Budgetary limitations faced by John Carpenter at the dawn of his career forced him to take to his synthesizer collection and create his own visionary lo-fi scores for his movies. Pioneering video game music composers were similarly restricted by primitive sound chips and as a result, tiny magical sounds were forced into existence. How minimal can minimal get? At Pterodactyl Squad HQ we decided to find out by marrying the greatest hits of John Carpenter with the style and hardware of vintage video game systems. It’s all about doing much with not much. It’s all in the creativity. It’s all in the imagination. It’s all in the reflexes.

To download, head on over to the release page.

In the midst of a secret chiptune show at MAGFest X, Brendan Becker aka Inverse Phase fired his 8-bit cylinders for the crowd and brought along copies of his Shuttle Scuttle OST. The video game score was conceived for a space shooter developed in the style of NES titles of yore. This made it perfect for Brendan’s compelling chip work, which ties everything into a beautifully nostalgic package. The soundtrack is available now on his Bandcamp page, and the game itself can be found as an iOS title at shuttlescuttle.com.

So in all my inane ramblings that pop up around the internet, I have neglected you, my loyal readership. For that I apologize, and give you this as a gift. It’s the latest album from good friend and better rapper, B-Type. Worded Words, and released for free or best offer over at his official bandcamp page.

There are songs about Godzilla, robots, and Pokemon. If you gave me this album when I was twelve, I would have thought this was the greatest series of songs ever. Well I am a bit older than ten now, but strangely, I still spend a lot of time thinking about Godzilla, robots, and Pokemon. Which means this album is still awesome. Right now.

As for the beats, It feels like you are trapped inside a giant eighties era arcade machine, the cabinet’s demo droning catchy riffs with an abundance of bass. There’s a good mix of original and remixed tunes, giving the album less restraint. B’s lines maneuver through a variety of styles over those tracks, showing off a growing versatility in his rhyming arsenal.

To get a feel for the album, I would have to suggest Top Percentage, with the track’s swaggering beat, and Pokemon themed rhymes. Don’t listen to him about not evolving your Pokemon though. My reasoning for this can be saved for a very lengthy article on the topic some other day. Just remember to evolve ALL your Pokemon.

The other song I recommend is the nerd heavy Song of Time, although, skip over to the end of the album and check out the latter version, Song of Time (Projekt Zero Pre-Emptive Remix). Though both good tracks, with plenty of great bars from a who’s who kind of list of nerdcore. Unfortunately, the original track suffers from having heard this song remixed too many times (Final Fantasy Syndrome I call it). Besides, the best version of Song of Time is already this one. Perhaps this is why ProjektZero, which I am sure he will explain later, chose to remix it into a lo-fi dungeon crawling epic.

So go grab a copy, and give it a listen, and if the economy has been good to you, perhaps shoot him change for a cup of coffee. Unless…you don’t accept my apology that is…

It feels like yesterday that I had the pleasure of meeting Shael Riley and Ty Guenley, the masterminds behind the 8-bit indie rock band Shael Riley and the Double Ice Backfire and their newly-released album Ultimate Songs from the Pit. They had been visiting NYC to get the album mastered a year ago, thus bringing Shael and Ty in proximity to me and each other. This came not long after the Backfire’s success in funding the mastering through a Kickstarter, which gained nearly twice as much monetary pledges as the initial goal. The cash certainly didn’t go to waste: even songs from the band’s previous EP Songs from the Pit feel refreshed and immediate due to Drew Lavyne’s mastering and Ty’s mixing.

Although the process of finalizing and mass-duplicating the CD was long, Shael and Ty were hardly at rest in their music making. As incentive for the Kickstarter, the band recorded cover versions of songs commissioned by those who made large pledges; one such cover, a remake of Shael’s Castlevania homage “Juese Belmont” was posted at OverClocked ReMix. The Double Ice Backfire also contributed to albums that covered “Weird Al” Yankovic and They Might Be Giants. My favorite song from Ultimate Songs from the Pit, “Hobby Model” almost seems like a cover itself, with its refrain resembling that of Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman”.

