Chiptune, Chiptune

The "golden age" of chiptunes was the mid 1980s to early 1990s, when such sound chips were the most common method for creating music on computers. Chiptunes are closely related to video game music, which often featured chiptunes out of necessity. The term has also been recently applied to more recent compositions that attempt to recreate the chiptune sound for purely aesthetic reasons, albeit with more complex technology.

General MIDI is not considered chiptune as a MIDI file contains no information describing the synthesis of the instruments.

New tracker tools are making chip sounds available to less techy musicians. For example, Little Sound DJ for the Nintendo Game Boy has an interface designed for use in a live environment and features MIDI synchronization. The NES platform has the Midines, a cartridge that turns the system into a full blown hardware MIDI controlled Synthesizer. On the DOS platform, Fast Tracker is one of the most famous chiptune makers because of the ability to create hand-drawn samples with the mouse.

Due to Myspace, chiptune artists have gained some notoriety.There has however been a small amount of artists coming out of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

Source: Wikipedia > Chiptune