My Favourite Game
The Linkin Park frontman on his love of Nintendo, obsession with drawing Mega Man and tour-bus Halo sessions
Mike Shinoda on tour bus Halo sessions and his love of Nintendo
Mike Shinoda is a founding member of Linkin Park, and was one of the band’s vocalists as well as its primary songwriter, rhythm guitarist, keyboardist and producer. A lifelong videogame fan, he has contributed to game soundtracks and even featured in an 8bit game with his band. When quarantine began earlier this year, Mike began creating music and art live on Twitch in collaboration with his fans, and has recently released the resulting tracks on an album, Dropped Frames, Vol. 1. Here, he talks epic Linkin Park tour-bus Halo sessions, composing with chiptunes, and connecting with fans in the time of Covid.
What were your first memories of getting into videogames?
My parents were in a bowling league. They would meet with their friends and bring the kids and we could go play the arcade games. Once I got the NES, my friends and I, we’d play games and swap them, and we’d beat all of them immediately. Other than drawing, playing videogames was the only thing I did. I drew those characters non-stop. I would draw my own Mega Man enemy characters and levels, take multiple pieces of paper and tape them together and draw out a full level.
Was designing videogames ever a possibility for you?
I went to school for illustration. And I’m pretty sure if I had gone down that path instead of going into music, I probably would have ended up in gaming. It’s kind of inevitable, because there’s only so much interesting work that I would be able to get in music doing illustration. I do love the idea of developing characters, doing concept art. Since I don’t do it often, I’m not that good at it. But on my Twitch stream, the fans will often raid Dave Greco, who is this phenomenal concept artist. We built a little bit of a friendship, just because I admire what he does and he likes what I do.
Games seem to have affected your music – one of your tracks, Super Galaxtica, stems from a Gameboy sound.
I was a huge Nintendo fan, I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling from Nintendo. So many of the characters were my favourite things growing up. I played nonstop as a kid, we even had a club. It had the stupidest name. We called it Nintendol – we added an ‘L’ at the end of it. But our fame was that we could finish any game in seven days or less.
Are your Twitch streams part of getting back to that ‘game club’ feeling?
I wasn’t intending to put out an album. I work on music every day, but when quarantine started, I decided to start sharing it on livestreams. I ended up on Twitch because I like how the experience of watching the stream is gamified. And I liked that I could add point systems and fun activities for the fans to do. As you watch the channel you get loyalty points, Shinoda Bucks, that you can spend on things like requesting a song style for me to do, an art image for me to draw, or ask a question. With quarantine happening, there’s a sense of community that we all, like, lost a little bit. You can’t see your friends as often, you can’t hug anybody or get together for a meal or anything. And so I think I was looking for a little bit of that.
Did you find much time to play games when you were touring?
When we were touring Hybrid Theory and Meteora, the first two records, we were notorious for our obsession with Halo. As part of our rider, we had to have an Xbox in the front and the back lounge of the tour bus. The very first thing we did the moment we showed up is plug a cable between the two of them so we could play front lounge versus back lounge. We’d do that with each other, with our crew, and we’d invite other bands on the bus and we’d destroy them. It was so competitive! It got to the point where our drummer Rob [Bourdon] and his friend were sitting in a Denny’s and they overheard these other guys talking about Halo and how good they were, and they went over to them and were like, “Hey, you guys play Halo?” And they literally went over to their house and played Halo with these strangers!
At the risk of asking an obvious question, then, what’s your favourite ever game?
Maybe one of the Halo games – I feel like the second one was really good. But then I should probably say Mario… are we talking about like the game itself, and not like the characters? Because there’s two separate things. If it’s characters, I’d say Mega Man, Metroid and the Zelda series, because those characters are the best. If you’re talking about the actual game, I’ll say Mario. I loved Super Mario Bros 3.
“I still get a warm and fuzzy feeling from Nintendo… I played non-stop as a kid, we even had a club”