I'm not generally one for rap music alone, but combine it with just about every other genre and I'm sold, and that includes chiptune. This video for "Follow Me" by Pato Pooh ft. Adam Tensta captures the spirit of the awesome genre merger perfectly, with old-school 8-bit graphics given an amazing hip hop makeover.

Thanks to everyone who sent in the tip!

The game will feature 11 exclusive mixes by Daft Punk as well as in-game avatars and set designs. It will be the first time the duo have participated in a video game.

Here are the eight of the 11 songs the mag says will show up in the game:

• Daft Punk "Around the World" vs. Young MC "Bust A Move"
• Daft Punk "Da Funk" vs. NASA "Strange Enough ft. Karen O, ODB and Fatlip"
• Daft Punk "Da Funk" vs. Queen "Another One Bites the Dust"
• Daft Punk "Robot Rock" vs. Hashim "Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)"
• Daft Punk "Robot Rock" vs. Queen "We Will Rock You"
• Daft Punk "Short Circuit" vs. Boogie Down Productions "Jack Of Spades"
• Daft Punk "Technologic" vs. Gary Numan "Cars"
• Daft Punk "Television Rules The Nation" vs. No Doubt "Hella Good"

If you're interested in the title, due out Oct. 27, check out our latest hands-on impressions.

Daft Punk Bring Exclusive Mixes, Mash-Ups and Masks To "DJ Hero" [Rolling Stone]

Yesterday, the Austin, Texas game development company Castoro co-founded, Heatwave Interactive, announced a partnership with top-selling rapper T.I. and the rapper's company Grand Hustle Records to make a game called Platinum Life. He described a game that replaces the conventions of fighting monsters and battling other players in a World of Warcraft with dodging paparazzi, performing on stage and winning rap battles. Castoro said he and his team thought "it would be cool to make a game about going from making mixtapes and selling them out of my truck to being T.I." Or being a rapper just as famous.

Platinum Life is being designed to counteract what its creators see as a negative or cynical view of hip-hop in video games.

"Usually when people do projects around hip-hop, they focus on shooting people and doing drugs," Castoro said, blaming everything from the lack of hip-hop fans in development to publishers' willingness to take risks. "It's easy to make a game about 50 Cent and say he's going to shoot people. It's easy to understand violence in games. And violence is a part of hip hop, but that's not what it's all about." Castoro considers rap as part of his life. It's what he listens to most. It's what he knows.

In Platinum Life, players won't gain experience points. They'll gain fame. They will create a character, pick a real-life musical icon, like T.I., to be their role model. They'll even get a chance early on to open up for them at a local club. Think of battling in an MMO, but instead of targeting enemies, think of targeting audiences and winning them over.

Castoro described the experience of playing the game: "Imagine an urban New York street," he said. "There are stores you can go into to buy things. All the people are NPCs. Some are friendly and some of them aren't." People will begin to recognize you. "You can ignore them. You can bitchslap them and you'll get negative reputation and lose a fan. Or you can do something positive like do an autograph and win a fan. Later on you're not going to want to deal with that because you can win thousands of fans performing at a concert." Players can partner with others, specializing as rappers, singers or DJs. They can have a computer-controlled entourage. When it's showtime, players will pick songs for their performance, set up a stage show with spotlights and fireworks and whatever else and then need to hit their marks to perform well. Pattern-matching gamplay as experienced in Guitar Hero will be a part of gameplay, but rhythm gaming won't be the core gameplay element.

In the beginning of the game, players would be a hip-hop nobody. The equivalent of hitting a level cap would see them become a hip-hop mogul.

The wrinkle is that this game being designed to improve rap's image in video games is tied to T.I. who is serving a one-year sentence after pleading guilty to federal weapons charges. That doesn't shake Castoro from believing that T.I. and the game can have a positive effect. "These games have a long lead time and there's plenty of time to get involved and make sure his personal opinion is kept in there," he said. Castoro is impressed with how T.I. turned the publicity around his pending incarceration into a time to further his charity work and speak out against gun violence.

