[16] Due to the limited number of voices in early sound chips, one of the main challenges is to produce rich polyphonic music with them.

[24] Some of their early music, including their 1978 self-titled debut album, were sampling sounds from popular arcade games such as Space Invaders[25] and Gun Fight.

By 1983, Konami's arcade game Gyruss utilized five sound chips along with a digital-to-analog converter, which were partly used to create an electronic rendition of J. S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

[31] The record featured the work of Namco's chiptune composers: Toshio Kai (Pac-Man in 1980), Nobuyuki Ohnogi (Galaga, New Rally-X and Bosconian in 1981, and Pole Position in 1982), and Yuriko Keino (Dig Dug and Xevious in 1982).

[33][34] Arcade game composers utilizing FM synthesis at the time included Konami's Miki Higashino (Gradius, Yie-Ar Kung Fu, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and Sega's Hiroshi Kawaguchi (Space Harrier, Hang-On, Out Run).

By the early 1980s, significant improvements to personal computer game music were made possible with the introduction of digital FM synthesis sound.

[36] Fujitsu also released the FM Sound Editor software for the FM-7 in 1985, providing users with a user-friendly interface to create and edit synthesized music.

[40] Despite later advances in audio technology, he would continue to use older PC-8801 hardware to produce chiptune soundtracks for series such as Streets of Rage (1991–1994) and Etrian Odyssey (2007–present).

[43] The soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 (1992) is considered "revolutionary" and "ahead of its time" for its "blend of swaggering house synths, dirty electro-funk and trancey electronic textures that would feel as comfortable in a nightclub as a video game.

"[44] For the soundtrack to Streets of Rage 3 (1994), Koshiro created a new composition method called the "Automated Composing System" to produce "fast-beat techno like jungle",[45] resulting in innovative and experimental sounds generated automatically.

Hobbyists were also writing their own dedicated music editor software, such as Chris Hülsbeck's Soundmonitor which was released as a type-in listing in a 1986 issue of the German C-64 magazine 64'er.

[51] Since then, up until the 2000s, chip music was rarely performed live and the songs were nearly exclusively spread as executable programs and other computer file formats.

The low-quality digital PCM styling of early game music composers such as Hiroshi Kawaguchi also began gaining popularity.

[61] In 2003, the J-pop girl group Perfume,[62][63] along with producer Yasutaka Nakata, began producing music combining chiptunes with synth-pop and electro house;[63] their breakthrough came in 2007 with Game, which led to other Japanese female artists using a similar electronic style, including Aira Mitsuki, immi, Mizca, SAWA, Saori@destiny, and Sweet Vacation.

In Canada, Eightcubed and Crystal Castles helped the popularity further via the Toronto underground club scene and created a lasting impression with the music video "Heart Invaders" debuting on MuchMusic in 2008[72] and the single "Alice Practice" hitting 29th on NME "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".

The influence of video game sounds can also be heard in contemporary British electronica music by artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Kieran Hebden,[78] as well as in heavy metal bands such as DragonForce.

[80][81][82] In 2010, a BBC article stated that the "sights and sounds of old-school games" (naming Frogger and Donkey Kong as examples) are "now becoming a part of mainstream music and culture.

There is at least one commercial game for the Amiga, Nebulus II, that used chiptune style music, although with some conventional sampled instrument sounds as well as speech.

Around 2007, the Mssiah was released for the Commodore 64, which is very similar to the MidiNES, but with greater parameter controls, sequencing, analog drum emulation, and limited sample playback.

On April 11, 2005, 8 Bit Weapon played their songs "Bombs Away" and "Gameboy Rocker" on G4's Attack of the Show live broadcast Episode #5058.

[89] Another chipmusic feature included little-scale, Dot.AY, Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families and Jim Cuomo on the Australian television series Good Game in 2009.

[90] The Electronic Frontier Foundation in December 2010 used a faux 8-bit game with an 8-bit sound track by crashfaster to demonstrate its notable legal achievements for that year.

In the United States, during Super MAGFest—a yearly convention that hosts a variety of video game-related events—popular chiptune artists such as goto80 and Chipzel have previously performed on the Concert Hall mainstage.

A chiptune-focused mainstage show (aptly named "Chip Rave") typically occurs on the third day of the convention within the concert hall and has featured countless prominent faces in the chiptune community.

Super MAGFest also holds a continuous venue called Chipspace, a place where participants in the chiptune community go on-stage and perform their music through an open mic system.

[98] Originally started by Chiptunes=WIN[99] founder Brandon L. Hood and maintained by geekbeatradio,[100] Chipspace has evolved over the course of MAGFest's lifespan to bring chiptune fans closer together.