OverLooked ReMix

OverLooked Remix, also known as OL Remix or OLR, is a parody of the popular ReMiX website OverClocked Remix. Though it has a number of features mimicking OCR, it boasts a number of features and community members independent of OCR.

Origins
The webmaster of OverLooked Remix is Matt Hackett (aka. "richter"), who created OverLooked ReMiX in March 2005 after being given the idea from fellow OCReMiXer and lead guitarist of Game Over, Elizabeth Pezouvanis (aka. "Wire McQuaid / "Eriw"). Richter also administrates several other websites dealing with video game soundtrack remixes, such as VGMix. During this first stage, Nineko gave a great help, and he became the first moderator of OLR (other than the founders, who were administrators).

Golden Age
There is a time period in OverLooked ReMiX's history that is known as the Golden Age, which extended from March 2005 through approximately October/November 2005. During this period, things were relatively stable. The forum userbase was rather large for a new site, consisting of a few new members, but mainly OverClocked ReMix regulars. Competitions saw decent submission numbers and the quality and "ROFLness" of site submissions was growing.

First Nineko Banning
Sometime during or after November/December 2005, ReMiXer and forum moderator Nineko took advantage of the forums ability to rename oneself and changed his name to "·". This caused a lot of confusion in the forums, as most of the threads (in the ReMiX Arguments section) from the beginning of the forums were created by Nineko. As a result of this slight abuse of forum power, richter banned Nineko from forums indefinitely, but he was eventually reinstated, albeit without mod powers, with the exception of the ability to access the Game Database, mainly to post screenshots for uncovered games (since the archive was lacking many ones). This marked OverLooked ReMiX's first site drama. After this period, things started to settle down again. Nineko eventually got the power to moderate a small forum section, "Competitions"; in that section, there were contests like PsRC (People's Shitty Remix Competition) at first, and others later.

Second Nineko Banning
A period after Nineko was reinstated on the forums, Hella-Tite MC Fukkaslut (who was then a judge) became nearly non-existent on the site; some people thought that he was an alt account, but it's almost sure that he was Shael Riley's brother, Devon Riley. Due to this, the website queue began to back up. As a result, richter began to look for a new judge. Taking advantage of the situation, Nineko asked richter to be reinstated as a judge, mainly because of his previous knowledge of this job. However, richter appointed someone else instead, and also later nominations weren't for Nineko. As a means of revenge, he changed almost every screenshot in the games database to an animated .gif file or to a photo of trampling, as well as renaming games and screwing up system references. He was able to accomplish this because although no longer a moderator, he still had access to the games database. This act resulted in the second banning of Nineko, and was meant to permanent (richter banned the 151.46.*.* series of IP addresses to do so). However, Nineko has found his way back onto the forums as other users such as Inuyasha and Ugoff via proxy servers located all over the world. This event marked the first "attack" on the website of OLR, and it's effects are still being remedied. A well known forum user, SoloGamer, offered his help to fix everything, but he has never been taken seriously so far. After Nineko's ban, Adam D became the only moderator of the "Competitions" forum. Later, that forum section was merged with ReQuests and WIP, to make the new "Music" section, that is still on.

Server Problems and Short-Lived Spinoffs
During mid September 2005, OverLooked ReMiX was having problems with the server, which ultimately lead to large amounts of downtime, causing regulars Infinite MP and the_p00t to create their own separate websites, Infinite Remix and Stupidfortunecookie's Domain. From the start both were not very popular, and failed their initial missions. Stupidfortunecookie's Domain was abandoned, and Infinite Remix underwent several mission changes, and eventually closed as well.

OverLooked ReMiX v.2.0 and the Future
As of 2006, there are plans to make small, general renovations to the site. A complete overhaul of the website by richter has been planned for some time, and there have been a few verified test versions of OverLooked ReMiX v.2.0, but nothing concrete has been put forth. Thus, the setup detailed herein is tentative. A thread with a tentative list of improvements has been recently posted on OLR.

