Back in May I accompanied my good friend and music journalist Ali Gitlow as a photographer to cover the underground ‘Chiptune’ scene. There is a current subculture of musicians all over the world that are hacking old video game consoles and using them to compose music. Ali and I went to a local do-it-yourself venue in Brooklyn and interviewed Anamanaguchi, a chiptune band that has hacked an original Nintendo and an original Gameboy console to create musical compositions. They then take those compositions and play along to them with guitar and drums. Ali’s full story and my photos are posted over at the Flavorpill blog.

What I found most intriguing about this process is that most of these Chiptune artists are too young to have used these consoles when they were at the peak of their popularity. In Anamanaguchi’s case, they are all still undergrads at NYU, and were babies when the original NES was popular.

Getting ready to take apart the Nintendo

Flash memory card Nintendo cartridge hack