If, like me, you often find yourself waking up in a cold sweat remembering that you, at one point actually enjoyed Sky Eats Airplane and other purveyors of the nintendocore genre, well, it seems those horrible nightmares were prophetic, with the genre making a return in what can surely only be called “Nintendocore II: The Revenge”
The team from Nintendocore Lives, a collective who live, breathe and sleep everything 8-bit and MIDI were seminal in the resurgence. They’ve recently release the anthology Smash 64, informed by the countless days plugged into Super Smash Bros on the 64-bit console.
It would probably be a safe bet to say that Pokémon GO has spurred this resurgence and perhaps the penultimate moment was Issues performing the Pokémon theme song, flanked by Pokemon themed gear. Not unlike Kanye West’s Brit Awards ceremony encouraging the second coming of Grime, sort of.
But it isn’t just Pokemon on the anthology – though there are tracks dedicated to Pikachu, Jigglypuff and Polygon – there’s something here for all types of completest nerds from Zelda references, Mario mentions and Donkey Kong puns.
Essentially, Nintendocore blends the MIDI-style music from Nintendo games such as Mario Kart, Smash Bros, et al, with some metal instrumentation and vocals. It’s….bizarre. Espeically considering music on Nintendo was actually MP3 quality, remarkable for 1996.
Diehards will be familiar with the 8-bit backing tracks, taken from key moments from Super Smash Bros 64 including classic mode battles and also secret character theme songs. Super nerds may even be able to pick out the Battlefield and Final Destination reference.
You can get a copy of Smash 64 now and revel in the return of Nintendocore.
