Chip Music

Chip Music

Massive Chiptune Groupees Bundle on Sale for the Holidays

December 10, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this

Chiptune fans now have something they can put on their holiday wish list. (Or ever gift to other fans!) Chiptunes = WIN has not only released a holiday compilation album, but they’ve also teamed up with other chiptune artists and Groupees to create the Bundle of WIN combo sale.

That’s right! As of Noon Eastern today (Monday, Dec 7th), we’re presenting you with the fantastic holiday opportunity to grab not only a brand spankin’ new 10 track ChipWIN compilation, ‘Bundle of WIN‘, but also 10+ albums from all of the artists involved in the comp! And everything provided through the fantastic folks at Groupees.com!

That not enough? Alrighty then. How about we include a bundle of awesome bonuses?? The more folk give in total, the more delightful bonuses that’ll unlock for all donors! Not to mention three really cool prizes for the top three donors. Yup. All that’s in this beautiful bundle!

On top of that, how about the chance to donate a percentage of your monies to everyone’s favorite fest that’s not a con, MAGFest?? Okay then. We’ll do that too! –Brandon L Hood aka “President Hoodie”

Like with all other Chiptunes = WIN albums, all sales are reinvested into the chiptune community and future projects, and in this case will include gaming and music event MAGFest. Two dollars nets you the basic bundle of 11 albums featuring a bevy of chiptune artists such as CarboHydroM and Auxcide, with additional proceeds unlocking bonuses. The sale lasts until December 22.

[Disclaimer: The writer affirms outside friendships with the chiptune community, unbeholden to the purpose of the post. Because who doesn’t want to support more chiptunes?]
Chip Music, Events, Game Music

Retro, Indie and Music Collide at Super Warehouse Event

December 1, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Retro, Indie and Music Collide at Super Warehouse Event Share this

London-based partygoers recovering from this past weekend’s #SEGASaturday event have just a few days to prepare for another one. Joypad and VICE Gaming have announced Super Warehouse, a “collaborative music meets indie and retro gaming” party happening at London’s Hoxton Arches on Saturday, December 5th.

EDM and Chiptune accompaniment will be provided by FAIK, Sega Bodega, Shirobon and Slugabed with live, interactive visuals courtesy of VJ Yourself. Adding to the audio/visual mayhem of the night will be Robin Baumgarten’s uniquely physical “1D dungeon crawler”, Line Wobbler. There’ll be plenty of indie games on hand thanks to publisher Devolver Digital who will also be bringing two unreleased games to play.

For retro fans the organizers have crafted a novel, interactive way to play a huge assortment of 8, 16, and 32-bit games from Nintendo, Sega and Sony; by live request. Attendees can tweet the name of a game they’d like to play using the #superwarehouse hashtag and the Joypad staff will load it up and call it out as gameplay rotates throughout the night.

Advanced tickets are available now through Eventbrite for £11.45 and like #SEGASaturday, let us know how it was if you’re in the area and attend! For those of us not in the same town, continent or hemisphere we can, at least, grab a free half-hour mix by FAIK made exclusively for Super Warehouse. It is a wonderfully appropriate mash up of beats, drops and video game samples.
Chip Music, Game Music

Top Gear Composer Returns for Horizon Chase, Out Now on Android

November 23, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Top Gear Composer Returns for Horizon Chase, Out Now on Android Share this

It only takes two to make a trend, right? If that phrase I just coined holds true then it’s been a trendy year for old school game composers making a return to form through the medium of Outrun-inspired mobile racing games. First it was Motohiro Kawashima — lead composer on Streets of Rage 3 — returning for the trippy PlayStation Mobile racer, Oh Deer! (also my first post on OSV). Most recently it’s Barry Leitch, composer of such classic racing games as Top Gear, Lotus Turbo Challenge 2, and the San Francisco Rush series.

Leitch has returned after years away from video game music to provide the soundtrack to — wait for it — a new Outrun-inspired mobile racing game. Horizon Chase has been out on iOS since August but it’s just come to Android which is where I discovered it and its fantastic music. Fans of Top Gear should be especially pleased both with the gameplay and soundtrack. Dodging competitors over undulating terrain and tearing through rolling corners, the music is perfect accompaniment. Leitch’s characteristic arpeggio melodies are updated with modern synths, tinny guitars and just a touch of dubstep. The pacing is perfect and the sound is both new and delightfully cracktro — err, retro.

Leitch sums it up in a recent Kill Screen article by saying, “the stuff I wrote now is the same as back then, but this is finally how I imagined it sounding in my head 20 years ago. Two decades later, you can finally get the music to sound like how you wanted it.”

It’s a bit of a shame that the races aren’t marathon length to give these songs more time to jam. Fortunately, there’s a soundtrack for that, created by Leitch himself and available in physical form from his site. With fifteen tracks and 59 minutes of music it’s one of the longest soundtracks I’ve seen for a mobile game and comes complete with full color liner notes and artwork for $20. I already picked up the game but I just might have to grab the CD as well to keep this fantastic music playing.
Chip Music, Game Music, Japanese

Listen to the New Sound of Street Fighter II

November 8, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Listen to the New Sound of Street Fighter II Share this

Back at the end of July Brave Wave announced the Generation Series that aims to remaster beloved, out of print and incomplete game music in excruciating quality. The first (and so far, only) album announced is Street Fighter II: The Definitive Soundtrack which is planned for release before the end of the year.

