Did you know that there is a thriving music scene based solely on sounds from our most loved consoles?
If this excites you, please read on..

The genre commonly named ‘chip tunes’ consists of sounds sampled or synthesised on old consoles ranging from the commodore 64 through to the gameboy and NES. Many new pieces of software have been written for these old consoles to maximise their musical use. Prophet64 has just been released for the C64, which converts your Commodore 64 into a drum machine, 303 emulator, mono synth and sequencer. Nanoloop and LSDJ have been around for some time on cartridges for the gameboy which again enables a gameboy to be a fully fledged music studio.

Some artists choose to only use the old consoles in their music production whereas others incorporate them within a modern studio for the added advantages that come in hand.

E:LF has put together a 35 minute mix of chip tunes that he has collected online to showcase this amazing genre. Listen to the mix the next time you are playing your megadrive for maximum effect!