I think my favorite part about the gAtari 2600—besides, you know, the body of the guitar is an actual 2600—is how the “frets” are just these ginormous footpedals, all fused onto the “fingerboard” in a row.

No, I realize the pedals are actually being used to play loops (Right?? And then the “whammying”), but they look hilarious. This machine does not sound hilarious, however. Rather, it sounds awesome.

• Hack A Day – The GATARI “2600” Musical Instrument

• cTrix

As its predecessor had done for Breakout-style games, Bit.trip: Core takes the notion of classic, single-screen shooters and spins it off into a new, equally rhythmic direction. Whereas in the first game you were a paddle bouncing pellets to create musical notes, here you are an icon in the center of the screen capable of aiming and firing a beam in four directions, albeit only one at a time. Pellets will appear from all corners of the screen, and you must shoot them before they escape. It sounds deceptively simple, but the game is difficult. Ample reflexes, pattern recognition, and spatial skills –- which block will enter your range of fire first?—are important, but as with Bit.trip: Beat, to truly excel at the game you must lose yourself in it and the music. It’s a zen gaming experience.

In that regard it reminds me of one of my favorite Atari 2600 homebrews, Vault Assault, which is in itself a port of the arcade game Space Zap. Like Bit.trip: Core, there you control a cannon situated in the center of the screen, firing beams in four directions at incoming enemies. When Space Zap reaches its high-speed fever pitch, until you can discover the game’s rhythm and control the chaos, you will be overwhelmed. Lose that beat, and you will find it difficult to regain your bearing. Bit.trip: Core relies on the same concept, though the game graciously gives you a bomb that will wipe the screen of all pellets once per level (think Geometry Wars). Considering each level is in excess of 10 minutes, though, you may find yourself never using it for fear of a more difficult situation coming up. Much like Bit.trip: Beat, Core isn’t good in spite of the difficulty, but in part, because of it. Its difficulty curve isn’t unfair, bit rather it drives you to come back and squeak past that tough part, confronting the next mini-stage and its rhythmic changes.

That said, the music is not just for show. Hit enough pellets without missing a certain amount, and the screen will shift, featuring more instrumentation and more interesting effects. This continues until you hit the maximum level, where psychedelic lights and more dynamic music are your reward. Whiff too many times, however, and you’ll find yourself in the downright creepy “nether realm,” where the graphics enter a state of stark black and white, and the only sound is the beep of a pellet getting shot on your remote. As Jenn pointed out in her Bit.trip: Beat review, it is an unsettling state where feel yourself on the edge of death, clawing your way back to living color and safety.

As with the first Bit.trip game, there is a narrative that continues in the periphery. Told almost entirely through short cut scenes between levels and through the background and music of the stages, it subtly details your character’s journey in search of belonging and companionship. The game feels dark, even though there is nothing so overt as to state that. The world is a lonely and hard place by oneself.

Bit.trip: Core is a game that embodies the very essence of the medium. It draws the player in through visuals, sound, and gameplay, and is an ultimately rewarding experience to go through. It’s an easy recommendation from a seemingly crowded WiiWare game list.

Related posts:

1. Tripping to the blips of Bit.trip Beat
2. Throwback games are awesome.
3. Daily Linksplosion: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Jackson’s popularity was such that his influence has permeated the gaming medium, whether through his direct involvement, composers riffing on his yelps and yowls, or just a bit of cheeky satire. Yet what I’ll remember most about him is how his music became an essential component of the sonic texture of arcades, along with the distant warble of a dying Pac-Man, the chime of a stage beginning in Galaga, a bold narrator extolling the virtues of Dirk the Daring.—Jeremy Parish

While it’s true that 1UP’s Michael Jackson retrospective skipped over my favorite homage—the ‘Thriller’ dance sequence near the beginning of Splatterhouse: Wanpaku Graffiti (video link)—it’s certainly a nice gesture. More meaningful, though, I think, is Jeremy’s short and heartfelt little ode to MJ over at 1UP’s Retronauts blog.

edit: Oh, my.

• Retronauts blog – R.I.P.: Jackson’s Unspoken Gaming Legacy
• Offworld – One Shot: MJ, in Memoriam
• GoNintendo – Michael Jackson tributes in Mario Paint

Related posts:

1. Michael Jackson’s old arcade games up for grabs
2. I Love the 80s: Michael Ian Black is REALLY into Ms. Pac-Man
3. Retronauts: oh, god, here we go again

Date: May 7, 2009 2:02:23 PM CDT

Hey!

First off, I want to introduce myself. I work with a music promotions company in Boston [...] where I help a bunch of great artists get their music heard, plus send a lot of fun videos and absurd music news to blogs across the web. Now I know you don’t usually post about music but I thought you might be interested in checking out this new band.

