You can explore an 8-bit version of Milwaukee in a new Nintendo video game
For six years, Jordan Davis has been playing around the Milwaukee music scene in the band Space Raft.
Now you can play around the Milwaukee music scene as the band Space Raft — in the video game “Space Raft.”
To promote the pop-rock band’s latest album, “Positively Space Raft,” Davis, Space Raft’s singer and guitarist, has developed an old-school 8-bit video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System (with a demo available to play for free on the website for Dusty Medical Records, the band’s label).
Davis isn’t the first Milwaukee musician to do something like this. Electronic artist Luxi has made a few different styles of video games featuring her music.
But while Luxi’s games are largely set in fantastical settings, an appropriate aesthetic given her ethereal music, “Space Raft” is set in familiar Milwaukee locations, often with playful modifications.
Davis developed a forest temple inside Humboldt Park, inspired by “The Legend of Zelda.” Music scene landmarks like Cactus Club, Rushmor Records, Circle A, Howl Street Recordings and the WMSE-FM (91.7) studios appear in the game, too.
You can play as one of four Space Raft members — including drummer Tyler Chicorel, bassist Jon Heibler and keyboard player TJay Christensen (whose game weapon is a bowling ball, appropriate for a guy who’s a competitive bowler).
Milwaukee music scene figures make cameos, including singer-songwriter Mark Waldoch, local bands Phylums and Moon Curse, Dusty Medical President Kevin Meyer, WMSE’s “Local/Live” hosts Erin Wolf and Cal Roach, and Cactus Club owner Kelsey Kaufmann. And the game soundtrack consists of 11 chiptune versions of “Space Raft” songs.
Davis created a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of raising $4,800 — enough, he calculated, to produce and distribute 100 game cartridges, boxes and manuals. He’s raised nearly $11,000 so far, and the Kickstarter campaign is continuing through Aug. 27.
“It has been really overwhelmingly positive. I was not expecting this much support,” Davis said. “Knowing this is a niche hardware at this point, I assumed it would be an oddball art project. … Way more people are interested in this than I ever imagined.”
Rooted in childhood
Davis, 38, has a deep fondness for Nintendo, going back to when he got an NES for Christmas when he was 5.
“I remember this 1987 game ‘The Goonies II’ had a chiptune version of Cyndi Lauper’s ‘The Goonies “R” Good Enough’ from the movie,” Davis said. “When I heard the computer music version of it, my brain lit itself on fire. … I remember as a kid the music in video games felt as important as some of the cassette tapes I had.”
That love carried on into adulthood, when the band would play bootleg Japanese 8-bit video games at practice. And it inspired Davis to make some chiptune versions of “Positively
Space Raft” songs.
“I was sending them to the band just for a laugh … but I found it so fulfilling and had so much fun putting it together, and I looked up after a couple of weeks after I had done a version of every song on the album,” Davis said. “I realized how badly I always wanted to make a video game.”
That was about two and a half years ago, and Davis has spent 30 minutes to several hours nearly every day slowly developing the game.
“I did a ton of research looking at older games, learning what was possible, learning about the limitations, which are the key when working with NES. There is so much you can’t do,” Davis said. “I tried to come up with a design that would work. … From there, I had to learn some light programming.”
Davis likened parts of the process to banging his head on the wall, but he befriended people online in the 8-bit game development community, getting guidance from as far away as France.
Adding local music landmarks
One of his biggest challenges ultimately led to one of the game’s greatest strengths.
“I hadn’t done a visual art project since high school, and it was hard to get my bearings and draw pixel art,” Davis said. “After drawing a few generic buildings and being unhappy with them, my next step was to take a building I was very familiar with, the Cactus Club, and draw that. All four of us have worked there at one point or another … and after traveling the world, it’s still our favorite club to play.” The game features about two dozen single-screen levels with real-life settings, including Fuel Cafe and the Vanguard, and six scrolling levels through the streets of Milwaukee (and one level on the icy streets of Green Bay) where players control the band’s van.
The object is to retrieve the master tapes of “Positively Space Raft,” which have been stolen by jealous former bass player Srini Radhakrishna, and eat chicken sandwiches along the way for strength. (Radhakrishna’s casting isn’t some dig from his bandmates; he pitched the idea to Davis as they drove together to Radhakrishna’s new home in California.)
While the Nintendo Entertainment System has been outdated in popular culture since the early ‘90s, the timing for the “Space Raft” video game couldn’t have been better for the band.
With concerts and other social gatherings called off around the world because of the coronavirus pandemic, musicians near and far are facing an unprecedented hardship.
“Most bands like us sell records at shows,” Davis said. “Doing a release show is huge as far as funding a band for a year. The most important thing you can do when you release a record, you can’t do right now. So the fact that we’ve got something that is getting attention and raising awareness about the band and the record, that’s invaluable to us right now.” Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
Piet also talks concerts, local music and more on “TAP’d In” with Jordan Lee. Hear it at 8 a.m. Thursdays on WYMS-FM (88.9).