8-Bit Jesus: New Christmas Chip-tune Album
2 12 2008
EDIT: I had to take my dog to the vet today (12-15-2008) for bladder stones. At only six months, the only realistic option is surgery. For anyone that has said to themselves, “I would pay money for this album”, please visit my most recent post about the situation, and how you can help and get a physical copy of the full version of 8-Bit Jesus.
I’ve been working on a new album for the past few months and am releasing a free MP3 download of the first half - sort of a preview, I suppose. The album is entitled 8-Bit Jesus and contains 9 tracks thus far. Each one is a chip-tune version of a classic Christmas song done in the style of a different NES game.
Below you will find links to download the full album as a .rar or .zip, or each track individually.
Due to the recent increase in downloads, my server is apparently unable to handle it all! If you experience problems, please visit one of the following mirrors for the 8-Bit Jesus download. A Huge thanks to those that have volunteered their precious bandwidth and server requests to accomodate this!
Download the entire Album in RAR
Download the entire Album in ZIP
We Three Konami
Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja
Silent Knight Man
Carol of the Belmonts
Joy to Commando
Deck the Kremlin
Little Drummer Nemo
The Legend of Noel
Super Jingle Bros.
I hope you enjoy. Feedback would be wonderful.
This is awesome. I hope you release the other half soon. Thanks!
YOU DID THE LITTLE DRUMMER!!!!!!!!! <3 Yay!!! Thank you!!!!
Thanks! Hopefully, the other half will be done by Christmas - if not, by January 1st.
Carol of the Belmonts = my freakin fav!
Sick stuff bro!
Holy crap, this is the greatest thing ever. May you live to be a thousand years old, sir.
Oh my gosh… next week is my birthday, and I’m going to go ahead and consider this an early birthday present. Everything about this makes me happy.
Ummm… I found these and immediately told my friend “8-bit Christmas carols!” and squeed at her. I am SUCH a nerd, but thank you for making my day.
The following tracks were AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
We Three Konami
Carol of the Belmonts
Little Drummer Nemo
Super Jingle Bros.
I hope you release the other soon, which I’m almost certain will be MORE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I also very much enjoyed “Carol of the Belmonts”, but I would love to hear a Metroid title music inspired “Silent Night”. Great work!!
“Deck the Kremlin” and “Little Drummer Nemo” currently link to the same track. Is the other one missing, or is this just a mistake?
What I heard was fun, though!
Thanks for the heads up Sparky! The link is fixed.
You did an amazing job of capturing the essence of each theme. I can only hope there’s a Mega Man (2 or 3) lurking on the future other half. This is seriously awesome!
Holy damn, this is some of the best music for the holidays ever!!
Rocking that Little Drummer Boy man. Great track ! ! !
OMG this album is goin straight to the mp3 player have a merry christmas to the creator and all a good night
whoa dude this is so GOOD!
great idea and even better execution
(stumble from hipsterplease.com)
Oh. My. God.
This is terrific! Beats the hell out of the same boring 50-year-old Christmas tunes I have to hear all the time. “Carol of the Belmonts” is a particular favorite.
This stuff is pretty fantastic! My roommate sent it to me and now I’m sharing the link with as many pals as possible. Good job!! Can’t wait to hear more!
Thank you so much to everyone! The second half is coming along nicely, and should be along shortly.
Gina, you got your Mega Man 2/3 track
Absolutely wonderful. My family and I just trimmed our tree while rocking out to this. Thanks for making an awesome day even awesomer.
Awesome stuff man. Really looking forward to more!
-Zem
Hey there Doc Ock!
Just wanted to let you know I really enjoyed this. I’m sure you know the Japanese versions of a lot of famous NES music (Zelda, Castlevania) had better renditions due to the FDS sound chip. It might be something you want to research and add into your songs to break up the monotony. Good job though!
Supremely superbly awesomely boss. You are the king of the world. Oh, wait…that’s Jesus. Well, you’ll always be number 2 in my book.
Awesome. Can’t wait for the second half.
Where the hell is the donation box?
Doc, I really like what you’ve done - especially We Three Konami. My only criticism would be that the tracks are all very short.
1 word: WIN
Carol of the Belmonts++
Furtivespy, I know what you mean. It’s a combination of the fact that most Christmas songs have a repeating tune with 20 different verses and the fact that most NES tunes are about a minute long on average.
