Tag Archives: Haunted House

8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House

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Haunted House (also known from its NSF header information as Castle Boss) is the first (and so far, only) FamiTracker track uploaded by CM.O user 8-Bit Beast. It was posted on June 13, 2013, and the user has since abandoned the account. Since 8-Bit Beast requested constructive criticism, I can say this: the song is a mess. The lead instrument is shrill and obnoxious, the time signature seems to break frequently (likely 8-Bit Beast was copying and pasting notes without making sure the beats lined up,) and there are only two instrument patches. The main instrument, commonly referred to as the “gadunk,” plays on each channel, whereas the second instrument is a jumbled mess of notes and only appears near the end. This song is so perfectly bad, it’s beautiful.

Video courtesy of SiIvaGunner.

At first listen, the song is uncomfortable to get through. It seems to go on for far too long, despite being under a minute and a half long, and it’s too inconsistent to follow along with. It may have been done unintentionally, but 8-Bit Beast created a terrible masterpiece.

In 2014 my friend Ap0c brought the song to my attention, and we couldn’t get enough of it. He made his own remix, and even incorporated Haunted House in his live sets. In 2015 Ap0c released “8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House Remastered,” a joke EP featuring the original song, a version with heavy reverb, and his remix. He commissioned me to make some album art, which is when I designed the 8-Bit Beast’s pixelated silhouette.

In 2016, Ap0c was a judge for ChipWIN: Volume 5. He and I joked around about submitting Haunted House, and I started working on “Cache Boss,” a Bit Shifter styled song using a slowed down “gadunk” as the melody, before abruptly becoming a piano midi of Haunted House. From what I’m told, the ChipWIN judges were intrigued to see a submission coming from Bit Shifter, then furious when they thought Ap0c was behind it, then entertained when they figured out it was me. The track was included as a bonus track for downloading the album, and the artist was renamed “8-Bit Shifter” to avoid misleading anyone.

A few months later, I was invited to SiIvaGunner, after submitting a handful of my own rips. One night, I tried bringing Haunted House to the group’s attention, but the response was lukewarm. I figured the best way to show the song’s potential as a meme was by example. Using the midi I wrote for Cache Boss, I submitted eight (ha) video game rips using the song, each with words like “haunted,” “castle,” and “boss,” to hint at the source material. A few team members who were awake at 3am saw “Joke: Haunted House (AKA Castle Boss) by 8-Bit Beast” pop up 8 times on Discord, and it caught their attention.

Most of my submissions were garbage, and they insisted that if I was going to force the meme on their channel, they would have to be As Quality As Possible. I reworked some of the low-effort ones, and on September 16th 2016, Haunted House was introduced on the channel, in the form of a bait and switch Castlevania rip. Unsurprisingly, the fans were confused. Some were upset and started dislike-bombing. The first Haunted House rip came just days after the “bean” fiasco, and fans were likely still upset from that. In the coming weeks however, other SiIvaGunner members began submitting Haunted House rips, and more clever Haunted House rips were submitted to the channel. Fans were referring to it as the “mystery meme.”

The team allowed me to use 8-Bit Beast in the Halloween event, and I planned on revealing the source of the meme at the end of the event. Eventually a fan traced the meme back to Cache Boss, and the community thought they had solved the mystery. I held out hope that this would throw fans off the trail until I could reveal the true source, but on September 21st, 2016, the fans had found Haunted House.

The 8-Bit Beast became one of the main characters of the Halloween event, and in what was originally intended to be the channel’s final months, Haunted House became one of the channel’s big memes. It reappeared in the Christmas event, and occasionally showed up in regular rips throughout the following year. The beast character would occasionally return for Halloween events and other promotional artwork.

In short, if 8-Bit Beast hadn’t uploaded that FamiTracker experiment, I wouldn’t have gotten a lot of the opportunities I had. I was the designated “ChipWIN bonus track” guy for about 8 (HA.) different albums, which allowed me to keep practicing making chip music, and even write a few Shyabeetus tracks for ChipWIN. SiIvaGunner made me the Quality of Control guy for Haunted House rips, and eventually made me a member of the backroom, allowing me to contribute to channel shenanigans from behind the scenes. I even got to do signatures with the team for a couple years at MAGFest, because of that.

So, thank you 8-Bit Beast, wherever you are. Gadunk gadunk gadunk, gadunk gadunk gadunk gadunk……

MAGFest 2020 – Open Mic performance

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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

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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

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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.

Castle Lololo – Kirby’s Dream Land

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This is the song that plays in the second level of Kirby’s Dream Land, but it becomes a Castlevania medley. The stage takes place in a castle, and the rip references every location in the first Castlevania game, followed by Haunted House (AKA Castle Boss).

A little backstory: Kirby and Castlevania are two of my favorite video game series. In 2010, a dream project of mine was to have Kirby’s Dream Land recreated in 2.5D. I started making Castlevania remixes in the style of Kirby’s Dream Land songs for a hidden “Alucard Mode,” and my favorite was a Castle Lololo styled rendition of Vampire Killer. I even made a version using Kirby: Nightmare in Dreamland instruments, but never actually released it to the public. This rip was my attempt to revisit the idea. It was also a subtle reference to the second song I ever performed as Shyabeetus, a Castlevania series medley titled Castle Incarnate.

This rip was featured on Volume 8-Bit Beast.

Castle Boss – 8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House

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This is just the Nutshack theme in the style of Haunted House. It was the first rip to be uploaded as “8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House,” and was intended to be a fake ending for the Haunted House rips. It was followed by “Haunted House – 8-Bit Beast’s Haunted House,” ending the first Halloween event. The thumbnail is a title screen I put together for an imaginary Haunted House game for the NES. It’s meant to be a hardware accurate 8-bit depiction of the album art I made for Ap0c’s Haunted House album. I went on to use the assets from this fake title screen to create the environment for the Haunted House Fusion Collab.

This rip was featured on Volume 8-Bit Beast.

Creepy Castle – Donkey Kong 64

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This is the theme that plays in the Creepy Castle stage, but with the melody and chords replaced with Haunted House. This was meant to be a sister rip to Creepy Castle Boss, which was one of my more popular Haunted House rips. The rip also features the Wood Man stage music from Mega Man 2, as mm2wood was one of the themes of the Halloween event.

This rip was featured on Volume 8-Bit Beast.

ＣＡＣＨＥ ＢＯＳＳ – BIT.TRIP FLUX

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This is an extended version of Cache Boss, although not the “complete” version. At the point where the song would originally cut out and become a piano midi of Haunted House, it instead continues with a Bit Shifter-styled rendition of Snow Halation. Next, the Nutshack theme is heard, using the BRK sample as a custom instrument, a reference to LSDJ, the tracker Bit Shifter uses. Next, there’s a Haunted House section, followed briefly by the Jetsons theme. The song ends abruptly with a “cart crash” joke (another LSDJ reference, as crashing is a common occurrence when performing using Game Boys), followed by the sound of the Game Boy being restarted, and ending with more BRK gadunks.

This was uploaded during the “finale” fake-out event. When I submitted this rip, fans had traced the “mystery meme” back to Cache Boss, and I wanted to hint that the mystery was still unsolved. By the time it was uploaded, however, Haunted House had already been discovered by the fans.

This rip was featured on Highest Quality Video Game Rips: Volume 7: Part mm2wood.