Latest / OverClocked ReMix Podcast / January 2026

Transcript

January 2026 · OverClocked ReMix Podcast

• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Overclocked Remix Podcast, the best way to keep up with OCR news and new remixes that you can listen to while looking for mysterious fragments on the only island in the whole world.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode number 15, which is the number that most makes me want to go on a long road trip before getting married to a princess.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Zach, and please ignore any horrible crashing noise that you might hear this episode.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: As I record this, icicles are falling off the side of my house to crash on the walk below, like some sort of contrived ice level obstacle come to life.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, if you are a fan of JRPGs in general, and Dragon Quest in particular, boy oh boy, this new remake of Dragon Quest VI is some changes, big and small.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: More changes from the 3DS remake about a decade ago than I was initially discovered.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: I did after all.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Although they have really de-emphasized having to go back to town to heal.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, it's easy.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can now zoom, which is DQ speak for fast travel, from the very start of the game.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to buy chimera wings or learn the zoom spell.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you can do it from anywhere.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Second, dungeons are now populated with scattered heal points.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: So a little moderation in your MPUs, and you can get through most of them in just one go.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: But believe it or not, this is not a Dragon Quest podcast.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: We are not here to talk about that today.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just excited.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're here to talk about video game remixes, and we started with an old school one.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: That is OCR number 240, Ice Capped, by McBath from Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: I listened to this one very early, and I remember a friend of mine in high school saying that to him, this was his ideal overclocked remix because it was just a song he already loved with a really great beat.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And here I was thinking I wouldn't have anything to talk about for news.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, obviously, I haven't listened to it yet, but I am stoked to.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, it's a bit late this month to do any sort of special celebration, but I promise you, there's something planned.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Pretty light month on both news and remixes, but this is gonna be a short one, so let's get to it.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Our news music this month was Snowy Caps by JD Harding from Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: After that was Super Double Espresso by Maze Dude from Super Double Dragon.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: Finally, rounding out that block, we had Hope You Brought Your Air Shoes by Minus World, Nicole Chang, and Ronan Op F from Mega Man Battle Network 5, Team Protoman.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I had never heard of I Was a Teenager to honestly.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: It does seem like my kind of game though.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's on the wishlist.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Killer Remix 2.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely adore the metal slash rock sound with Chipper Tunes.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds me a lot of the Commodore 64 metal band Makine Supremacy, who you might know for doing the soundtrack to Gianna Sisters Twisted Dreams.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So, while this is Audio Processing Unit's first remix as an aggregate entity, you already know and love the component parts.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: JSA Blixer on LSDJ, Pixel C on guitar and bass, and Paradiddle's Drosh on drums.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now this Super Double Dragon Track also has some nostalgic ruddish for me.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: That organ sample sounds like it's straight out of Wario Land 4.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: In general, this whole thing has like a late 90s VGM thumb feel.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds me of a couple tracks from Knights or Sonic Adventure.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: Almost kind of a New Jack swing, almost.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: I never did actually play Super Double Dragon, though.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: That series is pretty tied to the NES in my mind.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And what better way to round out a block than Mega Man Brogrock?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Very Falcome sound team sounding.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Especially with Ronin Ot F wailing violin zilos.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: And the coal chain broad heart.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that I've ever heard live heart in a remix before.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you've had it, but I can't bring any to mind right this way.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it was great.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: Endure and survive by Zach Parish, Jay and Wake, Nicole Chang, Jay as a violin and emulator from The Last of Us.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to shout out that Sonic Puppet is back after 14 years.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: According to them in the mix post, the concept for this remix was what if Big Blue sounded like a typical water level, or perhaps a water-themed RPG dungeon.
