Have you heard Anamanaguchi?

Instead of chiptune inspired music, how about music that inspired chiptune ? Yellow Magic Orchestra had an important impact (namely) on '80s/'90s era video game music. Here’s Rydeen (1979).

I don’t know how “pure” you want your chiptunes to be, but for my money Master Boot Record is some of the best stuff out there. I would definitely say it’s at the very least gaming inspired if not pure chiptunes, and it kicks all kinds of ass. They’ve done a lot of covers of classic game music - Bloody Tears is a great one, as well as their cover of the Doom theme. But I really love their original stuff too. Internet Protocol is a 10/10 album to me.

Slightly less chiptunes but still absolutely gaming inspired is their side project Keygen Church. Tenebre Rosso Sangue from the Ultrakill soundtrack is probably their best known track. It’s sort of a chiptunes adjacent castlevania-metal vibe? It’s hard to describe but it absolutely destroys.

Chipzel has already gotten a mention, but I have to say her stuff is fantastic, especially Chipped of the Necrodancer and Super Hexagon.

Developer Konjak (Joakim Sandberg) did good work on the Noitu Love 2: Devolution soundtrack, which is a free download (zip file) from his website and is very chiptune. The actual link on the website’s main page has an errant slash at the end that has to be deleted for the download to work. Some of the album can be found on YouTube if you want a preview.

Another banger chiptune to go for comes from Zircon and the work he did for the Demon Truck Soundtrack, especially The Devil’s Mudflap. It’s 16-bit Genesis goodness, and the game is pretty fun! Zircon’s done stuff for several games and is generally an all-around musical badass.

Herbert Weixelbaum’s Tanzmusik on the album 8-Bit Operators: The Music of Kraftwerk is a total earworm. The album is full of good chiptunes, but that one’s my personal favorite.

You might also enjoy Adventure by Adventure. Very upbeat and energetic stuff.

Lastly, I have to give a shoutout to Zweihänder. All his stuff is pretty good, and much of it game-inspired.

Enjoy!

Some radios:

• Nectarine - https://www.scenestream.net/demovibes/
• Kohina - https://www.kohina.com/
• CVGM - https://radio.cvgm.net/demovibes/
• https://rainwave.cc/all/#!/
• http://www.slayradio.org/home.php

Toby fox has been in my top listens for the last 3 years at least.

EX-LYD is full of bops

Gooseworx is nice

Leon Chang has some good ones.

Ben briggs too.

A_rival

Nick Nitro

I like to throw all the songs of a certain type i like into a spotify playlist and use the playlist radio to add more and find many other artists

Anything by Ben Prunty https://benprunty.bandcamp.com/

I’m surprised that Chipzel (of Super Hexagon soundtrack fame) has yet to be mentioned: https://chipzelmusic.bandcamp.com/

these are more rock than chiptune, but very much video game inspired!

• https://bitbrigade.bandcamp.com
• https://doubleferrari.bandcamp.com

Crawl OST by Alex Yoder. All his other stuff is pretty good as well, but this one is my absolute favorite. Too bad he doesn’t release stuff very often.

Not exactly like the ones you oncluded, but I really like this one: Challenger - Lemmino

If you want to combine chiptune with sea shanties The Longest Johns have an album that is all chip tune version of sea shanties. It’s called Commodore 1864.

I recently discovered IsabelleChiming and I am in love. They do remakes of classic gaming soundtracks.

https://isabellechiming.bandcamp.com/album/the-legend-of-zelda-remade

https://isabellechiming.bandcamp.com/album/zelda-ii-the-adventure-of-link-remade

…and I wrote the soundtrack to the recent Game Boy Color homebrew game, Dangan GB2, if you’re interested… 👀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eJduIfPzsk

4mat is amazing. Started in the demoscene in the 90s and did a bunch of game soundtracks

My favorite album of his is Origins but Decades might be more what you’re looking for

Rainbowdragoneyes makes good chiptune music (no fusion). Very underappreciated, it feels like.

Edit: added link