Taking Nintendo's Game Boy to places it was never meant to go, a lineup of international chiptune artists will be converging on Koenji High this weekend for Japan's first ever Blip Festival. The roster includes acts such as Nullsleep from New York, who takes a blowtorch to sweet "Super Mario" style ditties, gradually melting them down with a battery of zaps and bleeps until the listener is caught up in a dog fight (or goomba fight) of raw electronic sound.
"I kind of made a real pain in the ass of myself with a whole bunch of people trying to convince them (the event) was possible," says organizer David Adams over coffee in the Higashi Nakano area of Tokyo. He has made it his mission to bring Blip Festival to Japan ever since being blown away by it in New York in 2008, and it's hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm over the possibilities of the chiptune genre.
"The Game Boy and the Nintendo Entertainment System are both really basic; they can only generate four sounds for the Game Boy and five sounds for the Famicom at the same time," says Adams. "The sounds are very limited; you can't really manipulate them, but there's an appeal to . . . how far you can push the technology."