by Michael Tucker - 08.22.08

Arguably the coolest aspect of gaming nerd subculture(if it still is accurate to refer to it as a subculture) is the Chiptune scene. It’s always nifty to hear those bleepity-bloops from yesteryear turned into crazy songs of wonderfully elaborate awesomeness. And, subsequently, it is equally awesome to see this extensive and well made documentary series from Pitchfork Media about the birth and rise of Chiptune music. Titled Reformat The Planet, this 10 part series covers various shows and gatherings of the low-fi artists and features some interesting interviews with a number of them as well. Plus, I’m pretty sure I saw Mitch at the concert in episode two which is reason enough to watch.
If you’re going to check it out, however, I suggest doing so soon because this documentary is one of Pitchfork’s ‘One Week Only’ shows, meaning that it’s going to disappear very soon.











:O
i gotta watch this hooooly! i love chiptunes!
luet - 08.22.08 2:17 am
Direct link to the (very good) video (47.3MB): http://video.pitchfork.tv/BLIP01_PFTV_HIGH.flv
ZikZak - 08.22.08 2:57 am
Seriously, this pretty much made my week.
Thanks 4CR!
Pedro - 08.22.08 3:19 am
Yeah this was really awesome. Thank you.
Jak - 08.22.08 4:48 am
Sounds like simplified IDM.
That’d be awesome if one of their Gameboys ran out of batteries mid-song.
Loki - 08.22.08 6:32 am
That was a very informative and amazing video. I WANNA GO TO ONE OF THESE SHOWS NOW! Sadly, I live in Michigan… I doubt that ONE chiptune player has come out of Michigan.
Because we’re stupid Michiganians who have a hard time even getting a job let alone making amazing music. :C
AJ - 08.22.08 9:48 am
> Direct link to the (very good) video (47.3MB): http://video.pitchfork.tv/BLIP01_PFTV_HIGH.flv
And those numbers go up to 10…
Ian - 08.22.08 2:04 pm
Hey guys, you can get a whole bunch of the chiptunes music used is Reformat The Planet from 8bitpeoples. Also today is the last day to watch the movie (Yes, the week is almost over. Quick! Watch it!).
PlayStar - 08.22.08 2:22 pm
If anyone is interested in playing around with this style of music, there’s this awesome freeware music-making program called Musagi. It’s made by a guy who makes games (not an actual trained musician) with the intent of being very easy to use. I love it. It’s still in development, but is perfectly functional. I’d say it’s worth some of your time, just for the fun factor.
Satsuz - 08.22.08 3:35 pm
Its worth mentioning that one of the bands featured in the film, YMCK, have made a really nice VST plugin that recreates the NES sound synthesizer. You can download it free on their site:
http://www.ymck.net/english/download/index.html
angry lemur - 08.22.08 5:43 pm
check out http://gamewavepodcast.com/ for more stuff like this. good podcast.
Bob - 08.22.08 7:01 pm
just wanted to say thanks for linking us to that, it was a great watch for something slightly out of the usual, but very awesome.
Andrew - 08.23.08 9:45 am
I’ve always liked chiptunes, but man, they looked slightly goofy dancing around like that with Gameboys.
Most of the tunes that they made were pretty awesome, though.
Shadic - 08.23.08 2:54 pm
I wonder if any of them have been approached/ever thought about their music being used in a video game. It would be interesting, like the whole thing coming full circle.
Stuffed - 08.24.08 1:11 am
big thanks for direct links on movie! they are still alive.
intensify - 09.14.08 9:41 pm