All posts by jjokerdude

MAGFest 2020 – Open Mic performance

Here’s footage of my only Chipspace Open Mic performance in 2020, courtesy of Nerdfit. I didn’t have a set theme this year, but I made sure to play the 2020 version of my All Star remix, a new version of my Gourmet Race/Superman cover with SimpleFlips memes, and by Sam Mulligan‘s request, my ChipWINter Wilderness track. The full set list is as follows:

00:36 – Haunted Mouth
04:01 – 1-2 Superman
08:32 – Spaghetti in my Stocking

ChipWIN Bonus Tracks

Chiptunes = WIN was an online community and music label that would put out large compilation albums of chiptunes. Since 2012, the label released a big annual album, as well as a few side-albums. My friend Ap0c was a judge for Volume 5, so I decided it would be funny to submit a joke rendition of 8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House, disguised as a popular chiptune artist, Bit Shifter. At first the album organizers were mad, but when they figured out it was my doing, they decided to use it as a hidden gag track. We tweaked the artist’s name a bit, and thus began my job as the bonus track guy.

Before this point, Haunted House was an inside joke amongst a handful of folks in the chip scene. After Volume 5, I went on to use the song in SiIvaGunner rips, where people started recognizing it, pushing it to meme status. ChipWIN even went on to release a Haunted House-themed album (after we teased that the joke was retired), and SiIvaGunner themselves even teamed up with me to create a grand bonus Fusion Collab. After which, following Ap0c’s suggestion, I started submitting covers of the Matlock theme instead.

ChipWIN has presumably been shut down since 2020, and unfortunately there isn’t an archive of the albums anywhere, to my knowledge. However, I was able to gather my joke tracks and release an album. So… Here’s that. Highlights include an Auxcide-themed Haunted House/Sandstorm mashup, a seven minute Christmas medley of a wave channel singing “dick butt,” and a spaghetti western rendition of the Matlock theme.

The Beast Awakens

This track was featured on the ChipWIN April Fools album 8-Bit Best, an album comprised entirely of Haunted House remixes. I tried to capture the essence of Haunted House’s weird time signatures, and attempted to make them seem more… Intentional. I also tried to tell a story with ambience and sound effects, almost like a cutscene in an NES or Game Boy game. I even turned the lead instrument (which I refer to as a “gadunk”) into 8-Bit Beast’s laugh. To bring the whole thing home, I sprinkled in some references to Cache Boss, my first ChipWIN bonus track.

Kirby Reanimated Collab

The source for this reanimated collaboration was Kirby: Right Back at Ya! – Episode 49: Cartoon Buffoon. The project was organized by Roya Shahidi. In the episode, King Dedede has the inhabitants of Popstar work frantically to create a cartoon pilot, resulting in vastly different art styles; much like the collaboration itself.

For my shot, I tried to imitate the art style from modern Kirby games. The “scribble” joke is meant to reference Dedede’s sprite in Kirby’s Dream Land.

You can see the full collaboration here!

Mario at a Crab Rave

This is an LSDJ cover of Crab Rave, by Monstercat. This started as a joke over on Twitter, where I combined the sarcastic text Crab Rave memes with a meme from the chip music community, “chiptune is dead.” I wrote the hook in LSDJ, crushed the video into Game Boy-esque graphics (160 x 144px, 4 colors, pea green tint), and added a caption using the LSDJ pixel font. The tweet started gaining traction, so I finished fleshing out the cover and put it on SoundCloud. I used custom waveforms to recreate the steel drums from the original song, and layered waveforms to create a double-octave effect.

Chiptune is Dead!

Gourmet Skate

This begins as a straightforward cover of Gourmet Race from Kirby Super Star, but becomes a cover of Superman by Goldfinger. This same joke could have been explored as a SiIvaGunner rip, but I was already working on a cover of Gourmet Race and decided it would be fun to perform at Chipspace Open Mic.

The following year, I performed a version where the Gourmet Race portion of the song has 1-2 Oatmeal samples. You can hear that set here.