• 31:57
  unknown: Haha.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely nailed it.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: It could go either way, honestly.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I could see myself enjoying this track while monkeys swim around in a pre-rendered platformer.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Or I could see myself enjoying it while I'm opening treasure chests and running away from random encounters.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: It does sort of have a swing it and vibe to it.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: And our last track of the month is very atmospheric and cinematic.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: It really carries on the vibe of the game.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: With its own spin, of course.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, at least the vibe of the first game.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I never actually got around to The Last of Us 2.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: To tell you the truth, I tend to prefer naughty dog games that involve a wacky animal trying to not blow himself up.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anyway, uh I guess we're gonna do a segment now.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's time, in the second year of this incarnation of the podcast, to talk about Toho.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the basics.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: What is Toho?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a short answer and a long answer.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: The short answer is that it's a series of mostly bullet hell indie shimps, mostly by one man who goes by Zoom, capital Z U N.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: There are twenty main line entries, and the first came out in 1997.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: They star a Shinto shrine maiden named Raybu Hakure and a magician named Marisa Kirisame having adventures in Gin Sokyo.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: That means something like Land of Fantasy, which is mostly peopled by various creatures from myth, folklore, and stories.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now I say mostly bullet hell schmups because there are also 13 side games, and a couple of the main games are also not bullet hell schmupps.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them are still bullet hell schmupps, these side games, with some variation that makes them not 100% fit in with typical examples of the genre.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: For example, Toho 9.5, Shoot the Bullet, is a photography schmuck.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of shooting the boss in Shoot the Bullet, you have to shoot the boss with a camera.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: You have to slowly weave through the dense patterns of bullets to get close enough to snap that perfect photo.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then some of the side games are collaborations with other devs and are more ambitious, like Toho 7.5, Immaterial and Missing Power, or Toho 10.5, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, or Toho 12.3, Kisotensoku, which are all fighting games.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: You can buy most of them on Steam now, but back in the day you could only really get a hold of Toho games physically, at Japan's biggest dojen market, Kamikat, or maybe after the fact at Dojen shops in Akihabra or Osaka Dendenda.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Dojin, which means something like fandom, literally, is usually used in the same way that we use indie or fangame.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're kind of interchangeable in Japanese.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was the short answer.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: The long answer is Toho is a movement.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: You see, if you try to make your own Mario game and then sell it, Nintendo lawyers will be at your door to bust your kneecaps in with a baseball bat faster than you can say Yoshi.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: But the same reason that since Toho is itself a dojen work, other dojen works based on it should be totally fine.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want big companies to do anything with Toho.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to see a Square Enix or Capcom Toho game anytime soon.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: But indie devs can go nuts.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the only English-language Toho games that you can purchase translated into English by a professional translation team, and you can find them on Steam and consoles, those are actually Toho fangames, not original games.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: The original games have never officially been translated.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Toho Fandom has even seeped into Western media.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: For example, the League of Legends character Lux was inspired by Marisa Kirisame, and her ultimate move, Final Spark, is a reference to Marisa's spell card, Love Sign Master Spark.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: But nowhere has Toho Fandom taken off like music.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: Soon, you see, started the Toho series because he wanted to compose game music.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: He couldn't find any projects that needed his services or wanted them as a composer.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he made his own.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: You could argue that Toho Music is the point of Toho.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Boy Oh Boy has the fandom responded to that.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of hand-made Toho arrangement albums.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: There are places on the internet where you can download dozens of gigabytes of Toho music.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to dip your toes into it, there's a great internet radio station called Genzokio Radio.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put the link in the podcast description so you don't have to know how to spell Genzokyo.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And Gensokyo Radio plays nothing but Toho Gojen Music 24-7.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: On OCR, we only have five Toho tracks.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a shame for such a musically rich series.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to do my part and encourage some more Toho goodness in the community by serving up a mix of official Toho music for inspiration, and also playing the music that the OCR community has already offered up.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: Playing in, you heard Devil's Advocate by Prototype Raptor from Toho Six, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that was Naito Obu Brutal by Kid Cavage from Toho Nine Phantasmagoria of Flower View.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: They all have names like that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then there was the original Toho track, A Tiny Tiny Clever Commander by Zune from Toho 12, Undefined Fantastic Object.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: Here's of American, Toho 9 Metal, and the first boss theme of Toho 12.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: You can totally hear the boss energy.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: This also really, I think, helps introduce you to Zoom's, shall we say, note heavy style.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why use a few notes with lots of notes?