Since each track is generally done in the style of level music, they are relatively loopable, which means one can listen to it on repeat 4 or 5 times through and not realize how many times they have really listened to it. I think short and sweet could apply here, and I’d rather have someone listen to a track a bunch of times to get their fill than wish the track had ended before it’s over.
Thank you for the kind words.
Wow, just wow. I sat and laughed while I enjoyed listening to these tracks. They are so spot on! Made me want to go download an NES emulator. I was just going to say “Where my Link/Zelda!” when the last track played. Bravo, doctor Octoroc, bravo!
You’ve combined my favorite christmas song and my favorite NES era game into one incredible bit of music there with Carol of the Belmonts.
What kind of software / hardware are you using to make this? Makes me want to dig out my MIDINES
What, no jazzy Ice Climbers version of White Christmas or Santa Claus Is Coming To Town?
Justin Moravertz - I’m using a few plugins which replicate the wave forms that NES used for all of its voices (Triforce and Toad). You can find these plugins at http://www.tweakbench.com. They work with just about any sequencing program, but most people have found it to work best with FL Studio. I would prefer to use MiniNES but I have been unable to locate it.
Yaanu - I’ll keep that in mind. I have a few tracks left to do, and perhaps a few bonus tracks. Santa Claus is Coming To Town was one I was thinking about.
aweeeeeeeesome
This is brilliant. I didn’t know that I needed a Castlevania-styled Carol of the Bells, but I did, and it’s fantastic!
Can’t wait to hear the rest! Bravo!
This Rocks…carry on.
This is great. Keep up the good work!
These are amazing. You do a great job of incorporating not only the themes, but really keeping true to the original game styles. Great job. I love that it’s not just “chiptuned Christmas songs” because sure, that’s cool, but this demonstrates a true love for old skool gaming. BIG thumbs up, and I wrote about your album in my blog. I hope you get lots of recognition and cred for this!
Cool!
This is probably one of the best approaches towards Christmas music since.. some other thing. But seriously, this is awesome.
Oh my god man. Your Matrix Sprite tribute was amazing!! One of the most AWESOMEST fights in the trilogy. Also, you should set up a PayPal for this album. I’d pay for it.
Otakudad - I certainly appreciate the blogging community for getting the word out about this project. I thank you, and everyone else, for the digital “ink”. You guys and gals rock.
SwiftTheRedFox - To keep up with the gift giving theme, the rest of the album will be free for downoad, but I will be setting up a donation via PayPal for anyone who wishes to donate to the album and further Chip-Tune albums of mine (one of which will be classic shows such as The A-Team, Knight Rider, etc).
awesome. thanks so much for sharing!
Sweet dude. Love me some chip-tune and totally want show my support by throwing my dollar bills on ya. Uhh… that sounded dirty. Sorry about that. Anyways, keep up the good work!
Haha, no worries, Swift. Gave me a good laugh.
This was a great first part of the album! Loved every track, especially Carol of the Belmonts. Been listening through it a billion times, I just can’t stop!
Keep up the good work.
Gave you a plug on my site - good stuff! Hope “Sleigh Ride” is on your list for part two - perhaps a la “Duck Tales?”
I love how you’ve been able to take the elements of the musical styles we unconsciously identify and weave christmas songs into them; the resemblence is uncanny in a bunch of them too. The only downside for me is that The Legend of Noel ends kinda silly.
As for requests, I loves me some Goonies 2, but I’m eagerly waiting to see what you can come up with.
Super Jingle Bros is the best, thank you
THANK YOU! My head exploded. Carol of the Belmonts FTW.
Blogged it on both my blogs:
http://www.secondskinfilm.com
and
http://www.popten.net
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
Loved it!! Thanks!
I loved this. Now I have something to listen to while putting up the Christmas tree and drinking eggnog tonight!
AMAZING work — these are fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing these — can’t wait for the second installment!
absolutely genius.
The 8-bits microcontrollers returned with full power incarnated in Arduino (http://www.arduino.cc/) boards and clones. You is part of this new culture.
I will love to see more jobs like this.
Congratulations!
I had no idea what to expect before I listened to these tracks, but I am genuinely impressed. This is great stuff. Many thanks for your efforts and generosity.
Very good work! I really enjoyed super jingle bros and the legend of noel I love seeing cool projects like this.
Thanks for the excellent soundtrack to my friend’s Xmas tree decorating party!
