Hey Ken! It can be difficult for me to pick any single favorites, but I could pick a few systems and list some of the first things that come to mind.

• Amiga - Shadow of the Beast, Space Hulk, The Secret of Monkey Island
• NES - Magician, Journey to Silius, Wolverine, Castlevania III, Overlord, Mega Man 2
• Game Boy - Turok 2, Ottifanten Kommando Stortebeker, CV2: Belmont’s Revenge
• Sega Genesis - Ecco The Dolphin, Ecco: Tides of Time, Ys III: Wanderers from Ys.
• SNES - Final Fantasy IV, Super Metroid

Although I’m not sure it’s possible to pinpoint an inspiration for Cheap Dinosaurs. I had a band in high school that covered VG music, and through playing shows I met a band called Chromelodeon that played instrumental prog-rock. They were the first band I saw using chiptune hardware in original music. Eventually I played drums for them… then later on we disbanded.

But my friend Dino from Chromelodeon started writing music that used the Game Boy more heavily under the name of Cheap Dinosaurs, and eventually that turned into a full band as well. It has some former Chromelodeon members and other chiptune musicians (animal style, chipocrite, an0va).

Most of us have a strong, shared interest in vgm and chipmusic, but when it comes to writing music it’s mostly up to Dino’s creativity. I’m happy to be in a band with someone that I feel writes very original stuff- I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation about a certain band or soundtrack that we wanted to sound like. The closest thing to that might be Goblin, who scored horror soundtracks in the ’70s and ’80s like the original Dawn of the Dead and Tenebre, although I’m not sure we sound that much like them. We’re big fans of instrumental and soundtrack music, including vgm but other types of music as well. :)

I grew up with an Amiga 500 and 2000 and made mixtapes of game music as a kid, but it wasn’t until the late ’90s when my brother picked up an old NES that I found a renewed and deeper interest in this stuff.