1st:
Sonic Mania - Flying Battery Zone Act 1Composer: Tee Lopes
Score: 100/100 (9.2), Sonic Mania (1/28)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmo0bMoony8Hello? Tee Lopes???? How the fuck???????? Flying Battery was already such an incredible theme, but Tee Lopes decided to rhythm game-ify it and make it even more of an absolute banger and jesus christ the quality of this remix absolutely fucking blowns my brains into orbit. Remember me saying I thought it was ironic that I liked that basically no FM was in the remix?? Well, this one uses EVEN LESS and doesn't even try to "fake it" considering it just straight up uses instruments like the trumpets in the second "pseudo-loop" which are INCREDIBLE by the way like. for real. And the parts that do still sound close to the original FM parts blend into the modern instrumentation so well it's. just fucking crazy. 0:26 SUBTLY ADDS THE EXTRA PERCUSSION CLAPS AND STUFF FROM THE SAME PART IN ACT 2 NOPE THATS ILLEGAL THATS TOO GOOD NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE it's not even fair anymore!!! and then the second pseudoloop also has the fucking crazy cool break parts with that electronic twanging at 0:44 and 0:50 fuck. This is like the perfect middle-ground between an "upgrade of the original" and a "remix" that literally not a single other song in the game nailed and it really shows how good getting that perfect middle-ground makes the final product. This song is absolutely insane, and since deciding positions/score for songs, this has actually risen so much that it's probably a Top 100 All-Time VGM for me. An absolute banger, through and through.