Stephen Malkmus
Jo Jo’s Jacket
This video might be a stretch, as it has maybe eight seconds of actual fake video-gamery in it, but it's our list and we love Pavement and its former lead singer, Stephen Malkmus. The song is mainly about Yul Brynner, at least as any song by Malkmus is about anything. The lyrics recognized two things ol' Yul is famous for: being bald and the underrated film Westworld, in which a robot Yul goes killer-crazy in a theme park.
The video treats us to a Westworld game that only exists in more perfect dimensions. Looking like one of the most ancient games ever made, fake robo-Yul chases someone through the desert. Anyway, the reference is over before it begins, but you can still enjoy the other random weirdness throughout.
Beck
Bad Cartridge
The song is a remix of one of Beck's more recent hits, E-Pro. The remix was done using the Game Boy sound chip, so direction of the video seems a no-brainer. The fake game itself in the video is honestly pretty hard to follow and would probably get a 5 or a 6. Hopefully you enjoyed this video and did not have an epileptic fit because of it.
Junior Senior
Move Your Feet
Perhaps not a fake game per se, this video is slathered in 8-bit love. Featuring a naughty squirrel and anthropomorphic food, Move Your Feet goes from an intensely catchy dance jam to an unforgettable cartoony piece of NES paradise.
Xiu Xiu
Boy Soprano
This song might be too out there for some listeners, as omnisexual group Xiu Xiu (pronounced shoe-shoe) prefers odd noisemakers and off-tempo beats to a clear verse-chorus-verse set-up. Also, even with a lyric sheet, we still aren't too sure what singer Jamie Stewart and his bandmate/cousin Caralee McElroy mean in the song.
But the video is pretty straightforward, right? It's the one on this list most suited to the theme, as it's a complete play-through of the fake 8-bit Xiu Xiu game, from start screen to game over. However, the blurbs of character dialogue are strange and the game itself is depressing. We'd give it a 4, because it also looks frustrating.
Tobiah
I Love Your Music
By the same director as Beck's Bad Cartridge, this one also trades heavily on Atari-era visuals and fits with the song’s techno stylings. Our favorite parts are the dancing cube people and the singing pink head. And if you're wondering where the fake game is in the vid, at several points in the video a cube person stands in front of a screen moving his hands around. That's just abstract enough for us to get away with calling it a game, so hah!
Architecture in Helsinki
Do the Whirlwind
The Australian group Architecture in Helsinki have been pretty big in the indie-pop scene for awhile, with their twee songs entertaining many a shoegazer. Do the Whirlwind is one of their funkier numbers, and the video features graphics closer to 16-bit than 8-bit. The whole video has this style, but by the very end we get a nice Pac-Man parody after all the characters die, which we suppose is the director's idea of heaven - or hell.
Next page: Japan and the very worst videos!
