The idea of Game Day this week was simple: a bunch of you sent a bunch of game-related links all at nearly the same time. If this kind of convergence happens again, we’ll do it again. In the wake of all this game-y music goodness are quite a lot of additional resources. So here we go. In case you missed it:

• Hacking a Wii Guitar Hero guitar to work with a synth
• Two free software solutions for making music with your Wiimote on your PC
• Free software and DIY hardware makes your Game Boy Color a real MIDI instrument (with jacks and all)
• If you don’t have friends, get friends, or in my case, find a friend who can afford an Xbox 360 and Rock Band. Sigh.
• When that Rock Band purchase makes you too poor to buy other drum pads, use your Rock Band pads

What’s that? Surely you don’t think I’ve become one of those blogs that does big link round-ups just to distract you. No, there’s still more to tell.

All this Wii waggling could be pretty useful for visuals. So on Create Digital Motion, we’ve got a few more tips, including a library that lets your Wiimote talk to Flash apps on Mac. (Now, Windows, anyone? Or even Linux?)

Still not enough Wiigling about? Be sure you see our coverage of a WiiWiiWiiWii instrument, Wii with Deckadance for DJs, and OSCulator for sending OpenSoundControl and MIDI on Mac.

Patryk Laurent was so inspired, he put together his own Wii strumming app, free for Mac (uses Java). And heck, he’s a Neuroscientist, which I find impressive. Neuroscientists must not have a fight song or theme tune or whatever, because he does what everyone else does and plays Mario. Patryk: I challenge you to write “Neuroscience: The Original Soundtrack” and get back to us.

Lastly, Chris O’Shea points us to Beats, a new PSP game that plays on the idea of interactive music listening. The results aren’t so exciting — so far this field has a lot more potential than it does realization, so far. But I think no one’s quite figured out what interactive music should be yet, which is kind of exciting.

Just so long as we’ve advanced from Simon. Ah, what a game that was.

Bless Nintendo for making the Wii controller: inexpensive, lots of internal sensor data (motion sensing, tilt sensing, buttons), elegant design, and standard Bluetooth support allowing it to be used with Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Now there’s free and open source software for making the most of your Wiimote as a musical instrument. First up: Wiinstrument, a multi-purpose percussion instrument, now available for all three operating systems (a Windows version was recently added).

• Plays percussion / drums with gestures
• Use an (in-development) internal sampler with WAV files, or trigger other software via MIDI
• Use tilt for control changes
• Supports tilt, velocity (how much force you use when you move your Wiimote), with acceleration from both the Wiimote and nunchuk
• It works with Mac, Windows, and Linux, via a standard OpenGL-based interface, thanks to the awesome 2D OpenGL library Gosu. (Programmers, take note.)

Of course, drums are just the beginning — you could use this to trigger clips, grooves, visualist videos and animations, whatever. And it comes with demos, tutorials, source code, the lot.

Wiinstrument Release Information
GarageBand tutorial (relevant to other apps, too)
Support information for Windows, Mac OS X Leopard, Linux
Via thread with the creator on our forums

Here is in action.

But, you say, that’s all well and good, but it’s not … air guitar. Today is your lucky day:

Wii Guitar, Drum Kit

Evan told us earlier about his Wii Drum Kit. To that nicely-crafted (Windows-only) software, he’s added a Wii Guitar. Evan’s drum kit isn’t quite as sophisticated as the Wiinstrument, though it could still be useful as a simple solution. But the Wii Guitar does something the Wiinstrument doesn’t:

It is a basic wiimote guitar that can be played similar to the way you strum a real guitar. Hold a direction on the d-pad to select a chord, and swing your wiimote up and down to strum.

What? You think you might look a little … silly … doing this? Heck, yeah! We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Groovy. And if you’re a Windows-based .NET programmer, you may find his site a good starting place for your own Wii-based projects. (Cross-platform developers will want to stick to the Wiinstrument for wiinspiration.)

Wiimote Guitar v0.1
Wiimote Drum Kit

Previously:

Wii Controller as Complete Audiovisual Musical Instrument, and How Less is More

Want that vintage-y goodness of a real Game Boy’s sound, but want new-fangled color and MIDI? Pushpin is for you. First introduced seven years ago, it’s finally been released. Brian Whitman writes:

Hi, thought you’d like to know that Noah and I have finally released Pushpin, which turns your Game Boy Color into a fully controllable MIDI synthesizer. It’s a ROM download and parts list to build the cable. We first finished it in September 2000 but are finally getting around to releasing it, open source and free.

Pushpin includes:

• ROM file, to be flashed to a cartridge
• Instructions for a cable that connects GBC’s link port to MIDI (standard DIN)
• Receives 90 MIDI Control Changes, note messages, pitch bend, program changes
• Four channels, multi-timbral

In other words, Pushpin makes your Game Boy into a full-blown hardware synth. Awesome.

Pushpin Project Release Page

Someone can feel free to just leave me the parts in a stocking, and I’ll have a happy Christmas Day.

But maybe the real message of Rock Band’s success is that musicians need some friends to jam with. Witness what happens to MTV Multiplayer blogger Tracey John when she tries to play all four instruments at once:

‘Rock Band’ Challenge — One Woman, Four Instruments, At The Same Time [MTV Multiplayer]

Funny, this is roughly what I looked like trying to play just one guitar in my play test at Harmonix in August. Doh. (I’m holding out for Herbie Hancock Presents Keyboard Hero any day now.)

In all seriousness, the multiplayer aspect of Rock Band is its killer feature. My prediction: back here in music land, while the computer music emphasis remains on one-man-bands, more multi-computer, multi-player jamming functionality could be the wave of the future. In the meantime, I’ll continue to wrangle two or three or five computers in performance at once — probably with similar effects.