Hump Day Music: Maverick Rising

Some of the best and most iconic video game music came in a day and age where video game composers were limited by the sounds they could create with the sound chip of many older consoles.  Changing mere beeps and boops into incredible pieces of 8-bit, 16-bit and even 32-bit music just showed how great these composers were.  Many video game franchises still around today such as The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania, Sonic and Final Fantasy became known for their music.  Among those gaming series, a certain blue bomber made by Capcom became known for it's great 8 and 16-bit rock music that got players pumped to play through each level and beat it's Robot Masters.  That series is Mega Man rocking gamers since 1987.

Today, I am going to do something a little different.  Rather than highlighting one particular piece of music from Mega Man, I am going to highlight a whole album.  In honour of getting their 27,000th like on Facebook, OC ReMix released their newest free album, Mega Man X: Maverick Rising.  Maverick Rising is a collection of 62 ReMixed tracks from the Mega Man X series by 49 incredibly talented artists.  Maverick Rising is broken up into five disc.  Each disc is music from a different character in the Mega Man X series from X all the way to Dr. Light.  I have only listened to the first eight tracks and I am enjoying it.  For those interested, go to maverick.ocremix.org and download the album for yourself.  It comes at the excellent price of free, so there is no excuse not to download this collection of great video game music.  If you are not convinced yet, maybe the trailer will convince you to download it.

OverClocked ReMix: Great Free Music at Your Fingertips

When I work on articles and other projects that I work on, I enjoy to listen to music.  It helps keep me focused on the task at hand and also relaxed to let my creative juices flow.  Over the weekend while writing blogs and other articles, I started searching through the web pages of a website known a OverClocked ReMix (OC ReMix for short) listening to all the free video game music I could.  I was first turned onto the greatness of OC ReMix by Tommy Tallarico and Victor Lucas, who featured the website on a segment of Electric Playground years ago.  I continue to go back to the website every once and a while to listen to the new remixes that the community of hundreds of remixers add on a regular basis.

OverClocked ReMix is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music by re-interpreting the songs we have all come to know and love through playing games with new technology and software.  OC ReMix offers thousands of fan-made video game music arrangements, information on game music and game music composers, resources for aspiring game composers and a forum for video game music fans to share their love of video game music.  Apart from thousands of single-tracks for video game music fans can enjoy, OC ReMix along with their hundreds of loyal ReMixers have gone onto produce over 50 albums for many gaming series known for their great music such as Mega Man, Metroid, Sonic, Street Fighter and Final Fantasy.  After an Associate Producer from Capcom USA listened to OC ReMix's Street Fighter tribute album, Blood on the Asphalt, the musicians of OC Remix were chosen to handle the soundtrack for Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  It was first in the video game industry as the Street Fighter II Turbo HD was the first video game release to feature a soundtrack completely made by fans.

Instead of illegally downloading music through torrents, OverClocked ReMix offers video game music lovers like myself thousands upon thousands of re-interrupted pieces of video game music.  From Jazz Metal Gear Solid music to Heavy Metal Mega Man music, there is something for every gamer on ocremix.org.  So show your support by downloading the tracks and albums that pleases your ears or by buying some official OC ReMix merchandise or if you are looking to get into composing music for video games, even contributing some tracks of your own.  I hope you enjoyed this article and that I opened a few peoples' eyes as there is great legally free music out there, you just need to look.