Finally!!! Christmas music that I can enjoy! This is Spectacular!
Finally, Christmas music that won’t cause me to shove glass ornaments up my nose and into my brain! Thank you good sir! Thank you.
Tossed a quick review up on my gaming page at Examiner.com: http://www.examiner.com/x-1025-NY-Multiplayer-Gaming-Examiner~y2008m12d9-Christmas-tunes-go-retro-with-8Bit-remakes
8-Bit Amazing…
So thanks to Shaun Inman, I’ve discovered this little gem: 8-Bit Jesus Christmas Album. Absolutely frickin’ awesome. Go check it out!
……
While I usually hate Christmas albums, this one is worth a listen. Most of the songs are more then just a re-playing of all the same old songs, you’ve made a good effort to make something new instead of just playing the same thing on a non-traditional instrument.
Absolutely fabulous, I love how you capture both the spirit of the game and holiday song! I cant wait to sneak this onto all my friends ipods and drown out my co-workers with a little 8-bit Jesus!
“Service Temporarily Unavailable” - why no torrent?
Hey brother, I put up a blog and a link that’s hosted on my web site. So anyone who can’t download from here, go here:
The Jude Abides
This is very cool, i’m sending it to all my geek friends.
I’ve set up a drop.io mirror here: http://drop.io/8bitjesus people can download and stream the tracks from there too.
genuis! I love it
Enno - I didn’t anticipate the amount of traffic I’ve gotten thus far, so the server can’t handle this many server requests at a time. I just upgraded the hosting but it may take up to 24 hours to be effective. In the mean time, I’m providing onsite mirrors which will hopefully cut down on file transfer time and allow more people to actually view the site. So far, it seems that it has not been too effective.
Jude and Brent - Thank you both so much for providing those mirrors. Hopefully this will free up some request time and allow more people to download the compilation.
Awesome! Great job man. I hope you include some Megaman inspired songs in the other half
This is fantastic. Great job! Mentioned your music on my blog.
This is 100% awesome. I think the Super Jingle Bros should be renamed to 8 Jingle Eyes. Sounds a lot more like 8 Eyes than Mario.
This is pure awesomeness. You are making lots of new fans today, Doc. <3
My faves are Little Drummer Nemo and Carol of the Belmonts. Little Nemo had such a great soundtrack, it really deserves more remix love.
Requests (all NES games):
Dr. Mario
Dragon Warrior
Final Fantasy I
The Guardian Legend
Metroid
Startropics
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I-III)
Bahamut - I do have a Mega Man 3 inspired track.
Kevin - Thanks for the post!
Leah - You got three of your requests
This is vulcan awesome. I have a couple of holiday partys and events to play and I am going to try and work em into a set. If that’s alright.
Barbuk chez JU !
Great songs, up the chipset !
This is fantastic. Very well done. Keep it up!
*downloaded at work*
…HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME! *runs and tells coworkers*
This is just what my holiday needed. Can’t wait for the second half of the album! Thank you so very much!
My god… this is a modern masterpiece!!!! Merry Christmas to you Doctor Octoroc!
Ah, this is a really spiffy idea, and it sounds good, too! I’m DJing on my college campus’s radio station this semester, and on Thursday I’m doing an all Christmas music show, so I was wondering if it would be all right if I played Super Jingle Bros. and maybe another track, too? If it is not all right, I don’t mind at all, but I’m trying to pull an hour of the nerdiest holiday music known to man. Thanks very much for taking the time to read this!
Ditto to what SuperPope said.
I love these songs, but a Metroid Silent Night would be geekgasmic.
Happy holidays! Merry Christmas! May you have good cheer this holiday season.
This album is awesome - really getting me in the mood. Cannot wait for the second part.
Thanks Doc.
Just awesome. Oddly, this makes me feel better about the general state of the world… just knowing that there’s someone out there making songs like this!
These songs are awesome. I really like Joy to the Commando. I’ve used Super Jingle Bros. in my annual Christmas video. For these, I just film some of my ornaments and decorations and put some music with it. I doubt I’ll have a video this unique in the future.
Missy - You shouldn’t even have to ask! Play these for anyone, anywhere you want. I’m honored.
Euterpe - I have a Metroid track for the second half, but it’s not Silent Night…I’ll give you a hint: O, Little Town of Zebes.
Joe Chip - That is exactly why I created this album.
