8-bit music

An 8-bit collection of Pink Floyd recently rippled through Twitter, followed a few days later by Weezer. It turns out, 8-bit music is as alive and well as 8-bit gaming, maybe even moreso.



Here, in no particular order, is what a little digging this morning unearthed.

First up, thanks to a tweet by @bboru21, I found a site called Pterodactyl Squad, "a video game music netlabel" with a nice collection of free mp3 downloads.

It seems like most of their stuff is original, and would make for really great game room background music. They have a compilation of 8-bit Weezer songs which includes Island in the Sun and Buddy Holly.



There are a few prolific Youtube users cranking out 8-bit renditions. Here are two good ones:

NESsongsrus, who converts everything from classics like Iron Maiden to post-80s artist like Lady Ga Ga and Eminem.








GermanNintendoGamer currently has 50 8-bit tunes, mostly of 80's music and tv shows.







So by now I'm thinking to myself, "Hey, someone should make a Live 365 station with all this 8-bit content..." Naturally, someone has, sort of. 8 BIT RADIO is a channel dedicated to actual gaming music. It is for Live 365 subscribers only (of which I am one, so I can listen to Peter Hirschberg's Retro Arcade Radio station on my iPhone). I'm listening to a piano rendition of the Ocarina of Time theme on it right now, and based on this, would say it's worth the $7.95/month membership fee to access these two stations alone. Especially since it just moved on to a jazz/swing orchestral version of Super Mario Bros. :)

UPDATE: I just discovered a really nice streaming radio station that plays a mix of 8-bit themes and 8-bitized mainstream music (like the Weezer track). It's called 8bit FM, and I highly recommend it if you want to get your classic game on!