For me it was Jeroen Tel's Hawkeye on the SID. I remember showing it to my dad - not sure what his reaction was, but I was acting like I just saw the Batmobile drive down my street. It's one of my favorite pieces to this day, and I even have it set as an alarm tone on my phone.

extends levant

Ok, that is a BANGER, and I'd forgive you if this thread was mainly an excuse to share that.

For me, I guess the Kid Icarus title theme when I heard it as a kid. And just that whole soundtrack, that's what got me interested in chiptune in the first place. As an adult, Praying Hands from Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge brought me a lot of inspiration.

It's not "real" chiptune, but the release i, cactus on 8bitpeoples blew my mind back in the day. It stood out to me among all the other chiptunes as being very unique and made my brain irrevocably idm-pilled for the rest of eternity

https://khonnor.bandcamp.com/album/i-cactus

Also not "real" chiptune, but Shnabubula's Playing Super Mario World While Taking Mushrooms was absolutely insane to me back then.

probably something by FoD or A64

Extends Levant by Hertzdevil, it had a clone hero chart that was popular for years. I remember hearing Apocythian Drive not too long after and at first I couldn’t even sit through the song because the chord progressions were too much— nowadays it sits right next to E.L in my head as truly goated chips.

GENERAL SERUM deserves a mention here as well

"Geothermal" from Cave Story (the music that plays right before the first Core battle).

I would say the Jayster cover of "Scrapyard Swing," which was one of the demos that came with the original famitracker. It still impresses me now, although I would say I'm now more impressed by his creative reinterpretation of the original than the technical bits (the technical bits are still cool though!)

my brian cannot rember right now so the best i can do is that chibi-tech song. you know the one

pretty hard to say first but I know when I heard Hot Buttered that was a real aww jeeziz moment. Same for Cydonian Sky

As far as a vintage video game soundtrack goes, it probably has to be the opening to Streets of Rage. I can remember being about 4 or 5 years old and booting up that game and even being as small as I was I knew I was listening to something special. I found the sound test shortly after that, and as cool as the game itself was I probably spent more time in the sound test than playing the actual game.

As far as a more "home brew" example? There are 2 instances that come to mind. My older brother was into listening to mod tracker music in the 90's. And there was one tune I heard called "Fountain. Mod" that I found absolutely stunning at the time and I still think it sounds beautiful today.

Quite a bit later I joined a site called VGmix. There I started making video game arrangements and honing my musical skills. While I was there I ran across the now legendary Rushjet1.

I still remember the first song I heard from him called "Technotris" It was a techno nes remix of Tetris that I loved the sound of. I don't even think Famitracker was out then, or if it was, it was in early stages and Rushjet1 was using MML to make his music and I just thought that was mind blowing.

I never got quite that technical myself. But once I got my hands on some trackers I could understand I eventually joined 8 bit collective and tried my hand at some chip tunes myself. And I would say hearing tracks like that in my formative years is a huge reason why I got into chip tune composition myself and I still enjoy it to this day even if I take breaks from it from time to time :).

RRThiel's Mega Man Perfect Blue music showed uo in a scratch game and i wanted to hear more, and thus chiptune entered my brain. Also saw other chiptunes on scratch thus mmaking me go oh i wanna chiptune now so yah

Fantasy Pants by Xaser. Sampling just the right amount of distorted guitar to not have it loop and still managing to fit it in the SPC is crazy to me.

edit: oh and also the entire Mega Man X and Castlevania Dracula X soundtracks

it might have been yousuke yasui

outside of all the good ol' game music I grew up immersed in, I'd say the first things that come to mind are Blitz Lunar's Triptunes album and the old Kind of Bloop comp.

Runnin' Through Castles by Jayster

realistically, something rrthiel or perhaps ai bomb.

though i think the turning point for me was rollin down the street, in my katamari. that kind of opened my eyes to stuff beyond just nes chiptune. and then probably something from bit shifter

I think I was hooked on chiptunes from the first time my family booted up Revenge of Shinobi on Genesis. Before that, my formative memories were of Atari and Tandy games so I legitimately did not know that games could sound like that.

's why, so far, the only chip I've dabbled in is the gen's.

the first chiptune that impressed me was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-Mx0lEmnZ0

Like damifortune, there's a ton of music I appreciated while playing games as a kid. Looking through my YouTube history, Sonic music stuck with me the most, as I was looking up many covers of it. (And Touhou music, despite barely playing the games...)

However, while I appreciated it, I didn't really treat it as seriously as the music albums I grew up listening to. During the early years of my musical journey, I mainly listened to metal, alternative rock and post-rock, with very little electronic influences, let alone chiptune.

Thanks to getting into music reviews and music rating sites, I had also picked up some music snobbery, so I thought there was a divide between 'real music'/albums and 'video game music'/soundtracks. Especially since there were very few video game soundtracks on those rating sites at the time...

Then, at some point, I discovered some bands that took influence from video game music, such as Machinae Supremacy and Anamanaguchi. Because both of them had actual albums, I immediately treated them more seriously! While the former was more 'metal' and closer to my existing tastes, I quickly grew to prefer the latter, even if it was more 'catchy' and 'poppy'. (And even with the live instrumentation, there was actual chiptune underneath!)

From there, the wall I'd built up started to crumble, as I discovered labels like 8bitpeoples with tons of free releases, and some years later, this very website.

tl;dr: the album Dawn Metropolis by famous BotBr Anamanaguchi

I actually didn't get into, like, popular music until after I played Guilty Gear X and learned that guitars could be really cool lmao. When I was a kid I only listened to retrogame tunes and baroque music.

probably Zizibum by X-Ray, I Think You Sync Autumn, or one of A64's earlier tunes (Hang Loose IIRC?)

zabutom
safe to say i would have thought the whole scene a missable niche, but the likes of endroll and jellyfish parachutes and kugghjul really caught my ear at the time

either rainbow road from snes mario kary or rolling down the street in my katamari by fearofdark. former was probably the first chiptune i enjoyed listening to and the latter was what got me obsessed with tracker music.

For me the messenger soundtrack was the thing that got me into chiptune, extends levant was probably the first to impress me after I started doing chiptune, and moe moe kyunstep pt2 was the first to really impress me after I got good/comfortable with chiptune. Oh yeah, and trayson's (nosyart on YT) stuff continues to impress me, there's so many subtle techniques he uses that blow my mind most recently in his song "nothing" he does some triangle echo stuff in the instrument envelope, its crazy (he also slows down and repitches the song in reaper which is something I haven't thought to do before).

i've been a chiptune fan for longer than i can even remember, but one that particularly stuck out to me for what ever reason is revelry by auxcide. i heard it in a scratch project once back when i used that site all the time. i think it was just some art showcase project??? i can't seem to find it any more... either way the song just fascinated me back then

chibi-tech - Love is Insecurable

Really expanded my idea of what chiptunes could do.

Unreal Superhero 3. I first heard it used in a scratch project and was blown away as a kid lol

Unreal Superhero 3 for me as well! I heard about it from Battle for Dream Island and it really stuck with me. Keygen 8 by Dubmood as well.

probably something by keffie

disasterpeace- beta’s brilliancy

very similar to fade, my first encounter with chiptune was a jeroen tel song. It wasn't an original, it was his C64 version of afterburner, but that got me hooked into finding more stuff like it, leading me to more jeroen tel and eventually the follin brothers.