Nintendo’s Famicom still gets releases 33 years later, like this all-star chiptunes album

Stephen Kleckner
Updated
8-Bit Music Power Famicom album
8-Bit Music Power Famicom album

Collectors of the Famicom, the Japanese version of the Nintendo Entertainment System, just received a new cartridge to try and add to their collection. But it this one isn’t a game.

Columbus Circle, a Japanese manufacturer and retailer of various gaming products, announced it’s releasing 8-Bit Music Power, a new album featuring some legendary old-school game musicians who have worked on titles such as Xevious, Star Hector, Pac-Land, and Summer Carnival 92′ Recca. These retro game artists are also teaming up with current chiptune genre talent such as Prof. Sakamoto, Tappy, and Saitone. The thing is, this album is on a Famicom cartridge. In order to play the album, players need a working Famicom. Westerners require either an Famicom adaptor for their NES or one of several retro game-playing systems, such as the Retron 5.

8-Bit Music Power costs 4,104 Yen ($34 U.S.), with a release date of January 31. This Famicom album is available for preorder from Amazon Japan, although when I tried to place my order, it had a restriction on my California address. This likely means this product is only going to ship in Japan, and that I need to start bugging friends that live in the country who can order it on my behalf and bounce the album over to me.

The album itself comes from Japanese artist RIKI, who released a quick teaser on their website:

To pull the release together, RIKI has gathered a group of various artist who have all either first started on retro video game projects or whose work is heavily influenced by that era of gaming. The list of talent appearing on 8-Bit Music Power include: