What does Grizzly Cogs sound like?

Chirpy, bouncy chiptune anthems from your favourite 90’s mascot games.

The review of ‘Tiny Jukebox’ by Grizzly Cogs

Last year, I picked up a fantastic Dance Dance Revolution-themed rhythm action game called Tiny Jukebox. I gave the game a positive 7.5/10 review score because it’s tiny in name and in nature. My favourite aspect of the game was the soundtrack, created by Grizzly Cogs, and now I’ve bought the soundtrack, it strangely opens up a world of opportunities to enjoy it.

The twist for Tiny Jukebox is that every song is about 10 seconds long. They are all about two bars long, sometimes with an intro and/or outro fill. Whilst chiptune is the main sound (running the gamut of chipsets across the ’80s and ’90s), it doesn’t stay there. Grizzly Cogs also dives into chiprock, lo-fi beats, synthpunk, elements of world music, and playful tuned-percussion synthpop. Each song has a catchy melody or riff that’s usually done in 4 or 8 bars, and no sooner have you heard it, you’re into the next track. It’s relentless, but that’s Tiny Jukebox’s charm.

Just like the game shuffles all 72 tracks to appear in any order, if you buy the soundtrack and get the MP3s, you can do the same with the soundtrack. Out of the box, if you play the soundtrack as it is listed, you’ll move from genre to genre seamlessly. Shuffling the tracks creates a unique setup each time you play the soundtrack, and as there’s little audio gap between tracks, it creates surprising transitions and flows. I’d have loved the soundtrack to have come with hard edit versions of each track that contain just the 8 bars so that you could create your own non-stop shuffle edit, but what’s here gets you close to it. I’ve enjoyed albums that play with shuffle mechanics before, and this is one of the better interpretations and explorations of what shuffle can do.

Whilst Grizzly Cogs shows his full electronic prowess with 72 8-bar bangers (there’s not a single filler here), we also get two longer tracks. At 36 seconds, “Enough (Game Over)” plays like a dance track from a ’90s arcade. Main Theme ‘Leonie has lost her mind’ is a whopping 75 seconds! It plays like a cheesy Europop anthem translated to chiptune electronics. They serve as great bookends for what is a quickfire and dizzying explosion of electronic music and chiptunes that even the TikTok generation could stick with. Just remember – shuffle is your friend, and it is the best way to experience multiple listenings.

Recommended track: Katy Bibi

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