​NYC's annual three-day Blip Festival, which starts tonight, is the world's most important celebration of "chiptune" music, wherein gamers-turned-composers write songs using their favorite ancient video game consoles. Wanna see how the sausage gets made? Let's take a look at the consoles that will serve as the backbones for the festival's music.

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The Four Loko Protest And/Or Vigil, Starring Anamanaguchi
Union Square Park
Wednesday, November 17

Better Than: Going down without a fight.

Even before New York banned Four Loko, the energy drink that supplements the caffeine equivalent of three cups of coffee with taurine, guarana, wormwood, and 12-percent ABV, the threat of such a ban had been looming for months. Momentum really started to build by late September, after a new batch of 17- and 18-year-old incoming freshmen found the drink waiting for them at their respective college campuses. Still, few were prepared for the official announcement, and no one could have anticipated the public outcry that has followed. That outcry culminated last night with the Four Loko candlelight vigil, held at Union Square.

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Ryder Ripps

Poor lady

One detail that didn't emerge during our long conversation with Brooklyn chiptune composers Anamanaguchi, regarding their wish-fulfilling project of scoring the Scott Pilgrim videogame, was whether or not the band planned to release the tracks separately. So we wrote guitarist/NES guru Peter Berkman, who told us, "We're working out the details on the soundtrack. Hope we get it figured out soon!" But no fear about the logistics, @StrikerObi, Berkman promises that, one way or another, you will be able to have Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game MP3s on your iPod, wink wink.

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"I feel a huge connection to Scott Pilgrim: we all grew up playing in bands, we all grew up with the John Hughes-esque emotional drama drowning our lives. So all I had to do was write music and it would work."

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game pixel art by Paul Roberston

Every few years, gloriously awkward music nerds get their very own vulnerable onscreen antiheroes. This year, Scott Pilgrim will be for music-blog-scanning MP3 hoarders what High Fidelity's Rob was to SPIN subscribers in 2000. The title character of the most recent film from Shaun of the Dead/Hot Fuzz director Edgar Wright, Scott Pilgrim is a scrawny bassist who falls for a rollerblading indie girl named Ramona Flowers. New to town, she has the unusual baggage of seven evil exes; in order to date her, he must individually defeat them all. Personified by geek heartthrob Michael Cera and based on illustrator Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-part graphic novel, Scott Pilgrim the protagonist is as much creative-underclass epitome as fighting-game avatar: successful combat moves register numerical points and achievements (e.g. "64 HIT COMBO"); extra lives are gained from grabbing levitating pixelated faces; bathroom visits deplete Pilgrim's "Pee Bar."

So logically, with the August 13 release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World comes Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game on August 10, an 8-bit side-scrolling brawler that pits the unlikely warrior against his paramour's former loves. Also logically (and awesomely), Ubisoft asked Brooklyn's own 8-bit-punks Anamanaguchi to score the cartoon melee, an opportunity the band's chief composer Pete Berkman admits was a "dream come true." Hence, Berkman and guitarist/Gameboy manipulator Ary Warnaar were "psyched beyond belief" to get on the phone and tell us about the experience.

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