Mission Statement
Taken from Overlooked ReMiX's "About" page:

"We are a few guys who prefer crazy vg remixes over the good ones. So we were thinking about starting up a remix database filled with the mixes you wouldn't dream about showing pretzel. We have a few already, but we would need your help. We will only accept remixes that are:''  -Funny/crazy/weird or -So bad they make you laugh"

''We don't take ourselves seriously and are just here to have fun. While many sections of the site may pretend to be serious and may even display a false pretense of "quality control" and the like, it's just a VERY funny joke. Very. Honestly, some people find the idea of a crap mix a downright waste of time, and if you're one of those people, then this site simply isn't your bag and that's fine. It certainly isn't for everyone.

''While a site like this may be seen as having a negative effect on the VG Remix community, encouraging poor quality and the like, we really don't think it should be a concern. With much MUCH larger communities such as OC ReMix and VGMix pushing the quality envelope more and more everyday, edging towards professionalism will become more and more important over there, and hopefully the ability to look back on earlier (crap) mixes over here will be even funnier. ''

The mention of "pretzel" in the first paragraph refers to David Lloyd, a.k.a. djpretzel, administrator of OverClocked Remix.

Submission Process and Site Standards
The submission process on OverLooked ReMix is a one-tiered system, consisting of a review by a panel of five judges. The judges give either a yes or no vote to each individual remix submitted. The final decision is based on the majority; thus, whenever a remix accumulates 3 votes of the same polarity, it is posted for eventual addition to the site, or removed from the judging queue altogether depending on the judge's consensus. It is worth nothing that the judges are somewhat lazy and are known to postpone adding a remix for a number of weeks, and when questioned, an answer is never given. The judges panel was smaller in the past, being made up of only 3 judges for several months.

A judge's personal opinion is the only reasoning necessary to support a given vote. This means that personal quarrels between users may result in their remixes being constantly and consistently rejected. Feedback is rarely given to the artist, and when it is, it varies in nature from constructive criticism to derogatory remarks about the remix's similarity to a MIDI rip. Generally, a remix is accepted if it is humorous. Most of the time, humor is derived from the lyrics, choice of instruments, or humorously poor quality, though subject matter can certainly play a role as well.

As of now, a guideline for judging remixes is not in effect, nor is it planned. Judges have the power to NO OVERRIDE a remix if they think that it clearly violates the guidelines, e.g. it's not a remix from a video games, or is a midi rips with no further effort on it.

Judges
Originally, the only judges (also known as "shtyjdgfgts") were Nineko, richter and Eriw, but as the site started to expand, the need for new judges to even the judging and distribute the workload became a concern. Several judges have since come and gone, sometimes due to personal reasons, or abuses of power. As of August 6, 2006, there are currently five (5) judges.
 * as opposite as OCR, a host is not needed when you submit a remix, since richter's magic php skills made it possible to upload your submission directly on the OLR server, as long as it's in mp3 format and isn't bigger than 20 megabytes. A submission by e-mail is needed in the second case. This is still a high limit, however, and more than three times higher than OCR's, that is 6MB. In fact, there are a couple of OL remixes that wouldn't fit on OCR (and not only for the quality!)

Current Judges:

Eriw

t3h real adam d.

Viiklas

Divisible by Waffle

Xenon Odyssey

Previous Judges:

richter

Nineko

King Of Pillows

Hella-Tite MC Fukkaslut

Disk Mastah Smokabitch

Tomapella

Due to the mechanics of this system, it is likely that there shall always be an odd number of judges. Though he still maintains the site, Richter stepped down due to time constraints, as he's working on several projects, like VGMix 3.0.

