If you’re a long time listener of our podcast, Barrel Roll!, you might recall a very special episode last June where we chatted with Mustin of The OneUps about his two new projects in the works, and even played a radio edit from each. One of those albums, CHRONOTORIOUS, has long since been released and reviewed. The other is finally dropping on May 4th.

For those unfamiliar, The OneUps are a videogame cover band that interprets classic tunes into a variety of styles, including Fusion, Funk, and Jazz. Their newest project, the Super Mario Kart Album, has been a long time coming. In our interview, Mustin shared that both the game itself and the original soundtrack by composer Soyo Oka, holds a special place with him. The Super Mario Kart Album is a labor of love you wont want to miss.

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"An OverClocked ReMix solo album by Joshua Morse"

Less than two weeks after the release of Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed, OverClocked ReMix has already released another album. While previous albums featured a variety of artists,  Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned shatters the tradition by only having a single artist: OCRemix veteran, Joshua Morse.

Also setting it apart, Sonata of the Damned focuses on the Castlevania series as a whole rather than a single game. This includes tracks from both before and after Michiru Yamane took the “driver’s seat” in the franchise’s music. You’ll hear songs from games as old as the first NES entry all the way to the recent Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia.

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"An OverClocked ReMix Album"

The folks at OverClocked ReMix are at it again. Fans from the OCR community have once again banded together, this time bringing us Humans + Gears: Xenogears ReMixed, an album that pays tribute to one of Yasunori Mitsuda’s less appreciated soundtracks, Xenogears.

Interestingly, the album is broken up into two distinctly themed discs. Songs on the “Humans” disc contain a variety of acoustic instruments (and patches emulating them) including guitars and string ensembles. By stark contrast, the “Gears” disc is mostly made up of electronica.

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"A Chrono Trigger Arrange Album by The Bad Dudes"

It still amazes me to this day that Yasunori Mitsuda’s very first video game score would turn out to be one of the most beloved game soundtracks of all time. After such a memorable first effort, Mitsuda has continued to create great music over the years, taking the spot as my personal favorite composer.

To say that the source material The Bad Dudes chose to arrange is “good” is an understatement. That being said, there is certainly a lot of pressure to live up to when making a Chrono Trigger album, especially considering how many Chrono Trigger remixes already exist.

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"An OverClocked ReMix Album"

Over the years, the community for fan remixes of videogame music has not only grown substantially, but has also been putting out higher quality work than ever before. It is becoming increasingly common for fan projects to have the impressive polish of professionally produced albums.

I first started feeling really strongly about the quality of the albums released by OverClocked Remix when “Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream” was released. That is not to say that the albums before were lacking in quality. After all, when the very first album, “Relics of the Chozo: A Super Metroid Musical Collaboration“, came out, I basically wore out the ogg files from playing them so much.

Voices of the Lifestream, however, seemed to take the idea of fan made arrange albums to a whole new level of professionalism that just hadn’t been seen yet. “Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption” is no exception to the trend of increased quality.

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