They’re this really fun danceable, electronic 3-piece called Antennas Up who are self-proclaimed “nerds of geekdom.” They take a lot of their influence from the 70’s and 80’s disco and dance eras and blend it with contemporary electronica. I don’t know if you’re a fan of the old video game, Space Invaders, but the drummer (The Ryantist) just got a custom drum kit made with multi-colored invaders all over.

The makers are C&C Drums who have made kits for Ringo Starr and other contemporary drummers. The Ryantist got to work with them closely on the design and he said: “After some brain stew, we realized this was an opportunity to build a classic kit on multiple fronts, and to celebrate high geekdom. We had in mind a kit with vintage drum shells, and vintage sound at heart, combined with a classic video game exterior. Evil 8-bit alien crustaceans marching in attack formation. Oh…and the sound? It’s fucking sweet. The snare drum is unreal. Sensitive, yet focused and fat. Gotta hear it to believe it.”

If you’re interested in the band you can visit their page and check out their bio, pictures, or music:

www.planetarygroup.com/03antennasup

Thanks! Have a great day!

Subject: Re: Kansas City’s Antennas Up Creates Custom Space Invaders Drum Kit

Date: May 13, 2009 12:26:46 PM CDT

Hey Jenn,

Just wanted to touch base and make sure you got the information I sent over about Antennas Up. They created this custom drum kit with neon Space Invaders on it that looks great and produces killer sound as well. If you’re interested you can check out the band here:

www.planetarygroup.com/03antennasup

Let me know what you think of the drum set, and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to get in contact.

Thanks!

Subject: Re: Kansas City’s Antennas Up Creates Custom Space Invaders Drum Kit

Date: May 20, 2009 11:45:43 AM CDT

Hey,

Space Invader drum sets are cool! Did you get a chance to check out the info I sent over about Antennas Up? Any thoughts on the drum kit? Want to write about the band? I can also set up any interviews or get you a copy of the album.

Let me know!

I am really torn on this. Mostly I think I need to hire this woman to do my PR.

Related posts:

1. Open Mic Hero

After rearranging my Wii’s disk space to accommodate the comparatively large download—catch you on the flipside, Paper Mario—I settled in for some truly excellent, old-school synesthesia.

Bit.trip: Beat is a paddle game: think Arkanoid, Breakout, Pong or, ahem, Circus Atari. Here, though, the paddle control is gracefully approximated by very gently rocking the Wii remote forward and back. As with classic paddle games, the controls are ‘twitchy’ and require only very fine movements.

Your onscreen ‘paddle’ (which is to say, your avatar, or, you know, the line) moves vertically along the far left of the screen, and little pellets fly onto the screen from the right, hurtling toward the paddle. And the point is to hit them. Simple. Each pellet represents a kind of a musical note, too, so as you bat the pellets away, the game’s melody emerges. So far, easy enough.

But as you progress through the game, the choreography of the pellets becomes increasingly intricate. Soon those specks are weaving in and out of one another, changing shape and size, or cruelly altering their course midflight. In that way, Bit.trip: Beat is a classic gamer’s classic game: it’s all reflexes and pattern memorization.

When your paddle is in serious jeopardy, the game abruptly switches to a kind of “Danger! Danger!” Pong mode. The music disappears, and the graphics reduce themselves to their Pong-and-ball blipping fundamentals. And it’s genuinely unsettling. Compared to the rest of Bit.trip: Beat’s furor, the starkness of the black and white screens is downright creepy—like being trapped underwater or in the vacuum of outer space.

Perhaps Bit.trip: Beat isn’t all that innovative, but it sure borrows from the best. Those delicious, low-rez graphics are so totally cribbing from bit Generations. The controller’s rhythmic throbbing, the pulsing in your hand? That’s lifted right off of Rez. Like the music? It’s heavily inspired by the work of 8bitpeoples and other musicians.

And Bit.trip: Beat’s addictive “I can do better!” gameplay uncannily reminds me—right down to its shmup vibe and its emphasis on synesthetic musicality —of Lead for the 2600, of all things.

I’ve heard it argued that every game should have a ‘narrative’, and while this may not be true, by golly, Bit.trip: Beat has one. It reveals itself quietly, in the background, behind the mess of dots and dashes and musical morse code. And while that story isn’t especially crucial, it’s a nice touch. Things are happening. I am going somewhere.

I was a girl on a mission. As I played, each time I missed a pellet, I felt this strange surge of apology. That’s really remarkable, I think. I’ve missed plenty of notes and percussive beats in my time; I require a stellar music game to make me sorry for bumbling the song. That’s gratifying, in its own way. I began to compete against myself.

