Halcali
Tandem
As the Japanese have such a strong gaming culture, we weren't suprised to see games appear in their videos. This is one of our favorites, largely because this song is painfully, soul-stealingly catchy. On top of that, early in the video we’re treated to the partially blurred appearance of Mario, mushrooms, Koopas, and World 1-1. Apparently Nintendo didn't approve their use, but pixelating a pixel-based image seems useless.
YMCK
Magical 8bit Tour
YMCK is another Japanese band, working in the chiptune genre. And since their music sounds like an NES title, why not have the whole video look like one? In fact, the three members of the band always look like that in all their videos and album covers.
YMCK
Cenette Annee
Please forgive the indulgence, but we just couldn't choose between these two YMCK videos, as this one is as magically simple as the other is complicated. There's just something poetic about dance routines performed by incredibly basic sprites. Maybe it's extraordinarily cheap, but we can't help but be reminded of the dancing girls in classic Final Fantasy games.
Dealership
Forest
We wanted to keep this list confined to real videos made with the artists' involvement, but we're including this independently made one for Dealership's Forest, a song about Zelda (just listen to the words). It's a an adorably false NES game set to a song about Zelda for a band with one member, Jane Pinckard, a former games journalist and current industry professional. It is almost too meta to exist.
Bonus! Terrible Videos!
Franz Ferdinand
Take Me Out
This one comes from the thankfully dead MTV series Video Mods. The premise was to take hit songs and then reskin them with videogame characters singing them. Basically they worked as lame double-commercials, advertising both the song and the game and question.
If we could, we'd put every one of those videos in this section, but this one was about Star Wars so it wins. Also it’s based around a song that is actually good, and is only hurt by the stilted "dancing" of the stormtroopers and the lead singer, Anakin “Cry Me a River” Skywalker.
Black Out Band
Video Games
Warning: don't listen to this entire song unless you want a trip to your personal hell. This is perhaps the worst song ever professionally recorded and seems to have been made by the rich parents of a terrible singer who wants to be a star. The price they pay is to be incessantly mocked forever for a song that actually hurts to listen to. So for the sake of your ability to appreciate music, don't listen to more than 20 seconds of it.
Apr 30, 2009
The History of Music Games
20 years of rhythm-based rocking - from DDR to Guitar Hero
17 videogame soundtracks ahead of their time
Hear the games that dared to be more than noise
Videogame music makes Reservoir Dogs better
VIDEO: We manage to tunefully trump Tarantino's play list
