wars kid, watching the (still great) original trilogy over and over on my father's VCR. However I have watched the original Star Trek and I could identify all the little nods and references. This isn't really a straight ripoff, no one is trying to make a carbon copy of their 1960 counterparts, they bring the essence of the original characters, and make them their own, and unlike the horrible new star wars trilogy, the actors feel natural and most of them feel like real people, unlike George Lucas' script-reciting robots. When Spock's mom dies, you care. When Anakin's mom dies, you wonder why you are wasting your precious time watching it.

Anyhoo, two thumbs up for this one. unlike what Hollywood has been trying to make us believe by churning out soulless space opera crap-fests every once in a while, space sci-fi movies can still be done well, and it makes me happy. I think the trekkers should be proud.

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