Category Archives: music

Soundcloud List of Classic Video Game Music Remakes

Musician Jeff McGowan has a large list of video game music he has remade on his SoundCloud stream, and the results are fantastic.  The service is free of charge, so you have nothing to lose to check them out, and your ears have everything to gain by listening to some great interpretations of some wonderful music.

You can check out Jeff’s stream here:

thanks to 7upbottle, via Reddit

Rap Pac

Apropos of yesterday’s post mentioning the ease at which popular Rap artists are rhyming “Atari”, comes Spin.com‘s  list of 50 rap songs that featured video game samples.

L’il Flip – “Game Over (Flip)”, deleted from the list due to copyright but here linked to Vevo’s YouTube upload.

1978 "Fuji" logo for Atari, a video game company

Have You Referenced Atari In a Rap Song Today?

In recent days, popular Rap artists have discovered the ease of rhyming the word “Atari”.  To wit:

Yeah I’m sorry, I can’t afford a Ferrari
But that don’t mean I can’t get you there.
I guess he’s an XBox and I’m more Atari
But the way you play your game ain’t fair.
Cee Lo Green – “Forget You”

She wanna go and party, she wanna go and party
Nigga, don’t approach her with that Atari
Nigga, that ain’t good game, homie, sorry.
Kendrick Lamar – “Poetic Justice”

In a nice bit of synergy from the Atari company, they are taking advantage of this pop-culture phenomena to sell a line of headphones in the U.K..  Of course, the bad news is that every reference to the company name is in a negative light, playing on the obsolescence of Atari consoles.  But still, any pop-culture reference is a good reference, right?

Atari headphones page at HMV:

“I’m more Atari” T-shirt referenced in the social media hooks for this post available from Cee-Lo’s website:

Atari Video Music

Atari’s Groove Tube

Smack dab between the release of home PONG in 1975 and the VCS in 1977 came the Atari Video Music in 1976.  The brainchild of home PONG creator Bob Brown, you would plug your stereo via RCA jacks into this piece of ordinance, and output to your TV via a RF connector.  Thusly, the Atari Video Music would display trippy graphical patterns on your TV, in time to your music.  The box is hard-wired analog, with nary a processor in sight.  Think of it as an early version of today’s mp3 player visualizers. You can grok the effect in this YouTube video:

Read more about the device here at Technabob.  What would your choice of “mind-enhancer” be when watching this thing?