The NES was and continues to be, the best console in computer game history. OK, so now the XBOX 360 et al are so advanced that the games are almost like watching tv, but it’s all about gameplay. If you aren’t sure what 8-bit is you need to recognise, fool!

When I was little I had a NES and a Sega Master System – which was pretty much the equivalent of repping both East Coast & West Coast during the rap wars of the 90s.

Now it’s all coming back, kids like me have grown up and to counterbalance the demands of adult life (working out which coffee you like best, deciding that you aren’t ashamed to say that you liked Supergrass more than Blur and realising that everyone you know has a drink problem) longed for that 8-bit goodness to add some limited colour to their furtive/futile existence.

Now there are a couple of facets to the 8-Bit revival…

Music

Samples of NES/Master System audios have been cut and pasted into various genres since they were created, however it’s only really in the last year or so that a bespoke genre has developed. The first ‘band’ that I noticed that were heavily inspired by this type of beat was Crystal Castles. Their sound is awesome but it’s more than that, the whole package is infused with 8-bit influence and is pretty alluring in terms of crossover between computer-generated music/ fashion and contemporary art (check out Kitsune for similar art/fashion/music crossover).

Other bands that I have stumbled across are Neogear (not sure what’s going on with these guys now – check out J G Harding’s solo work which I also really rate) and also Partyshank who are currently ripping up the indie-cindie-kiddie-boppie scene with their chip-music sound with tinges of weird toy sounds.

Get on Last FM and search for 8-Bit and check out what’s around…you might like it.

Art

Check out some of these hybrid photography 8 bit tings, thanks to 8-Bit Peoples for these :

For 8-Bit inspired art, check out The Gallery over at Iam8bit.net

Virals and Lols

With nearly 5 million views, The Angry Nintendo Nerd has crafted a unique blend of Revenge of the Nerds meets the swear count of an East End boozer. It’s a fucking fuck-ladened walk down memory lane as he reviews some of the best and worst NES games.

Fashion

Carri Mundane is editor of super super scene magazine called eerrr… Super Super (we think she is, our research is tenuous at best). Anyway she also designs stuff through Cassette Playa that is influenced by amongst other thing, by a bit of an 8-bit vibe. She has worked with M.I.A and Klaxons who are quintessential tools of the uber-scene (until Klaxons achieved actual mainstream success with obviously and instantly demotes them from super-scene, past scene, to hell, without collecting £200 at go).

Her stuff is getting mad props across the World and is going for stooopid prices. To be honest, we don’t think it’s half as good as some of the stuff on Threadless but hey we are simple folk here at WSI, so we probably don’t get the higher meaning of her work, maaaan. It no doubt represents an acid-influenced revolutionary call to arms – rallying scenesters to swap their lycra for army fatigues and stick it to the man, to the sound of some phat bass and rabid 8-bit mash up, blap.

If that’s all too much of a drag for you (as it will clearly not be fashionable by the time the next Cheekbone issue is delivered) then why not this?

Image Courtesy of MIS blog (FALL 2007)

I’m not going to give away much of the games story; it’s a bit of a simple one anyway…it’s only got two controls; forward and back. I recommend that you take a little bit of time to rummage around, because, frankly, the end is a bit of a paean to existentialist misery.

On the plus side though, epic 8-bit beats are full of win.

Which seems very fortunate, what with our logo and all. So, dear readers (ha!), anyone got a monkey for me?

Seriously though, it’s all about the keys here…

Would you look at that type. Why don’t keyboards have serif’s anymore, I wonder; it’s awesome. You can’t see it yet (I need to get a decent ink ribbon), but the lowercase is also great. Also, why don’t we get keys for fractions anymore? That seems eminently useful.

Also, annoyingly, the G key appears to be broken (fitting Murphy’s law very well, as the first thing I typed was obviously ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’). But I’ll fix that unless anyone has a better idea for what to do with the keys. I don’t really want to take the typewriter apart, but might for a good enough project. And no, I do not need a steampunk macbook.

Whilst I have no revelations that have the shock value of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, I just wanted to share with you the power that emits from the Blackberry and why it is what all mid-management crave.