Voting System
OverLooked ReMiX currently has a voting system in place, allowing all registered users who have more than 10 posts to rate any song from 1 to 11 from the remix's page. It was created in early June 2005 as a system rating remixes from 1 to 5, and was later changed at the request of several regulars. Originally all users could vote on remixes, but after many users came up voting either 1 or 11 to all remixes became a problem, restrictions had to be put in place. Another reasons of the change were alt accounts, used (not only) by remixers to swing votes as their wish and bump their remixes higher in the Top 11 (see below). Several changes has been suggested, and it seems that the voting system will disappear at all in OLR 2.0

Top/Bottom 11
Very soon after the creation of the voting system, a special part of the home page was created showing the top 10 and bottom 10 songs according to their average score from votes collected through the voting system. After the suggestion of several regulars, this was changed to the Top and Bottom 11 to complement the voting system which rates from 1 to 11.

TopList
Forum users are allowed to set up a TopList in which they can insert up to 11 remixes they like the most. This list will appear in their forum profile (and in OLR 2.0, probably also in other places), and is used to sort the remixes by toplist points. A remix ranked 1st in someone's toplist is given 11 points, and a remix ranked 11th is given 1 point.

OverLooked ReMix Forums
The OverLooked ReMix Forums are a great chance for people curious about the site to understand the community. Board listings include general discussion, a help section which also serves as a suggestion receptacle, an unmoderated board similar to the UnMod section of OverClocked Remix and Mental Hospital of [VGMix], and a number of boards dealing directly with the judging process and site projects. While no registration is required to browse these forums (unlike OCR, in which visitors need to register to see the UnMod and WIP boards), it's highly recommended to be involved in the community.

Unfortunately, the most well-known (and subsuquently well-used) board is the unmoderated section. Its name changes periodically at Richter's whimsical discretion.

Of particular note is the recurring "truck" theme in the site's emoticon selection and background design. This somewhat peculiar motif is another result of Richter's chaotic behavior, mixed with comments from various members about the remixes being comparable to "a truck full of shit hitting a bevy of quail." This was taken as a compliment, given the unique nature of the remixes.

IRC channel
Originally seen as a way to combat rampant postwhoring, an IRC channel was created as a place for OLR regulars to hang out and talk without using space on the forums. It is located at #olremix on the Enter The Game server, and usually only has between 4 and 10 people in it at one time. At first it was very successful and led to the Million Man Mix being created, and also served as a way for the administration to help make decisions on remixes and forum issues. Additionally, OLRemix member Andy Lyons held quizzes weekly in the IRC channel until October 2005, when he mysteriously lost Internet access for several months. Nineko replaced him for two weeks, but has eventually been banned from the channel as well. Hence, the quizzes have not returned (though he insists that they will one day return...). The IRC channel populace has declined due to several key users leaving OverLooked ReMiX (and therefore, the channel), the shutting down of OLRadio, and the decline in the popularity of the contests.

Site Projects
The OverLooked Remix community has created several projects covering whole video game soundtracks from "overlooked" games. An entire section of the forums are devoted to Site Projects. Finished projects have been given separate websites which are hosted on the same server as OverLooked ReMiX. Many of the attempts at creating projects have failed, due to either the abandonment by the creator, or lack of participation.

Finished Projects:


 * OMFSKULFAGGER, (Sküljagger), initiated by richter
 * T3H J0URN3Y 2 51L1U5, (Journey to Silius), initiated by t3h real adam d.
 * Misstik Kwest, (Final Fantasy Mystic Quest), initiated by JoeCam
 * Ghost In My Bonnet, (Luigi's Mansion), initiated by Zimish One

OLRadio
Started in October 2005 by t3h real adam d., OLRadio started life as a live broadcast of OverLooked ReMiX music, interviews, and other various funny media. When the limits of a live broadcast from a home cable internet connection became apparent, the show was moved to a podcast-only format, which lasted for a few shows before being put on indefinite hiatus. In March 2006, OLRadio made its return with the Top 11 songs of OLR as voted by OverLooked ReMiX users. Unfortunately, the broadcast only lasted a few more shows, and was cancelled by t3h real adam d., despite the addition of some new content and a new co-host.

As of August 2006, there are a few plans for OLRadio to return, but nothing concrete.