Infinite Lives

If there is one self-evident truth to the history of the gaming industry, it would be that the early 80s welcomed utterly bizarre gaming concepts. Even more bizarre, though, were the ones based around food.

There was Mr. Do, a game in which a clown digs tunnels underground to collect cherries, all while avoiding dinosaurs and monsters that look vaguely like Cookie Monster. Or Atari’s Food Fight, wherein a kid must make his way to an ice cream cone before it melts, battling his way past angry chefs with a variety of ingredients. But Data East took the enchilada, so to speak, when it brought out Burgertime in 1982.

Definitely better than that Skip Rogers ad from before!

• Everything is Terrible! – No Wires!

To say the NES’s musical capabilities are famous is an understatement. With tunes like the Super Mario theme and the soundtracks to Mega Man 2, Castlevania, Contra, and dozens of other games, the system’s little sound chip can pump out some incredible music. The NES is practically a founding member of the chiptune musical genre, alongside such luminaries as the Commodore 64 and the Atari 800. Thus when I heard about an oddball, Famicom Disk System-only ‘musical shooter’ entitled Otocky my interest was piqued.

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.

One time, Billy Corgan was standing in front of the Apple store, just sort of hanging out by himself. Corgan had famously abandoned his hometown of Chicago, so it was pretty big news that the prodigal son had returned—this was back when Corgan inexplicably formed Zwan with David Pajo and others—and was now standing in front of the Apple store on Michigan Avenue.

I’d never really listened to the Smashing Pumpkins, but Nik had, and when Nik paused to say hi, Corgan seemed delighted to be recognized. He zealously lunged for Nik’s hand, shook it vigorously, then mine. The guys talked about the 1990s, and I just kind of stood there, bored and cold.

After a few minutes, Corgan looks over at me, and I smile and nod, because I have absolutely fucking nothing to say. I must have seemed really thrilled to be standing in his glow, though, because Corgan says to me: “Are you going to be OK?”

“I’m… fine,” I said, startled. Then I was furious.

Obviously, I am still furious. I WILL BE FINE, BILLY CORGAN. I WILL BE FINE.

Here’s video of Super Smashing Pumpkins Bros. I, II, and III, as hacked together by fans. Tanooki Corgan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but in this crazy world, what does?

The very best of the three is Smashing Pumpkins III (1:07), because it convincingly recasts members of the Smashing Pumpkins as each of the four characters from SMB2.

• Gearfuse – Smashing Pumpkins: The Video Game?

Here in the U.S.—in fictional works, anyway—we usually depict our president as some trim, bland-faced, pepper-haired dude (Harrison Ford works, too).

Over at the fairly new Retronauts blog, E. Jeremy Parish takes a peek at three of the worst (read: strangest) presidents in videogame history.

It’s timely!

• Retronauts, 1UP’s Retro Gaming Blog – The worst presidents in gaming

It’s nearly that time—and by “that time,” I mean Yule Time!—which means I am making my annual holiday mix CD. It’s a great way to save money on gifts.

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.

...if you live here in the Bay Area, I mean. And I totally understand if you’re busy. But if you are anywhere near the Haight on Saturday night, you could pop on by Giant Robot—the one here in San Francisco, not the hip LA one—and check out art by heavy-hitting art bigwigs (David Horvath) and unsung heroes (Martin Cendreda). I mean, only if you’re up for it.

• GRSF

I am still humming along with ukulele covers of video game theme music. Tonight, for instance, I was trying to remember where my favorite Kid Icarus theme cover had come from. I’d first heard it on Ray Barnholt’s excellent Famicom muxtape, which is now—and for the foreseeable future—nonexistent. Fortunately, one quick, successful google revealed that the musician I was looking for is none other than the Tanguy Ukulele Orchestra.

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