For those not in the know, a Blackberry is a hand-held device used predominantly to receive and send e-mail, thus allowing owners to constantly be in touch with the office. The take-up of the portable has been phenomenal, with the second quarter of 2007 seeing billion dollar sales revenue and Research in Motion (the makers of Blackberry) preparing to sell their 20 millionth unit.

However it is not just the sales that makes Blackberry noteworthy, it’s the fact that it allows companies to tap into those staff that can’t switch off by giving them a tool that will allow them to work at any time and in any place. The persistent blackberrying by some users is so intense that it has been labeled ‘crackberry’, with the word being nominated in 2006 as word of the year.

Now from a rational point of view, who actually needs to be in touch with the office at all times? You can clearly see the benefits of the CEO, Executive Board and other key decision makers being permanently available; they have the knowledge, the skills and ultimately the remit to make decisions. If the CEO is skiing in Whistler, he needs to be contactable in case something needs sign off RIGHT NOW. In this day and age it isn’t acceptable to allow a deal to slip, a position to worsen or a customer to walk away because someone was chilling with a cocktail in Belize.

Also, the key decision makers need access to information, they need to be kept abreast of developments because simply, they live and breathe the company – if someone comes up to them on holiday and starts speaking about the breaking news on Bloomberg regarding their company, they need to know the inside line. Picking up on this concept of ’living and breathing’ the company, the likelihood is that the very nature of these individuals is such that they won’t want to be away from the company and hence the Blackberry may (perversely) facilitate them to act in a remotely normal fashion when on holiday.

In addition to the top brass, dealmakers should have Blackberries. These guys love work and boy do they work hard and to be honest, if they could, they’d sleep at work. It makes sense to give these guys Blackberries because they are your top 20% (see Pareto’s Law), they are probably carrying 20 people so why hold up their efficiency and drive? They want to get on, you want them to get on and your shareholders want them to get on. Again, still rational and efficient.

Also you have work folk who work from home or from multiple locations, these guys need to be tapped into something like a Blackberry just from a purely practical perspective.

So we’ve seen the rational and somewhat efficient manner in which a Blackberry should be allocated – i.e. to those that are business critical 24/7, the dealmakers and those whose working environment presents challenges. However, the allocation doesn’t stop there, it goes further down the chain and enters into an area where the dynamic of blackberry to blackberry owner changes.

Finally, we come to mid-management.

Firstly, the people who do a sterling job, but simply cannot sign anything off out of hours, therefore don’t really need a Blackberry. Even if this guy or lady is sitting at home finding the missing link at 8pm on a Friday night, they can do diddlysquat until their line has signed it off.  Frankly, if these guys can’t get their work done in regulation (i.e. normal working hours) then we should be looking at how they work not giving them Blackberries to spend longer doing the job and eating into their real life.

Secondly there are those that work in support areas where, although they do important work for the business as a whole, they don’t have much which is urgent at any given time.

These are two groups just love the Blackberry, they love the ‘prestige’, which is a real false consciousness. Whilst the CEO needs it to steer the ship in the right direction, the dealmakers need it to hit their targets and the project manager needs to stay on top whilst traveling, the mid-manager neither steers nor has deadlines, they just desperately, desperately want the Blackberry.

They look longingly at others with Blackberries, they imagine what it’d be like to have one and have toyed with the idea (more than once) of signing off a normal outlook-based e-mail “sent from my Blackberry wireless”. I actually believe that (whilst I have no empirical evidence to back this up), some mid-managers would forgo hard cash in order to get a Blackberry. They see it as a proxy for importance, which is counterintuitive in that a) those that are important don’t need a electronic proxy to tell people their important b) those in the same role but without a Blackberry can see instantly how much more work his Blackberry toting colleague as a result of the Blackberry now does compared to him, with no real impact on their relative abilities to achieve their objectives.

And what happens once they get them? Boy do they flaunt them! They wear them attached to their belts, they get them out in meetings and they become out of office Blackberry warriors – sending e-mails at ungodly hours that frankly are unnecessary and add little value.

So there we have it, a quick expose on Blackberries. We’d love to hear your tales of Blackberry warriors, Crackberry addicts, and ridiculous Blackberrying antics.