Ben Lewis has been wiped off the face of the Earth
December 23rd, 2006
I just discovered the theme song to my first game (Ben Lewis’s Metroid Brinstar Theme) was removed from OCReMix because it wasn’t up the the quality of modern remixes. They aren’t wrong, even Ben seemed to think so, but to remove it from the site entirely? Besides being one of the earliest remixes, it even brought one of the better remixers to the site – Disco Dan.
I may never be able to explain why I love this mix so much.
About 5 years ago, (that’s 98, for the mathematically impaired) I picked up this mix while searching on audiogalaxy (back when it was ftp’s only) for various videogame titles. This was about the same time that I found the SMB orchestral arrangement. So I typed in Metroid in the search window and found one result with this title, apparently on the guy’s personal server. It had his e-mail address in the id3. A couple of years later (after the creation of overclocked) I talked to Ben, finally, and he pointed me to this site, which is part of how I got into this site in the first place. But this mix was around at least a couple of years before OCR came into existence.
Anyway, I think it’s the beat and the placement and the patterning that makes me play this one over and over again. It may also be nostalgia, but I really dig the way it’s laid out. Still. After all these years…
DC
The original page is actually gone, but Wayback helped me out. I’m making the complete song available from here for anybody who does want it.
March 1st, 2007 at 2:48 pm
thanks for posting the brinstar mix! this is better than 4/5 oc submissions :)
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Thank you so much for posting this audio file! I came across it in a flash, and the author linked to ocremix, and I was so disappointed to find out they’d pulled it.
March 24th, 2007 at 3:34 am
Strain of Thought: That author was me ;)
February 13th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
I’m alive! Funny how I always come across something new about that Metroid remix when I Google myself.
Thanks for keeping the dream alive. I still get fan mail about that track to this day. ;)
February 13th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
I knew this day would come. Hi Ben! Thanks again for letting me use that song in my game.
February 18th, 2008 at 5:07 pm
No problem. Think I should do a 10th anniversary re-remix for 2008? One that maybe has some effort put into it and doesn’t go on for 6 minutes?
February 18th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
Definitely! I’m real nostalgic about that remix, I’d love to hear how you’d remix the original. And effort or not, I still think the original is a great remix.
But you make a good point, 6 minutes isn’t right. It should go on forever.
July 29th, 2009 at 10:15 am
I just came across that remix, and I just love it. It keeps close to the original, with some nice beats added, I guess that’s why I like it so much. Metroid was such a cool game, I played it for months as a kid and always like the music.
Ben, I guess you didn’t get around to actually do that 10th anniversary re-remix, do you?
December 10th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I first heard this last year while playing the game Mega Man vs Metroid on Newgrounds and HAD to track it down. It rocks that much! How dare OCremix take it down and say it’s not good enough!