Since our original post Brave Wave have gone on to reveal some more details on the release. The album art has been updated (seen above), the playlist will include a staggering 100+ tracks encompassing the CPS1 and CPS2 versions of the soundtrack and the CD release will come on three discs. As previously reported, both the CD and vinyl versions will feature liner notes from original composer Yoko Shimomura and Polygon.com’s Matt Leone.

More importantly, they’ve released the eight comparison tracks embedded above that should give you an immediate appreciation for the work they’ve put into the album so far. On their vision for the new sound of Street Fighter, sound engineer Marco Guardia told Polygon, “We were trying to strike a balance between staying true to the song and it being authentic. We didn’t want to go overboard and mess with the sound to a degree that it sounds nothing like it used to.”

Take a listen for yourself and check out that Polygon article while you’re at it; there are some insights into Brave Wave’s process and the story behind the album’s origins.
Chip Music, Game Music

Joshua Morse returns for Halloween with VLAD II Castlevania EP

October 28, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Joshua Morse returns for Halloween with VLAD II Castlevania EP Share this
GameChops has just released a follow up to Joshua Morse’s spectacular 2013 Castlevania tribute album, VLAD, appropriately titled VLAD II. Like the original, VLAD II features four tracks of EDM chiptune/jazz fusion, this time with guest guitarist, Danimal Cannon, on two tracks. You can sample all four songs in the teaser video or listen over on bandcamp and check out the track listing below.

VLAD II is out now and available to buy from Loudr.fm for a minimum price of $4; just in time to pump up your Halloween week festivities. And for a limited time you can get both VLAD albums for a minimum of $7.
- Bone Ark Madness (Symphony of the Night – Rainbow Cemetery)
- Aqua Flash (Castlevania 3 – Aquarius)
- Mummy Lover (Castlevania – Wicked Child)
- Halfway to Hell (Castlevania – Heart of Fire)
Chip Music, Game Music

Kickstart Jake Kaufman’s Latest Soundtrack with Ghost Police

October 14, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Kickstart Jake Kaufman’s Latest Soundtrack with Ghost Police Share this

Jake “Virt” Kaufman is shaping up to be a very busy boy these days. On top of recent additions to his amazing work on the Shovel Knight OST with the Plague of Shadows DLC, and being slated for work on indie titles [NUREN] and working alongside Michiru Yamane and Ippo Yamada for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, another new indie project has just been announced with him attached to compose. Ghost Police is negative-space shmup title currently in development by independent game developer Steven McCarthy, and will feature an 8-bit chip music soundtrack done up by Kaufman.

“Many people don’t know this, but I actually got my start in videogames working on the Game Boy. As Ghost Police blends styles from the NES and Game Boy, I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to come full circle with the NES soundtrack for Shovel Knight by writing this with the Namco 163 sound chip, an expansion that I’m familiar with and am eager to push to its limits!” – Jake Kaufman

Kaufman currently has the trailer score for the soundtrack’s Kickstarter, which is seeking $16,000 USD with various stretch goals for additional work. A copy of the Ghost Police for PC is available for the equivalent of $7.80 USD – with the soundtrack, beta access, and backers’ pixelated likenesses featured in the game at higher support levels.

Source: Scarlet Moon Productions
Chip Music, Events, Game Music

Celebrate PlayStation’s 20th U.S. Anniversary with a Chiptune Album

September 9, 2015 | Shawn Sackenheim | 2 Comments Share this

The original PlayStation may have celebrated its 20th anniversary last December in Japan, but for me — an American teenager at the time — it’s September 9th, 1995 that I remember most fondly. Even before the console was out it was turning me on to new music. The “Hear it Now, Play it Later” demo disc I got for pre-ordering the console introduced me to the likes of Korn, Mother May I and Dag and even included uncredited tracks from Tommy Tallarico. After the launch it was a constant stream of new favorites with soundtracks in every style represented.

But just like Sony’s push to bypass 2D games and focus on the PlayStation’s polygonal power, there wasn’t a lot of classic 16-bit style music to be heard. Some developers did choose to render their music with the PlayStation sound hardware but the cool factor of “CD Quality Sound” was hard to ignore. It wasn’t exclusive to PlayStation — CD-based consoles had been around for nearly a decade in 1995 — but almost unanimously the sound was more like “real music” than the proverbial “bleeps and bloops” of the games that came before them. That was a powerful moment for gaming’s mainstream acceptance with graphics and music that leapt farther towards reality.

With that in mind it’s a little ironic to hear flagship PlayStation themes done in a chiptune style but it makes for an equally striking testament to how far things have come. That’s what Shiryu has done to commemorate the PlayStation’s 20th anniversary with the album PSXX. It’s a great listen that’s sure to touch at least one PlayStation classic you’ll recognize. I also found myself impressed with renditions of the atmospheric music from Tenchu, Resident Evil and Tomb Raider.

It’s an unexpectedly fitting way to remember the PlayStation on this anniversary of its North American debut and a great remix collection for any other day. PSXX is available now for €4 on Shiryu’s Bandcamp page. If you’d like to reminisce about the days of the PlayStation or just dream up other games you’d love to hear chiptuned, let us know in the comments.