The Blip Festival, a four-day celebration of music made with outdated computers and electronics, was recently held in a hip Manhattan art space before a crowd of 20- and 30-year-olds, many of whom were shaggy-haired and wearing glasses and T-shirts. As classical pianist Hae Young Kim began her performance, the room filled with electronic beeps and buzzes of a 1980s video game pulsing to a danceable beat, and Kim proudly held up the instrument she was using: a Nintendo Game Boy. Chiptune, or 8-bit music, is building a cult audience among former Atari jockeys. One of Blip Festivals organizers, 29-year-old Mike Rosenthal, explained that they are the first generation for whom computers and video games played a significant role in their childhood, and now that sound has taken on meaning, many of them are at an age where they want to take their toys apart and see what else they can make them do. Chiptune includes pop, metal, and other styles. The small chiptune community exists primarily online via file-sharing and on bulletin boards, and events like Blip Festival are rare, attracting some artists and fans from around the globe. The chiptune scene is informed by the do-it-yourself ethic of punk rock and hacker culture, and many artists depend on jury-rigged gadgets. The instruments have just a fraction of the computing power of todays average cell phone, yet that is part of their appeal because they prompt creativity. Illustrating that chiptune is more than just nostalgic, a few Blip attendees were too young to remember the gadgets that inspired it.