The real strengths of gameplay are, paradoxically, the feelings Bit.trip: Beat inspires in the player. There’s your inexplicable commitment to maintaining the flow and movement of the music. There’s nostalgia, which itself is powerful. There’s synesthesia, that musically- and sensorily- augmented shooter trance. And then there’s the feeling that keeps you playing, no matter how frustrated you become: the sensation that you really are constantly improving as you play. It’s why I still play Lumines. It’s why I stopped playing Geometry Wars.

Adam Milecki—who first got me hooked on Lead, in fact—phrased it really well. Of Eliss, he said: “Games this hard but this good make you better at games.” I think that applies here, too.

Bit.trip: Beat hit Nintendo’s WiiWare channel yesterday. It’s yours for 600 points (and, I believe, 312 blocks of flash space).

P.S. Check out the supremely rad Commander Video fan art, which I am irresponsibly using in lieu of screenshots.

Related posts:

1. The core basics of Bit.trip Core
2. Throwback games are awesome.
3. Daily Linksplosion: Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Otocky is the brainchild of Toshio Iwai, known more recently as the developer for Nintendo’s Electroplankton, and was released in 1987 by the ASCII Corporation. You play a weird little orange thing with cartoony eyes, arms, and legs that flies through inconsequential backgrounds populated with even stranger enemies. Your objective is to collect musical notes to fill a meter at the bottom of the screen, at which point the stage will end and you will face off with a giant, foe-spewing musical note. You must then fire off your collected musical notes at the holes in the boss until you’ve used them all. You can collect a bomb power-up, and your normal, boomeranging shot can be tweaked by collecting certain items.

How the game plays is just a small part of the Otocky experience, though. This is a musical shooter, and is one of the first examples of synesthesia in video games. What this means is that similar to games like Rez and Space Invaders Extreme, your actions adds to the melody. Each shot you fire will change pitch depending on the direction you fire in. The sound is dependent on what “instrument” your weapon is. The simple act of collecting notes builds the melody of the level. Even the bomb acts as a drum. All the game normal provides is a simple background beat, and as you fight your way through each stage, you create your own melody. Beating a stage will let you play it in a free music mode, where you can select your own instrument and not worry about getting hurt, as exampled below.

So why didn’t Otocky ever leave Japan? The game utilized the FDS’s extra sound capabilities, which the standard NES/Famicom doesn’t have. It also used a save feature at a time when cartridge games didn’t have them. The fact that the game is totally weird probably didn’t do it any favors, either. Nevertheless, the game’s musical styling is both infectious and inventive, and provides an interesting look at an early era of video game generative music. The shooter side is pretty good, too!

Related posts:

1. Lead: synesthesia homebrew for the 2600
2. Pixelicious ‘Owl Boy’ to be playable in early ’09
3. Tripping to the blips of Bit.trip Beat

The Ocarina of Rhyme, a hip-hop mashup of Zelda music, is pretty intense.

Supposedly this is the second time this has been done, but Team Teamwork’s version is pretty jaw-dropping anyway.

• 8tracks – The Ocarina of Rhyme via Reddit

Related posts:

1. 1UP Show theme song on the ocarina

Here is a music video about how MC Lars has a ton of Facebook friends (warning: video contains geysers of fake sperm). Which doesn’t have a ton to do with videogames, I guess, except that it’s nerdy and the glitchy beat is likably 8-bit. Also, check out DocPop—he’s the one flexing.

• Drown Radio – MC Lars Knows a lot of people (& I’m one of ‘em!) via DocPop

“And dere’s one special lady who’s found her way through my vinyl-treated denim shirt and into my heart—and that’s this lady behind me. Meez Pac-Man.”

In an Angle Dance -caliber performance, The State’s Michael Ian Black—surrounded by dancers clad in Blade Runner raincoats—sings a love song to a Ms. Pac-Man upright arcade cabinet.

Dig that pompadour!

• YouTube – “Ms. Pac-Man” by Johnny Blue Jeans (via)

Related posts:

1. Christian Bale’s Pac-Man cereal ad
2. Pac-Man Dossier: breathtaking
3. Pac-Man in your kitchen: silicone oven mitts

They told him, “Don’t you ever come around here,
“Unless you’re really good at Soul Calibeer”
There’s Frogger in their eyes
And Crystal Castles in their leers
So beat it, just beat it

This April, Michael Jackson will auction his arcade collection, including Frogger, Soul Calibeeer, and an old Zoltar machine. Zoltar, you guys.

