As a child I spent countless hours playing Super Mario Land, Tetris and Pokémon red. The DMG's unlit screen is the main reason I first went to the opticians and started wearing glasses.

Skip 20 years ahead and here at Laser Dog Games, we're in need of chiptunes for our upcoming game. I've enjoyed chip music for a long time, and even created tracks myself but I had always found it difficult to make them sound "authentic". I've tried countless plugins and effects, but nothing sounded like real Gameboy/NES music.

I've been a fan of Chipzel ever since I first played Super Hexagon. In fact, her albums were played constantly when we were developing ALONE. Chipzel's music is full of energy and sounds fantastic but most importantly, it has that "authentic" sound. It wasn't until earlier this year when I saw this vine on her Twitter that I kinda had an "oh shit!" moment. "Wait, she actually makes the whole track on a Gameboy?!?". Feeling inspired, I opened a new tab in my browser and optimistically googled "How do you make music on a Gameboy?". This led me to the wonderful LSDJ.

LSDJ (or "Little Sound DJ") is a Tracker that can be loaded onto a special Gameboy cartridge and allows you to make music directly on the console, using its awesome sound chip. The music produced sounds exactly like it was made on a Gameboy, because it actually was.

Excited, I bought LSDJ, a couple of cartridges and ordered an old Gameboy from eBay. Soon enough, I was writing my own chiptune music on my old-new Gameboy.