Cool Find: MOON8

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I’m a big fan of Pink Floyd. Their unique blend of cool psychedelic rock opera type sound and insightful, philosophical lyrics really appeals to me. Sadly I’ve never made it to one of their legendary live shows, and, being a child of the 80s, I missed them during their heyday; but was able to discover them thanks to classic rock (yay KTYD!).

I’m also a big fan of classic 8-bit video gaming, but unlike Pink Floyd, I was there during its heyday. When my friends got their Atari 2600s, I was always finding excuses to go over to their houses for a visit, and eventually my parents got me one of my own (although sadly it wasn’t the “cool guy” 2600 but the janky Sears Tele-Games clone. Still, it played Atari 2600 cartridges so it was OK.) Of course I also witnessed firsthand the Great Video Game Crash of ’83. (I even owned a few of the craptacular titles that, thanks to market saturation, caused the crash.) When the Nintendo Entertainment System revitalized the industry several years later, I didn’t get one (by then I’d moved onto my true love – computers!), but many of my friends did, again prompting me to invent clever excuses to go over and invade their homes. Many of the NES staples remain my favorites to this very day, and thankfully I can play them thanks to the magic of emulation. Yay!

Who would’ve thought that there would be some way of combining those two? (hey! you got your chocolate in my peanut butter…) Well, this is exactly what one fan, video game programmer Brad Smith, did. And thus was born MOON8. He describes it as something that Pink Floyd might have created had they written The Dark Side of the Moon for the NES instead of a rock band. And I have to say: it works. If you’re even remotely familiar with Dark Side, you’ll recognize it right away. Amazing how legitimate, recognizable art can be created even with the limited hardware capabilities of something like the NES.

So go download it today. It’s available in both MP3 and FLAC format. And, for you experimental types, he has even made the FamiTracker source files available, so you can tweak/remix/whatever to your heart’s content. (He does request that if you make your own modifications, that you send them to him).