Ben M - Thanks for the video plug!
Truly amazing. You made our day at work as we played it over and over and over. Great stuff! Thank you ever so much!
I just listened and I loved it. The way you incorporate the music style of the game but turn it into a Christmas tune. Ryu The Red Nosed Ninja was awesome and being a huge Legend of Zelda fan, I had to appreciate The Legend of Noel. A Christmas Final Fantasy song would be top shelf.
Keep it up!
freaking awesome. been on a steady diet of A Charlie Brown Christmas, Bing Crosby, A Very Special Christmas, Muppets, etc. for weeks now and needed something different. you supplied it.
thanks!
Glad to see so many people liking this as much as I do. I know you can’t accommodate all requests, but River City Ransom would be just oh so amazing. Oh Oh Oh! And Blaster Master! Man, I hope you make this a tradition!
This is super! Can’t wait for the second half to come out!
Each of these tracks is made of 100% WIN AND Awesome!
As an old gamer from way back when (I’ll be 57 in a few weeks) these are just freakin’ perfect.
Thank you!
Wow! It’s awesome!
Let’s the classics return! 80-90s are back! It was really good time.
Awesome! I’m mixing these in amongst my house mate’s playlist of “normal” christmas songs!
Never fail to make me smile - these are the perfect antidote to the mindless pap that normally gets churned out over the musical airwaves at this time of year - congrats on your awesomeness!
Reminds me of the C-64 christmas demo
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NVVtOOZPuGM
Extremely good, what more could I say
Excellent work, very nicely done.
Keep up the awesome work. I was skeptical but you pulled it off with flying colors. I can’t wait for the second part of the album.
Congratulations!
All the songs are beautiful and cool!
bye, Bernardo Ferrari, Brazil.
Good tunes, I really enjoyed them.
I’m suprised that these are in MP3 format, though. Given the nature of the music you could have shrunk them down to about 5% of the size by using a tracker format such as MOD or S3M, and maybe even be in better quality. Of course you could still offer MP3 links to those who don’t have a player.
–R
Judging by the mass of comments I would hazard a guess you already know this: the music is wonderful! I love how the style of the game music was preserved and it made me realize how varied the music was even on those limited systems. Great work!
must have second half!!! my favorite is The legend of noel or Ryu the red nosed ninja. but they’re all really cool. FINALLY!!! really good holiday music for us geeks!
Great job, very creative.
Amazing!!! I’m Brazilian so sorry about my English… when I heard about it, couldn’t even believe. Incredible work…Congratulations!! I loved it!!! May I use these song in my site?( of course I’ll give you credits)… d-.-b
Great stuff. Do more . Many thanks
This is great stuff! You all deserve dozens of high fives. And there’s another half?! Oh yes!
These are dead on… great work!
Holy hell, man, you killed these. Really nice work. We did a series for our production music catalog last year (called Degenerate Gamer, if you’re interested!), but they were more about using these classic sound cards as jumping off points for new music… you really nailed the legit vibe of these tunes.
Great stuff, Octoroc! I think the real strength is how you captured the mood of certain games / publishes in terms of *arrangement*. This is actually far more important than the voicing, which is also nice. Carol of the Belmonts is probably my favorite, and I hope for more Castlevania (Simon’s quest?) in the full version. I’d also like to hear some carol in the theme of Blaster Master level 1… Lastly, It might be nice to throw in a few ’sound effects’ here and there, maybe a few ‘jump’ sounds in super jingle bros, or a whip sound for Carol of the Belmonts.
I’ve got 8-Bit Jesus on repeat right now - thanks much. Would it be cool to use some of the tracks in a video that I’m working on for a website called geekadelphia.com? We cover all things geek in Philadelphia, and we’re doing a video for our 2008 Geeky Gift guide (games, comics, Batman, etc.), and I freaked out when I found 8-Bit Jesus because of how well it would work for the video. So check out our site and let me know if it would be cool to use some of the tunes. Thanks!
I really love this. Thanks.
I just have one request. When you put up the full album could you say which game each song is related to? I was unsure with a couple of those.
Arr… that’s so wonderfull… you saved my christmas
Adam - I’ve gotten other requests for a Blaster Master track, which I will try to get to. I did use a few sound effects in the newer tracks, but I wanted to find that thin line between too obvious and to obscure as far as being able to tell which game was which. I do have another Castlevania track, but it’s styled more after the third game. I could easily make every track on here a Castlevania track (since the soundtrack sounds like evil Christmas songs, haha) but it’s hard enough as it is to choose which games to use, since there are far more Nintendo games than Christmas songs. Also, thank you for the kind words.
