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