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!

This is perhaps the most glorious self-promotional thing I've ever seen a company do. Not only do they have the attitude down, the lyrics are pretty damn inventive too.

Every day is a fight, there's no room for bloopers
Bugs coming at us like in Starship troopers

And just when you think it can't get any better, Techno Viking shows up. I cried real tears.

I've gone ahead and included the full lyrics for the song below. Feel free to sing along, though if you're at work you might want to keep it down a bit - the language gets a bit rough.

Thanks to everyone who directed us to the clip! We owe you more than you will ever know.

Lyrics:
Intro
First off - let me make a short introduction
I'm the space 5.0, keeping EVE from destruction
Guard is the name, Lead master of the game
Top dog in the gamemaster hall of fame

Im chillin at my desk with two girls and one pimp cup
Sippin champagne, reading mails checkin what's up
Isk spamming scum bags disturbing the peace?
WOOP WOOP its the sound of space police!

Every day is a fight, there's no room for bloopers
Bugs coming at us like in Starship troopers
We help when we can, every child, every man
Treat the boogie man to a permanent ban!

CHORUS x2

We're CCP! We march on fearlessly!
Excellent is what we strive to be!

If you're going to follow us to the top

HARDEN THE FUCK UP!

You best watch out bitch if you're an exploiting scammer
Guard will gank you in the face with his big ban hammer
Remove all your Isk , throw your ass in the slammer
Make you share a cell with a manic ISK spammer

Like a never ending spam thread on racist biking
This song has something for everyone's liking
Holy shit I see local spiking

...ladies and gents, its techno Viking!

Chorus x2

Ever flowing - never standing still
We roll with the punches, move in for the kill
The competition ends up six feet in the ground
With fists full of awesome we go round after round

United we stand never ever growing weary
We cannot fall cause gravity is just a theory
We reach higher than the giants in operations
Patience soon well be crip walking in stations

We're more agile than a president dodging a shoe
We need three continents for our massive crew
From Atlanta to Shanghai to the Icelandic nation
Throw your hands up for World Domination!

Chorus

The Rock Band Network, which I described in detail earlier today, allows people to digitally transform music that they have the rights to into music playable on Rock Band.

The game's developers at Harmonix are anticipating such a diverse selection of uploaded music that they are introducing many new subgenres into the Rock Band Network store, various slices of heavy metal, for example.

Uploaded songs need not be constructed of the standard Rock Band parts of vocals, drum, lead guitar and bass. Song coders can utilize as many or as few of those parts as possible. They may submit a song that is only a single vocal track or just vocals plus drums — the combo that made me think of rap, which would fit the RBN store's hip-hop subgenre. Song coders will be able to flex the standards if not break the rules. They can't code two vocal tracks or three guitar parts.

It's hard to say yet which kinds of music will work well. It's easy to assume people will try anything and everything. Coding and playing Rock Band with vocal-and-drum or vocal-only rap could be a mess. One of the Harmonix guys' joke suggestions of Klezmer music could be great, could be disastrous.

Like the rest of the Rock Band Network, the consequences are in the hands of the community that develop around the service and the potential of the technology involved.

"We don't know how this is going to turn out," Harmonix community moderator Alex Navarro said near the end of the demonstration I got of the Rock Band Network. "We are going to be giving people the keys to the castle."

So...make it sound good in there and try not to wreck the place?

(This post's image shows sample songs placed in Rock Band Network store. Imagine anything in there.)

Kids, if you pirate software, your mother will be dragged into the street and beaten by the police. At least that seems to be the message in the preview video from the Software & Information Industry Association, which features cheeky teens copying games, parents resisting arrest with kitchen utensils, and anime prison tattoos. Double Def DP returns from the 1991 original, still proudly kicking the mildly sexually suggestive name. And just when you think it can't get any more surreal, the Klingons show up.

The SIIA website says that the full video is coming this summer, though I'm betting they showed the best bits in this teaser and the rest of it is perfectly normal and thought provoking. Still, it's good to see that the association hasn't abandoned its fighting software piracy through sheer absurdity strategy after all these years.

Coming Summer 2009! [Software & Information Industry Association via Game Politics]

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[Fukupayme]

Music Icon Chuck D and Super-Producer Just Blaze Lend Talents to NBA Ballers®: Chosen One™

Chuck D to Provide In-Game Commentary for Next Installment of Midway's Popular Basketball Franchise.

Just Blaze Producing Theatrical-Style Score.

CHICAGO—(BUSINESS WIRE)—Midway Games Inc. (NYSE: MWY), a leading interactive entertainment software publisher and developer, today announced that music icon Chuck D and super-producer Just Blaze will both have prominent roles in NBA Ballers®: Chosen One™, the next installment in the popular NBA Ballers franchise that is scheduled to ship for the Xbox 360™ and PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system in Spring 2008.

Chuck D, the famed front man and founder of Public Enemy, will serve as announcer and studio-host for the Chosen One tournament, and also provide play-by-play commentary throughout the game.

"The talents of Chuck D and Just Blaze will greatly enhance the NBA Ballers: Chosen One experience, as players live the fantasy lifestyle of an NBA Superstar," said George Gomez executive producer, Midway Amusement Games. "Chuck D is one of the most recognizable voices in music history, while Just Blaze has produced multiple chart-topping hits. Together they'll ensure that NBA Ballers: Chosen One will feature a sound to match the game's amazing graphics and gameplay."

Just Blaze, who has produced tracks for best-selling artists such as Jay-Z, Usher, Kanye West, Busta Rhymes, T.I. and many more, will produce the entire instrumental score for NBA Ballers: Chosen One.

The Just Blaze-produced score for NBA Ballers: Chosen One marks a bold departure from the current norm in sports video game soundtracks. Instead of a random compilation of tracks from various artists, the soundtrack will instead interact with the gameplay, much like a cinematic score, and will be a noticeable change from the typical use of licensed music in games.

Mega Man's plight is very similar to my own. In every Mega Man game, he faces totally insurmountable odds, giant robot armies coming from every which way. that's sorta' like me. As an educator, an artist, a producer, there generally is always an obstacle trying to prevent me from achieving a goal.

Interview with rapper Random [Capcom's Scarlett - Your Girl on the Inside]

This hot little ditty about Gears of War sounds like something Kriss-Kross recorded in a subway bathroom. But it is about Gears, so I'm posting it dammit.

The first Zelda rap commercial has nothing on this one. This guy lays it all down with his phat beats and early 90's rhyming skillz making the skinny white nerds from the original look like Vanilla Ice.

Actually, I think that's being far too kind to Vanilla Ice. Flynn De Marco

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]

Fear & Respect was an "innovative action adventure game" that was to be a collaboration between Boyz N The Hood director John Singleton and rapper Snoop Dogg. In short, it was Midway's Grand Theft Auto. The game has since been canned.

Why?

"Because we have enough data-points to know the hood thing is basically dead," says Midway's chief marketing officer Steve Allison. "It would be dead before it came out," he continues. "And you don't want to come out on a dead vibe."

Ironic, because bother Snoop and Singleton have made a career off of that "dead vibe." Midway continues to work with Snoop Dogg and the filmmaker on a new game that isn't in the "hood" genre, but most likely something else entirely. Two words: rainbows and unicorns. Brian Ashcraft

Interview Here [Gamasutra] via Eurogamer

Wherever pallid middle-aged nerds gather in Vancouver's basements to strap on Powergloves ("It's just so bad.") and exercise their rapmaster incompetence, we're there. Loading-Ready-Run's flowless rap tribute to gamin culture, l337. Florian Eckhardt