[Blog reposted from earlier, due to weird timestamp.]

If you have yet to drop by Pitchfork TV to watch Reformat the Planet do so now, because it will make you feel like there might be a light at the end of the tunnel of your gaming life. Here is a trailer if you want to know what you're getting into.



I love chiptunes for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the pumping beats that are sure to get you laid on Saturday night. Nothing says "Rock the Fuck Out" like a Gameboy with a plug up its ass wired into a surround sound system. But what really makes me love chiptunes is that it is evidence of a culture. More importantly, a relevant and artistically rich culture.

I don't like the fact that video games are inextricably linked to consumer culture and trash culture. When people think "video games", they imagine the giant throbbing corporate cock of Microsoft, ready to fuck you up the ass in exchange for a brief diversion of violence and sex. When people think of "video game culture", they imagine an infinite expanse of cats with captions on them.



I CAN HAZ CULTURAL IRRELEVANCY?

Gamers and gamer culture are hardly respected, and are hardly respectable. And lets be honest, if the entirety of our output was shit like this, we deserve to be locked the fuck up for our frankenstein photoshop creations. Thankfully, we don't live in that world.

Chiptunes and the chiptunes scene are important for a lot of reasons. The whole scene is DIY. If you want your life to be vibrant, it has to be yours, and the only way to make it yours is to make it yourself. The consoles may be relics of a well spent youth, but they are celebrated and reformatted to fit the artists intent.

The output isn't just some cultural feedback loop. The styles are diverse and reflect the individual musician, like a mirror you can dance to. The twisted soundscapes they create are unique, sincere, and original. Most of gamer culture is remix culture, which is great when you're in on the joke, but it doesn't last long in the open world. Like all remix culture, it withers and dies when exposed to a vacuum.



The OneUps may be awesome, but they are a good example of band that cannot exist without the self perpetuating elixir of reference and recognition. We say,"Oh shit, Toejam and Earl, turn that shit up." But without such recognition, the song ceases to be anything other than a funky jam. Not that I don't love to bring the funk, mind you. Nothing gets me going quite like a phat bassline and the sultry tones of a large black man whispering sweet nothings into my ear.

What I'm trying to say is that Dale North cannot survive in the vacuum of space.

With chiptunes, the sound may bud with nostalgia, but you don't need to play video games to know that this is awesome.



I made a pun. Did you see what I did there? I'm so fucking cool. I'm the goddamn definition of BAMF. Please love me.

I love chiptunes because it is evidence of a culture I can be proud of. It can inspire you to think or inspire you to get the fuck on down to the dance floor and rip that shit up. It is original, it is meaningful, and it is ours. Gamers are not some uniform mass, and we have no real cultural connection outside of the games we play, but various social phenomena have sprouted from something as simple as staying inside on sunny days and mashing on a d-pad. These are the cultures that connect us, and represent us.

This is our punk rock.

And if you had to choose something to represent you, would you rather have this...



...or this.



If the answer isn't obvious, you are walking cancer, and I hope a meteor hits you.