Genius loves company, and so the album has a fair number of guests. Fellow chip rocker Brian Mazzaferri of I Fight Dragons shares lead vocal duties on “Bootstraps” while Schaffer the Darklord drops lines into “Publishing Rights”. Additional rhyme-spitting comes courtesy of Mega Ran on “Area Dolls” and Billy the Fridge in “Rarest of Elements”. Ricky Henry, the ‘third-ice’ in the band’s live shows, was responsible for the album artwork. Ultimate Songs from the Pit is available now at Bandcamp for streaming and as a paid download, with the lead track “How to Fire a Gun” as a free single.

The forums at OverClocked ReMix recently released Rockin’ Sockin’ Cinder Blockin’, a tribute EP of the Concrete Man theme from Mega Man 9. Directed by DarkeSword, the release features many regulars in the arrangement community such as Flexstyle, Sir NutS, Rexy, Neblix and The Coop. The idea of putting together an EP came about the day after OC ReMix released the Mega Man 9 album Back in Blue; due to an oversight, Concrete Man was left out of that release. With an initial deadline of a week, remixers were free to submit their takes on Concrete Man for evaluation to be included in the new EP. The result is impressive and a testament to the talent of the community under DarkeSword’s guiding hand.

Jimmy Hinson, also known in the video game music community as Big Giant Circles, just released his original debut album Impostor Nostalgia. The release features over 75 minutes of retro and VGM-inspired tunes, fusing modern-day electronic music with chip sounds of yesteryear. Impostor Nostalgia includes a wealth of guest appearances from big names such as Alexander Brandon, C418, Disasterpiece, Josh Whelchel, Pongball, Souleye and zircon. This album has been long in the making, and it certainly shows in the quality of the work.

Today OC ReMix released Back in Blue, a Mega Man 9 remix album. The release was directed by Dustin “k-wix” Kulwicki and features 14 artists producing 18 arrangements. It is OCR’s seventh album this year, 27th overall, and their first release dedicated to an individual Mega Man title. As can be expected, the album features several heavyweights from the community such as bLiNd, Cyril the Wolf, DarkeSword, Joshua Morse, Mazedude, Rexy and Sixto Sounds. 2011 has been a great year for video game arrangement projects so far, thanks in part to the high quality standard that OCR is known for.

Nario recently released an original chiptune EP titled More of Me. It is the followup to his 2009 album Most of Me and covers a diverse selection of genre influences such as rock, electro pop, dance and industrial. The wide array of styles is presented through Nario’s distinctive 8-bit soundbed and his ear for harmonic structure. The EP is available through the skrow!media label and on Bandcamp, as well as a physical CD with bonus tracks.

This week saw the release of the Dynamite Headdy fan remix album Secret Bonus Point. The album was directed by Dj Mokram and released in conjunction with Nitro Game Injection. Secret Bonus Point is divided into four chapters and designed to play seamlessly from one track to the next. It features 26 arrangements by 14 artists including OverClocked ReMix members FlexStyle, Hylian Lemon, Level 99 and Swann. With such talented people involved, this album is difficult to pass up, and its great to see a game by Treasure getting its due.

So there are those who like dubstep, and those who do not. I am firmly in the former camp, and in case you don’t believe where my loyalties lie, then just ask me how much I love this new mixtape by Dj CUTMAN. Right from the cold opening of Arion’s Pokémon Dubstep Theme Song as it builds into Pikachu dropping a lightning bolt of warbling bass, I’m already on board for the next 40 minutes.

The Legend of Dubstep heads out from the world of Pokemon to visit my old friend Spamtron with his NES Mix of Lost Woods. We hear more great Zelda remixes from Ephixa, including his own rendition of Lost Woods, and my personal favorite, Song of Storms. a classic Tetris tune by Doctor P, and get a little heavy hearted with remixes of Corrider of Time (Chrono Trigger) and Terra’s Theme (Final Fantasy 6) via Mekamodo, and Yeahdef respectively. Added all together you wind up with over half an hour of pulsating bass and chopped up, remixed VGM.

I highly suggest setting this album to play next time you are throwing down in a round of Mortal Kombat or the fighting game of your choice. I may be a little biased, but I am pretty sure every fight was more awesome with dubstep.

That brings me to a question. What will be the first game to throw down with an original dubstep soundtrack. Although, I hope, with asking the question, someone will point me to an amazing one that has already been made. Then I won’t even have to do any of the leg work.

Anyway, go grab this album via Dj CUTMAN’s website. Then let him know that if he ever does another dubstep mix, that Zircon’s latest track, Ashes to Ashes, included on the recently released Harmony of a Hunter, has got to be worked in somehow.