This mix of positive and negative in T.I.'s life is something not to shy away from, he said, nor is it contradictory to the spirit of the Platinum Life project. "That's just part of the issue," Castoro said. "There is a negative side to the urban lifestyle." The developer referenced an incident earlier in the rapper's career when a friend was killed in a shooting. "What he went through was awful. He had one of his best friends shot and it's understandable that he became paranoid. ... the way he handled [his sentence] was admirable, trying to do something positive out of it."

Based on Heatwave's development schedule, targeting a 2012 release for consoles and PC, T.I. should be long out of prison before the game is released. A Platinum Life social networking game is set for release later this year. Heatwave also hopes to develop a micro-transaction-based version of the game that will be based on a free core version of the game. The company's talent pool is diverse, including a former executive from Valve and a producer who used to manage tours for Rod Stewart and served as 50 Cent's literary agent.

Castoro knows that Platinum Life is an ambitious project and there will be doubters. "I'm very skeptical about MMOs," he said. "I know the audience is skeptical about MMOs. We take this very seriously. I take this seriously. If there are people who are skeptical, I look forward to proving them wrong. If there are people who are hopeful, I look forward to fulfilling their expectations."

As we mentioned back in June, Capcom has teamed up with some of hip-hop's greatest talents to produce a downloadable mixtape, replacing the game's original jazzy soundtrack with something a little easier to fight to. Today they've revealed the cover art for the disc, available in printer-friendly downloadable form over at the Capcom Blog, in case any of you are still hooked on reading your music off of archaic silver discs.

And for those of you even more archaic, Capcom will be offering an extremely limited-edition vinyl copy of the mixtape at its fighting games panel at Comic-Con on Friday from 2:30-3:30 in Room 5AB, noting that it could also be used as a bonus for those buying items at the Capcom booth. Man, my Comic-Con swag battle plan gets more and more complicated every minute.

Announced back in October of last year, Scratch: The Ultimate DJ is a rhythm game like no other, despite looking like a rhythm game like just about every other. Unlike other rhythm titles, Scratch will allow players to re-imagine songs on the fly, but up until now we've had no inkling of what songs we would be re-imagining. Well now we know, and some of the biggest names in hip hop are coming on board.

The first five songs in Scratch's set list are Kanye West's "Flashing Lights", "Intergalactic" from the Beastie Boys, Tech N9ne's "Slacker", Eric B. and Rakim's "Don't Sweat the Technique", and The Black Eyed Peas with that one song they released that got everyone started and then quickly grew old.

Along with the newly announced tracks, Genius has promised music from The Gorillaz, Deltron 3030, Nelly, and Run DMC, as well as music from the upcoming solo album from Beastie Boy Mixmaster Mike, who is also providing creative and technical support for the game.

Could Scratch have what it takes to take on Activision's upcoming DJ Hero? It's too early to tell, but it's off to a damn fine start.

Mash, mash, on these buttons, smash, smash on these buttons causing concussions. Gaming groupies giving bubble bobble blue balls, double dragon roll on. Face it you lost, shedding tears, their ain't no wedding here. This is Metal Gear, there is no DDR Dance-off Here.

Unfortunately there are no mp3 samples of the songs on the site so you can hear exactly how PHAT the beats are for yourself, so you'll just have to takes your chances.

Make the jump for the full listing of tracks.

Super Barrio Bros. [AccessHipHop]

1. Intro
2. Mash and Smash
3. Bosses (feat. Alpha MC / Open-Mike Eagle)
4. Bad Villain
5. Three Pipes Down (feat. Psychosiz)
6. Song of Time Instrumental
7. Strategy Guide (feat. Sahtyre / Psydewaze / Nocando)
8. System (feat. DJ Dstrukt)
9. Snoochie Instrumental
10. Game Over
11. Outro Instrumental
12. Next Level (feat. Lyraflip / N/A / EMS)
13. Shit Talkers (feat. Thirsty Fish)
14. Glitch Ghost (feat. Abstract Rude)

This is one of the two vignettes currently available at the website, www.footballresurrected.com, part of a series of videos directed by music video director Maz Makhani featuring artists like Rakim, Aceyalone, and several other people I don't know but am sure are very good at what they do.