Check out the Julien’s catalogue—either MJ doesn’t own a Moonwalker, or he ain’t sellin’ it.

• Siliconera – What Arcade Games Did Michael Jackson Own?

Related posts:

1. Tour Michael Jackson’s game collection
2. Remembering Michael Jackson
3. I Love the 80s: Michael Ian Black is REALLY into Ms. Pac-Man

Taking control of / Somebody else’s console / With no remorse / That was so debauched! / My only thoughts were total scores on Tony Hawk / Or running amok in smug-g-ler’s runs / Smug-g-lin’ guns and drugs for fun / And pullin’ a gun on any NPC I see or stumble upon / GTA3 / made me inclined to kill repeatedly / The spinal chills / Of Silent Hill / Are still on my mind and creepin’ me / The fuck out!

Want more? Last month, Dan Bull released his first album, Safe—generously, it’s available as a free download, too, if you can suffer the lower audio quality.

• Freshnut.co.uk – Dan Bull – Safe – EPK

Usually I troll YouTube for ukulele covers, but tonight I figured, hey. Ukulele is stale. I ought to listen to melodica covers instead.

Now, the melodica is an interesting instrument. It looks like a child’s instrument, like some common recorder or penny whistle, but it has a really warm, organic sound that hints at its relation to the accordion and harmonica. But it doesn’t sound quite like any other instrument—the melodica is inscrutable. With both the melodica and the accordion, you get the sound of breathing, of little air valves pumping, which lends these instruments a “voice” that you don’t usually get either with wind instruments or with keyboards.

And that is why I like the melodica.

With no more ado, here are a handful of classic Nintendo songs as played on the melodica.

This is the Super Mario Bros theme.

Just a snippet of the underwater theme from Super Mario Bros.

By no means the best of the Mario themes, but this guy wins for pure pizazz. (Nice hat.)

The music from Tetris is a popular choice for fledgling YouTube performers. Here’s one of the best, augmented by a truly odd comedic performance.

This rendition of the Zelda theme isn’t perfect, but it’s my favorite. Also, it looks like an awesome house party.

This cover of Zelda’s “Song of Storms” really benefits from its higher production values! (I’m also into the eye contact thing.)

You’re welcome.

Related posts:

1. Knock yourself out with these classic Nintendo beverages

In the most recent episode of their podcast, A.J. suddenly announces that he has uploaded his video performance of the 1UP Show theme song (here, also) to YouTube, as performed on the iPhone’s “Ocarina” app. I’m familiar with the Ocarina application—it’s a nice little nod to Zelda—because “Ocarina” was named among TIME Magazine’s Top 10 iPhone Apps of 2008.

There is nothing more resplendently geeky than announcing, on a podcast, that there is a YouTube video of you whistling into your iPhone, and more specifically, that you recorded it in honor of a popular videogame webcast. Here’s A.J.:

Isn’t it eerie and melancholy? It’s perfect.

I promise to type about something other than 1UP’s staff cuts soon.

Related posts:

1. The 1UP Show, reborn
2. The Ocarina of Rhyme
3. LTTP: Mega Man 9 theme music on ukulele

And thanks to Brian Kent’s blog, I am about to fill my mix with the styling sounds of Doctor Octoroc’s 8-Bit Jesus, a half-finished chiptune album of traditional carols. Currently, nine complete tracks are available for download.

But here’s what is amazing: each carol has been reworked in the style of a treasured NES game’s music. So “The First Noël” is reconsidered as a moving Zelda theme. “Silent Night” inexplicably translates into a powerful Mega Man anthem.

And then there’s my favorite song—although at least five other tracks are competing for the title—the Christmassy ditty, “Little Drummer Nemo.”

What a perfect track! What was a sombre melody about wide-eyed wonderment is reenvisioned as snappy action music from my favorite game about childhood. So it’s unexpected, but it makes perfect sense.

8-Bit Jesus’ first nine tracks are available for download, whether one-at-a-time, or all together as one giant RAR/ZIP file, intending for unzipping/disRARing.

• Doctor Octoroc – 8-Bit Jesus: New Christmas Chip-tune Album (via)

• UPDATE: Download or stream 8-Bit Jesus here.

Related posts:

1. The other 8-Bit Jesus
2. Tripping to the blips of Bit.trip Beat
3. The core basics of Bit.trip Core

Granted, it’s already out. You can download the ROM (edit: no, no, download this one) and play it right now in a 2600 emulator like Stella. A warning: it’s tough.

Lead is a music shmup from programmer Simone Serra, designed for the Atari 2600. It boasts unforgiving gameplay and a catchy ‘glitch’ soundtrack.

