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Chiptune Friday: 8-Bit Daft Punk

Third Daft Punk post this month? Clearly March is all about robots dancing as far as I'm concerned.

You may have seen around the 'net that a new bit of NES homebrew was released last month in D-Pad Hero, a game that mimicked the now all-too-familiar Guitar Hero/Dance Dance Revolution style of tapping buttons in rhythm to a scrolling bar of icons, only it replaces the guitar controller/dance pad with a traditional NES game pad and high quality song recordings with size and medium appropriate chiptune. Gameplay is expectedly challenging, but the songs are divine, especially the chiptune version of Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".

Alternate Soundtrack: Noby Noby Boy vs. Daft Punk

As John previously mentioned, Spring is in the air here in New York. Coats and coffee have been replaced by t-shirts and...well... some people still have coffee. I've been rocking the cranberry juice myself. With all of this new life in the air, I find myself returning to my summer lover, Alternate Soundtrack, and where better to begin than with Bandai Namco's newest Springtime insta-classic, Noby Noby Boy.

As I'm sure you know, because you're all just that well-informed, oh wonderful 61fpsers, Keita Takahashi's Noby Noby Boy is a game all about relaxed play. In fact, the game's title is a pun on the japanese words for "loose" and "stretch," much like how the original Katamari Damacy was a visual pun in that the two kanji were nearly identical, but I digress. While Katamari was notorious for its ridiculously catchy and enthralling soundtrack, Noby's is much more subdued. Introductory tuba and bells clear the path for sedate acoustic guitar plucking. That's about it. Thankfully, Noby uses just about every feature of the PS3's Cross Media Browser, including the ability to play music from the hard drive, allowing you to make your own soundtrack with incredible ease. I found that the game works wonderfully with Daft Punk's Discovery.

Alternate Soundtrack: Need For Speed: Underground vs Justice's †

Written by Derrick Sanskrit

Until 2003, the most serious racing game I'd played was probable F-Zero. This became a problem with my roommates, who LOVED racing games, and so I was baptized into the world with Need For Speed: Underground on the Playstation 2.

Now, if your experience with this game was anything like ours, you loved every minute of gameplay to be found in NFS:U. The characters felt human and you felt genuine affection for Samantha and disdain for Eddie. The city felt alive, and oncoming traffic was a plaything to use to your advantage. Circuit races were intense, drift races were ego boosts, and drag races separated the hardcore from the wimps. Everything about the game just bubbled with glowing, neon awesome.

Except for that soundtrack! Ugh!

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.