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly black medium.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_00: Have fun looking at up if you don't already know what I'm talking about.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then the original Toho track, Romantic Fall, by Zune from Toho 10, Mountain of Faith.
• 53:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I love hearing this reinterpretation of Zune's style that is less nudic.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: The melodies of Toho really lend themselves to this string quartet treatment of icy peace.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: You can also really hear Zune's, for lack of a better word, very eastern sound.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's channeling something very Japanese that I just don't have the vocabulary for.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard that with the opening stage theme of the Mountain of Faith, which has really great schmuck first stage energy.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every schmuck worth its salt has a great get-hyped track for stage one.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_00: Toho is no exception.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: When you're trying to one CC a schmuck, it really helps to have good stage one music to look forward to.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna hear it a lot.
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_00: Followed by the original Toho Track, the ground color is yellow, by Zune and Akiyama U from Toho 10.5, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here I've paired the delightfully chippy lullaby of flame with an unusual one.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_00: This track is from one of the fighting games, and to me, it really does have that fighting game energy.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty neat hearing Zoo collaborate with someone else on musical ideas.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: As much as I love Zoom's music, the sound fonts he uses and the overall vibes can get a little repeating.
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's nice to hear his melodic ideas giving a little bit of a different sound.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was Temple of the Omni Sword by Heavenry from Toho 10, Mountain of Faith, and the original track, The Capital City of Flowers in the Sky by Zoom from Toho 7, Perfect Cherry Blossom.
• 1:15:04
  SPEAKER_00: For this last little block, I've paired up some relatively straightforward Toho metal, and I mean straightforward in the sense that the arrangement doesn't deviate too much from the source material, with one of Zoom's more contemporary tracks.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is nice to have fewer tracks every now and then.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Gives me a little breathing room to do something more ambitious.
• 1:16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Our interstitial music this month was Eastern Ice Field by Big Giant Circles from Sonic Achog 3.
• 1:16:12
  SPEAKER_00: And then for the segment, we switch to the original Toho track, Eastern Night, by Zoon from Toho 8 Imperishable Night.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I know there's been some Discord shenanigans lately, but as of right now, Discord is still the best place to come hang out with us if you want to chit-chat with a bunch of cool remixers and also me.
• 1:16:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's also, of course, the OC Remix forums, which aren't as active as in the glory days, of course, but maybe you can be the change you want to see in the world.
• 1:16:45
  SPEAKER_00: You can find links to both of those on the OCR main page, OCRemix.org.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Also on that main page is the OC Remix Patreon.
• 1:16:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to give some money, that is the place to do it.
• 1:17:00
  SPEAKER_00: Every dollar or euro or gill or zenny you spend on that Patreon is another dollar or euro or gill or zenny.
• 1:17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The light on and the servers on the And if you want to spend the money on me, you can do so on the Podcast Makeup.
• 1:17:22
  SPEAKER_00: An active community service.
• 1:17:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the podcast promise is that anything I get above and beyond expenses for the podcast who be donated to OCR.
• 1:17:39
  SPEAKER_00: On the OC Remix, if you scroll down, oh hello Olivia.
• 1:17:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you scroll down, there is a section called Remix Relax with six random remixes.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to roll a six-sided eye, and we are going to play out with one of these completely at random.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 1:17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, so that's Subsonic Sparkle by Game Box from Sonic the Hedgehog.
• 1:18:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a good one.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know this one off the top of my head.
• 1:18:09
  SPEAKER_00: Alright.
• 1:18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have a good one, and I'll see you next time.