Anyone who spent the ’90s mashing hours’ worth of sweat equity into the grey controllers of a Nintendo Entertainment System is intimately familiar with the unique medleys of 8-bit music. Whether rescuing princesses from horn-laden antagonists or racing through a techno-dystopian landscape to free your fellow woodland brethren from the grasp of a menacing physician, the experience was complimented by the simple symphony brought forth from the old gaming systems, despite their limited storage and audio range.
Here in Sacramento, River City Rush is a celebration of digital nostalgia that will take place at MusicLandria on July 11; the festival will showcase local and regional artists in a unified theme of video games and music. Attendees will be able to see performances displaying nerd culture and Nerdcore, music produced through the use of Chiptune or the sounds from retro gaming hardware (like Got Item!) and interpretations of music from video games. The event looks to be a playground for former ’90s kids begrudgingly forced to grow up.
Some of those ’90s kids forced to grow up ended up becoming local Sacramento bands like GotItem!, and from the influence of their childhood hobbies, they have now come to embrace the subgenre known as Nintendocore. The band consists of Steven Dunn and Anthony Bruno, who met during a Super Smash Bros tournament and united over a shared love of music and video games.
Anthony Bruno (left) and Steven Dunn stare intently into a screen while playing Starfox Adventures on the Nintendo Gamecube. Photo Courtesy of Kevin Carpio.
“Got Item! was originally a side project,” Dunn says of the band’s genesis. “I used to be in an alternative rock band, but I’ve always loved the heavier types of music and video games and video game culture, so I kind of did my own thing where I could let all that out in the one outlet.”
Those unfamiliar with Nintendocore will recognize a similar tone and cadence to heavy metal or hardcore punk, with heavy tones, deep and spastic vocals and quick tempo bass. What may be new to fans of the metal/punk genres as a whole is the introduction of those 8-bit sounds mentioned earlier, as if sampled straight from an early publication of Mega
Man. Audiences should expect to hear tones and samples from their favorite video games, at least the noises that appeared before the advancement of technology saw a full audio spectrum begin gracing the speakers of PlayStation and Xbox players.
Got Item! exemplifies this Nintendocore subgenre, not only with the aggressive and multilayered screaming/singing of the lyrics, but to the lyrics themselves. Songs like “Friendly Fire” speak to the banality of righteousness, a common theme in fantasy video games, whereas songs such as “Pokémaniac” reflect the relentless drive to catch ‘em all. Similar to these examples, many songs in the Got Item! pantheon serve to humanize the lighthearted and whimsical plots of our childhood entertainment by emulating the manic disposition that would be required of a ’90s video game protagonist.
“Nintendocore has been a thing since about the mid-2000s on MySpace, where it first originated by a band called Horsethe Band. They used a lot of 8-bit synthesizers in their own music, kind of like a metalcore style, and they jokingly called themselves Nintendocore,” Dunn said. “I think in simplest terms, my definition [of Nintendocore] is any type of aggressive music that includes video game elements, whether it’s synthesizers, sampling, or even just elements lyrically.”