2K Sports is also very good at what they do, though I wonder if this campaign will be enough to break them off a sizeable piece of the Madden-dominated football market. You have to admire them for trying, and if anyone can pull it off, these are the guys.

2K Sports Announces the "Football Resurrected" Campaign for All-Pro Football 2K8

Today publisher 2K Sports proudly announces the "Football Resurrected" campaign, a multi-platform marketing campaign in support of All-Pro Football 2K8, available on July 17 for the Xbox 360 and PS3. The campaign, which spans the online, print and broadcast mediums, is designed to attract fans of video games, hip-hop and football with engaging content that celebrates 2K Sports' return to the virtual football arena with All-Pro Football 2K8.

Kicking off the "Football Resurrected" campaign is an innovative episodic online video series featuring past and present hip-hop luminaries who sound off about different aspects of All-Pro Football 2K8. The six, two-minute episodes were shot by legendary music video director, Maz Makhani, and feature artists such as Rakim, Chali 2Na from Jurassic 5, Pep Love & Casual of Hieroglyphics, M-1 from Dead Prez, and Aceyalone.

The first two episodes, "Rice Returns" and "Give Me Real Football" can be viewed now at www.footballresurrected.com.

From the always awesome link log at Mike Nowak's The In-between comes this great old-school, game-referencing video from Canada's hip hop act Cadence Shark. Watch for Donkey Kong, Mega Man, Street Fighter, Frogger, Rampage, and Super Mario World shout outs plus the occasional naughty word. Michael McWhertor

In a nod to the late Notorious B.I.G.'s tune "Juicy", Soulful Commandoe has released a tee by the same name, highlighting the two consoles Biggie Smalls namechecked to show that he'd "made it." He also apparently had a pretty big phone bill at the time. At least it's more creative than the billionth mention of rims in modern hip-hop.

The Juicy tee is available over at Karmaloop for $29, should you want to show your 16-bit and B.I.G. love. Michael McWhertor

Juicy Tee [Karmaloop]

Rock 'n' Roll. Video games. Kindred Spirits. Parents and politicians have targeted both, blaming them for society's ills. That's not the only thing they have in common. Hit titles like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero or Lumines show how profitable marrying games and music can be. Rocker Dave Navarro sums it up:

To be featured in a video game is probably the greatest way to reach a large audience right now.

The music-game genre is exploding with sales up 80 percent. What's more, traditionally non-music games give musician opportunities to, as hip-hop producer Dan "The Automator" Nakamura" points out, "to not work with the regular music label system, which is so screwed up right now. You can do the kind of record you want to get done and know it will reach a different audience." Nakamura should know, since he scored NBA 2K7, which featured Mos Def, E-40 and A Tribe Called Quest. As gaming and the music industry move closer and closer together, why can't I help feeling they've still got better-looking groupies? Waaay better. Brian Ashcraft

Music, Games, Kindred Spirits [Reuters]

Last Friday I told you about the Xbox 360 versus PlayStation 3 event at the famous Apollo Theater in Harlem, with large screen side-by-side 1080p comparisons of the consoles running the same game. Now the results are in, and it looks like the 360 took the event hands-down.

"Xbox is flat-out better both visually and mechanically," said H3's chief communications officer and world class gamer, Adrian "Hollywood" Walton. "When 'Fight Night' is played at its highest level with the highest possible resolution, everyone was able to see Xbox 360's superiority to PS3 as clear as can be on H3TV."

Xbox Scores First Round Knock Out of PS3 [SmartMoney.com - Thanks Oliver]

The battle between the PS3 and 360 wages on in Harlem next Wednesday, as hip-hop stars go head-to-head on giant screens in the famous Apollo Theater. The event is sponsored by H3 Enterprises, a company dedicated to video games, big screens, and the hip-hop lifestyle. The plan is to have the two systems playing the same game side-by-side so the public can get a good idea of the differences between the two.

Tickets will be available on a first-come, first-served basis, but the organizers are expecting a standing room only crowd, according to the company's communications officer, Adrian "Hollywood" Walton. "Everyone playing and watching will get an up-close visual comparison of each system's imagery and will be able to judge for themselves who's really best — Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3," Walton says.

Biz Buzz: It's video-game time at the Apollo [The Star Ledger]