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The best moments from when dance music and video games collide

 

This week sees twenty years since the launch of the original Playstation - just typing that makes me feel ancient. So I thought now was as good a time as any to look back over the few, but impressive times that dance music and video games have come together. After a bit of research I've come to the conclusion that while this meeting of cultural giants can occasionally create something greater than the sum of it's parts, it usually ends in odd cameos and... well, goat simulators.

 

DJ Hero 1 & 2 - putting you in the mix

The first and only DJing video game franchise. Full disclosure: I've never played this game, nor do I know anyone that's ever played it, but apparently it was pretty good as it's sitting on an impressive 4.5 stars on Metacritic. DJ hero allowed you to take on the mantle of any number of famous DJs from Tiesto and Deadmau5 to Grand Masterflash and Daft Punk. Writing about it now, it seems like I'm the exact target audience of the game, so it strikes me as weird that I've never wanted to play it. Maybe their advertising was off, or maybe I just hate fun, but trying to get an AI crowd popping off by pretending to DJ with some plastic controller always seemed kind of pointless to me.

 

GTA 4 - Francois K hosts Electro Choc

I've written about my love of GTA's music before, so I don't need to go into how it's pretty much the best thing ever here. But lets take a minute to appreciate just how impressive it is to score a legendary DJ like Francois K to host a fictional electroclash radio show  on - lets face it - one of the worst games in the series.

 

NBA 2K8 - Steve Aoki as a playable character


Way back in 2008, before his cake days, Steve Aoki was touring the world with the Bloody Beetroots and flogging super expensive Dim Mak tees. For some reason the NBA thought that meant people would to play as him in their flagship computer game, despite the fact that he admitted to being "terrible at basketball". This inexplicable team up reminds me of when Spiderman was an un-lockable character in Tony Hawks.

 

Goat Simulator - Deadmau5 in the most weirdest cameo ever?

Deadmau5 hates a great many things, but if there's one thing we can be sure he truly loves, it's The Internet. So when everyone went crazy for goats back in summer 2014 and someone made a Goat simulator, of course Deadmau5 was on hand for a cameo. This is a real contender for the most Internet thing that ever happened.

 

Green Language - Rustie streams album via online game


It's becoming more and more difficult to hype an album these days. For Green Language, his much anticipated follow up to Glass Swords, UK bass DJ, Rustie, chose a pretty unique tactic. He made the album available for full stream, but only while the user played a custom-built, minecraft-inspired game.

 

Motorbomb - Noisia soundtrack


How do you make a run-of-the-mill motorcross game stand out from the crowd? Get drum & bass demi-Gods Noisia to soundtrack it of course!

 

Wipeout - Trance music brings adults into gaming

The original wipeout was one of the games that not only helped launch the Playstation, but helped bring adults into gaming for the first time. The Wipeout series was aimed square at the 20-30 demographic with a controversial advertising campaign featuring an OD'ing Sarah Cox and a soundtrack that featured a barrage of trance, goa and breakbeat.

 

Ghosts 'n' DJs

This game was the subject of a recent Kickstarter campaign and was a send up of EDM hysteria. Featuring bad guys resembling David Guetta, Steve Aoki and Paris Hilton, the character has to stop them from brainwashing the world by making all music sound exactly the same. Unfortunately the game didn't reach it's $45,000 goal, but you can still play the demo here.

 

GTA 5 – Soulwax Radio Soulwax

I know it's cheating to have GTA in again, but having Soulwax on the radio is just too amazing to ignore.

 

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