If you’re going to PAX be sure to check out two spectacular CrunchyCo-sponsored chiptune events!

1. Friday. 11am. Wolfman Theatre. 8-Bit Soundwaves: A Look into the World of Chiptune Music. Discuss everything 8-bit with Gabe Hayward (KGHB), Celene Ramadan (Leeni), Jack Waterman (Fighter X), Chris Lehfeldt (Infradead), and some or possibly all of the boys from Anamanaguchi.

2. Saturday. 1pm. JamSpace. Chiptune Showcase featuring Fighter X, Spamtron, Seanbad, Knife City, Zen Albatross, and possibly others!

This is going to be a weekend to remember, so DON’T MISS IT! Official PAX 2010 schedule here.

Seedless Volume 1 by Corey Lewis

Harmony Treblecleff, daughter of an eccentric inventor, finds herself teaming up with a band of seedless grape warriors and thrust into an epic mission to defend the galaxy from an army of rogue grapes gone bad! Join Harmony and the S-Grapes as they encounter wild animals, giant robots, and more on their quest to save the universe.

After starting out as a weekly web comic sponsored and hosted by Pink Gorilla Games, Image Comics picked up on the Seedless story and compiled it into one manga-sized book. With 128 full-color pages, the printed edition is packed with style and imagination, and chock full of supplemental material and bonus artwork by special guest artists (including CrunchyCo’s own Gabe Hayward!).

SEEDLESS Volume 1 debuts in comic book stores today, August 18, so go pick up your copy right now! The book is also available online at places like amazon.com (with free super saver shipping, ooh!).

For more work by Corey Lewis, check out his website: reyyy.com

Click here to view the embedded video.

Speaking of cool things from the wonderful land of Sweden, don’t forget to keep an eye on Project PAL!

Don’t miss CrunchyCo’s 8-Bit Soundwaves panel on Friday September 3rd, 11am in the Wolfman Theatre. We’ve made some additions to the line-up of panelists, including the knowledgeable local Infradead, and some of the Anamanaguchi boys! Below is the event as listed in the official PAX schedule:

Friday, 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM, Wolfman Theatre
8-Bit Soundwaves: A Look into the World of Chiptune Music

The chiptune phenomenon has exploded throughout the gamer scene! Chiptune (or 8-Bit) music has been rising in popularity since it first took shape in video games and computer programs of decades past. But chiptune isn’t just background music! More and more artists today are creating intricate and original musical compositions using retro gaming consoles as instruments. Find out where the method came from, where it’s going, and how artists such as Anamanaguchi, KGHB, and Fighter X are utilizing it to create unique 8-bit hits. Presented by CrunchyCo.com

Kreese has released footage from the long awaited (by me at least) Project PAL cartridges! They have the old “reggae” style sticker artwork, and will be available as a very limited run of PAL-B NES album carts. A total of 32 exclusive carts will be made, however 7 have already been given away! I hope I will be able to get one! Project PAL will eventually be released as a free ROM/NSF/MP3 digital download. Below is some information from Kreese himself:

Finally this project is ready! The project started in early 2010. It all began when NO CARRIER released the source for VegaPlay. It made me really happy because with VegaPlay I could present my songs with a menu and with some grahics. On a real NES system, using my PowerPak, after compiling it to a .nes rom-file. I made some test songs in FamiTracker (made by jsr). Then I created a multi-song-nsf and experimented with the VegaPlay source. First I had to learn how to inlude graphics. Using a program called yy-chr made it quite easy. I even had to learn a little about coding, pallettes and stuff. But Don Miller (NO CARRIER) had documented the source really good, so it wasn’t to hard to get into it…

Now I wanted to go the whole way and do like Alex Mauer already have done, release a cartridge filled with music! Then I started thinking of the songs, and felt like it would be hard to make 8-10 songs myself. First I tried to gather 10 different composers to participate on the planned cart. After a while I realised that it was only me and two more composers, motivated enough to finish anything. So now we started composing. Me, Wiklund and zabutom…

Even though we where only three people included in the composing it took a bit longer then I first expected. Along with the coding I started to play a bit more with the graphics. I got the idea to include some pictures of us, the composers. I also wanted it to be quite colorful and NO CARRIER helped me with some pallette shifting when changing songs. You can se the result here:

By this time I bought an eprom burner on eBay. Pinge80 a friend of mine had bought one a couple of months before. He had promised that he could help me and make some carts, but I felt like I wanted to learn the whole process myself. He supplied me with some donor carts, and some eproms. (Thanks mate!)

When the rom-file finally was ready I made a test burn in the eprom burner and after some struggling with “filling up the eproms” it worked! Seven donor carts, some soldering, label designing, label printing and the result looks like this:

- http://www.kreese.com

Fun fact: The stick-figure in the corner is my depiction of Aaron from our old comics!

That’s right, CrunchyCo’s very own Aaron Campion has turned 23 today! I found this awesome Polaroid of him while digging through my mess of computer files. I have no clue who took it, or where it came from (and he will probably think it’s embarrassing), but I think it’s pretty sweet!

Aaron and I have been good friends since we met in first grade. Ever since then, we’ve been doing imaginative projects together, from comic books, to board games, to movies, to music. Our combined minds have come up with some strange things things over the years, and we’ve always sort of lived in our own weird world together. You can probably tell just by looking at photos of us performing as KGHB, for example. For some reason, dressing up in tight shiny outfits and flailing around on a stage in front of people just makes a lot of sense to us. Or going back even further in our wacky musical endeavors, wearing Japanese masks and spewing out chunks of bloody banana to grindcore Mega Man remixes; now that made perfect sense! But probably just to us…

Anyway, the point is that no matter how old we’ve become, we’ve always been and will always be one unique duo who will continue creating things to share with the world together. I owe it to Aaron for kicking me back into gear when I procrastinate, and for always being so happy to perform the tedious tasks that I would never have the patience to do in my life.

So happy birthday to Aaron! Without him, this website of ours probably wouldn’t exist.

Artist: V/A

Year: 2010

Inspired by albums such as Alex Mauer’s VEGAVOX, Kreese and his ‘pals’ Wiklund and Zabutom came together to create the first European NES cart album! PAL and US cartridges will be coming soon for purchase and free download. Sticker artwork by Kreese and Ville Konttinen.

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