The Sound of the Game Boy

The Game Boy is remembered as a games machine, but it always had a second life in sound. Its audio hardware was almost comically simple: four thin channels, no orchestra, no warmth, just two square waves, a sliver of programmable wave and a channel of noise. And yet that tiny voice set off in two directions at once. It became an instrument that musicians still carry on stage today, and it became a muse that inspired records, tapes and radios out in the wider world. This page is the hub for both journeys, a single doorway into the whole strange story of the Game Boy and music.

We have split The Sound of the Game Boy into two features. One looks inward, at the music people make on the console itself. The other looks outward, at the music the console inspired other people to make. They are two sides of the same coin, and you can read them in either order. Together they show just how far four little channels can travel once they escape the plastic shell.

Part 1: The Game Boy as an instrument

In the first part we hand the Game Boy a cartridge and let it sing. Trackers and sequencers like Nanoloop and Little Sound Dj turn the grey brick into a pocket studio, and a worldwide scene of chiptune artists has been writing, performing and releasing music on real Game Boys for decades. Part 1 explains how the hardware actually makes its sound, how those cartridges coax songs out of it, and why a handheld from 1989 is still taken seriously as an instrument. If you have ever wondered what it means to play the Game Boy rather than play on it, start here. The museum even keeps a Nanoloop NL13 cartridge on the shelves so you can see the tool behind the music.

Part 1: The Game Boy as an instrument

The console that made music, then made the charts.

Part 2: The Game Boy as a muse

The second part turns the machine around. Here the Game Boy is not the player but the inspiration. In the early 1990s its bleeps climbed the UK Singles Chart on novelty hits, from a Tetris single produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber to a Super Mario Land dance record. The console went on to inspire cassette and vinyl oddities, mini players that only hum Pokemon tunes, fresh chiptune vinyl pressed decades later, and even radios built into Game Boy shells. Part 2 tells that story entirely through the records, tapes and players sitting in the collection, following one folk melody as it becomes a game theme, becomes a chart hit, and becomes a collectible all over again.

Part 2: The Game Boy as a muse

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  Tetris - Doctor Spin - Tape

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  Disappearing Lines - Game Boy Music - LP

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  Technician - Playing with the boy - LP

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  MC Mario - Super Mario Land

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  Radio Boy

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  FM Tuner Game Boy

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  Pokemon Game Music Collection

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Whichever way you come at it, the Game Boy's sound turns out to be far bigger than its speaker. Pick a side and start reading, then come and explore the collection to hear the rest for yourself.