As for the game’s music mechanics, freelancer/archivist/programming hobbyist Jess Ragan says, “Simone [Serra] has done what Tetsuya Mizuguchi could not: create a ‘synesthetic’ shooter that is not entirely dependent on pretty graphics and a pretentious art direction.” His review of an earlier build of Lead, below:

A little over a week ago, AtariAge announced the winner of the Lead Label Contest. The game will ship—with pretty labels on real Atari carts, as God intended!—this December.

• Retro Thing – Retrospective(?): Lead 16k for the Atari 2600

Related posts:

1. Hello, Homebrew: Halo 2600
2. The 2600 Post: something old, something new, and something lost
3. Synesthesia in early gaming, NES style

And while what follows apparently made some web-rounds back in July—I hate it when that happens!—I nonetheless feel vindicated in reposting it, thanks to yesterday’s North American WiiWare launch of Mega Man 9. So! Here is the Mega Man 9 theme music, as lovingly realized by the Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra:

The musician’s entire oeuvre is available for both listening and downloading at the official Tanguy Ukulele website (see below).

• Miniclash – Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra

Related posts:

1. Mega Man cupcakes look cute, yummy, accurate
2. “Ancient Mega Man” by Anak Binal
3. “Still Alive” ukulele covers

And now I am completely in love with The Hacktory.

While I was questing through current.com in search of the Gaymers video, I came across “Geeks and Toys Go Wild,” a viewer-created video of a Hacktory-sponsored event. The tiny DIY fest is so rough-around-the-edges and charming, just magical LEDs and chip music and, probably, alcohol. The Hactory video at Current may never make it all the way to TV, so—for now at least—you’ll have to check it out online, either here or embedded here:

I feel like there is this incredible nerd culture in Philadelphia that the rest of humanity doesn’t know about. Specifically, the goings-on at The Hacktory—classes on how to design circuit boards, or events with chiptune musicians dimly lit by demoscene graphics—remind me, bittersweetly, of the art collective gatherings and events that so captured my imagination when I was some college kid having her first brush with adulthood in her first real city. These community events were sincere, earnest, and wholly unmarketable. They were, to quote the Philadelphia Weekly, “Authentic Geek.”

Incidentally, The Hacktory turns one year old this month, hence the illustration of a layer-cake with LEDs that I am ‘borrowing’ from their blog.

• Current.com – Geeks and Toys Go Wild

Related posts:

1. Invader attacks again
2. Happy holidays from the Wilderness
3. Happy holidays! 1986 style

So I’m a huge fan of the film WarGames, and they just did a very limited release of the soundtrack for the film’s 25th anniversary this year. The whole disc is filled with great moog-ish synth early 80s stuff.

Attached is the synth-pop track off the album called “Video Fever” about arcade games. Great vocals and keyboards. I thought you would really enjoy.

And Dave’s right: I did really enjoy it, and you might, too.

Midnight PST edit: Thanks to Doctor Popular’s contribution in the comments, we now know that the composer of WarGames was also in a band called The Beepers. “Video Fever” is a Beepers single.

The WarGames OST is limited to only 2500 copies, and it’s priced to move at US$20. You can buy it (and listen to the movie’s theme music!) here.

Darnielle, better known as the band The Mountain Goats, collaborated with fellow singer-songwriter Kaki King on the video game -themed single, “Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle.” It’s the final track from Darnielle and King’s upcoming vinyl-only (?!) EP, Black Pear Tree.

Apparently this song debuted on Pitchfork late last week. In the accompanying blurb there, Darnielle explains: “The song is sung from the point of view of Toad.”

Stereogum helpfully posted the dates of Darnielle and King’s “Last Happy Night of Your Life” autumn tour, which includes stops in major metropoleis like SF, Chicago, NYC, Austin, and Brooklyn. Concertgoers will be able to pick up the Darnielle/King EP at the shows.

(Via 61 Frames Per Second)

Related posts:

1. Donkey Kong battles Mario in Bowser’s castle
2. Calculating gravity (or, rather, acceleration due to gravity) in Mario games

So of course S.S. and I compared videos.

And we’re in agreement: we have to get these two kids together. If there is a god, these two will meet and fall in love.

And they even both do a twee little thumbs-up at the end of their songs! Which makes me wonder whether the boy had never seen the teenaged girl’s YouTube video—but more likely than that, their love is simply meant to be.

Sept. 13 edit: Regarding the charming thumbs-up punctuating each ukulele performance! One Roo Reynolds captured a still of each thumbs-up, which now lives at his Flickr account here. Aww!

Related posts:

1. LTTP: Mega Man 9 theme music on ukulele
2. Hilarious, cringe-inducing email from 13 years ago