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Konami have released some lofi remixes to chill/study to

For the anniversary of ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA

It's the 35th anniversary of the Konami code, the string of button presses that first activated cheats in Gradius on the NES in 1986, but which would feature in many later Konami games as well. To celebrate the birthday of up up down down left right left right BA, Konami have produced some lofi hip hop to chill, study and/or relax to.

The songs are remixes by 'DJ No.2' of tracks from the NES games Gradius, Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Dōchū, Yie Ar Kung-Fu, TwinBee and Salamander. They have been released on YouTube with the now-traditional animated video:

There are more tracks available on the Spotify playlist version, including others by DJ Tokyo Machine.

If you're not familiar, lo-fi beats (to chill to) have become increasingly popular in recent years on YouTube, where they're often broadcast in endless livestreams and heavily recommended by the algorithm. A few years ago there were a couple of modestly popular streams pulling music from Soundcloud and pairing it with looping animations cribbed from Ghibli movies, but currently the most popular stream on YouTube has 32,000 people watching. The animations are now original, there's licensed music releases, there's official merch; it's a whole thing.

Konami are celebreating the anniversary in other ways, including with console re-releases of some of their classic games and new merch. You can browse it all via Konami's ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA anniversary site. I like the music most, though - which is legitimately chill. Lo-fi beats to write RPS posts to.

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Graham Smith

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Rock Paper Shotgun's former editor-in-chief and current corporate dad. Also, he continues to write evening news posts for some reason.

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