Cole - I figured that part of the fun would be trying to guess, and that between the sound and the names, it would give it away. I wanted to know if people could guess which ones were which, and after all the feedback I’ve gotten, I have a better sense of that. If you really want to know, that info is in the ID Tags for the mp3’s. Just check the track info in iTunes, WMP, or whatever player you’re using and I have that info there.
Robert - I’m glad I could save your Christmas. I imagine you felt much like I did about Christmas music before I created the album (which is also why I created the album).
Hey Doctor Octoroc, one day when you have a lot of tracks from a lot of holidays, for exemple Valentine’s Day, it’s a good idea to sell the songs in Itunes Store to get money!
Some sugestions to next season:
- Metroid
- Mortal Kombat
- Megaman (Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja it’s like to Megaman)
I don’t know if have this games in NES because it’s for SNES:
Tetris
Final Fantasy
Pac Man
Star Wars
Kirby
Bye
This is wonderful. And the length of each piece is in keeping with what inspired you in the first place.
Thank you for making this music and making it available, too!
“Carol of the Belmonts” has got to be one of the most perfect things I have ever heard.
Tony - Good eye on the length topic. I tried to make some songs last a bit longer but the medium kind of lends itself to short but sweet. Thanks for the kind comment.
Johnathan Dobres - I might have to agree. A lot of people like “Carol of the Belmonts”. The name just fit so well. For the second half of the album I have a track entitled “O Come, All Ye Vampires”. I’m sure you’ll like that one as well.
Cute =)
Wow, good stuff. Legit, its definately worth listening too over and over. This is better than some nintendo songs I got
LOLing @ the Castlevania soundtrack “sounds like evil Christmas songs”
Fantastic! Thanks for releasing this.
one request: Domenik the Donkey…. perhaps City Connection or Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out? Or maybe Little Marble (madness) Boy? I love your music very much. Its all my 4 year old wants to listen to.
You have made me incredibly happy with this, thank you so much!
@ Carol of the Belmonts: nailed it!
Thanks!
hahaha! that is brilliant christmas album!
Wicced you are beeing played on the radio in Norway now on Drid Machine!
http://smis.no/?page_id=94
Coolstuff
Great Album!
Each and every track on this album is enjoyable, and very funny. You are a genius. Can’t wait for the second installment (:
Heh, I just noticed that the “Ryu the red-nosed ninja” id3 comment says it’s a remix of “Rudolph the red-nosed ninja” and the Ninja Gaiden theme. Reindeer Gaiden? (-:
i was just wondering why you offered an rar-version while it’s only about 40 KiB smaller than the zip-version..
maybe you could offer vorbis-variants intead? or flac, for the 8-bit-audiophiles
anyway, very nice music
This is SICK! Great work! I’m telling everyone I know to check it out. Please can you let me know when the other half is done and about any future releases? Thanks man.
Great work. I’m seriously expecting sooner someone may make a video clip with this album along with the games. In deed, I want to see it.
Thank you for sharing!
Woah, got this album from my friend as a present and I have to say it’s great!
Keep up the good work!
Top drawer . . .TOP . . . Drawer!
You really did a fantastic job on this, good Doctor. I am looking forward to hearing the rest.
I wrote a little piece on ya today (including a plea for some friendly donations for yer l’il pups plight. Poor purebreds, always having troubles . . .). Will write a follow up when you finish the album
thank you for this.
i wish you and your dog the best.
I’m from Perú, South América. Just to say: “Two thumbs up”!!!!!!!!. This is a good christmas gift. Thank you very much Dr. Octoroc. Have a marry Cristmas an a happy new year.
I love these, and I will be sending some money your way very soon! Would you mind if I cut them into ringtones to help promote them to the listeners of our show and readers of our forums? I will absolutely recommend they come here and pay for the full album, I would even be happy to give you the cuts that you could then sell on your own.
I’m pretty sure “Ryu the Red Nosed Ninja” is going to be my year-round ringtone. Love it!
[...] 2, 2008 - I released a 9-track preview of a christmas album WIP, entitled 8-Bit [...]
Nice! Thank you ever so much!
The best one is “We Three Konami”