NI GAME DEV NETWORK // SUMMER SOCIAL
It all begins with an idea.
Huge thanks to the team at the NI Game Dev Network for having us at their 2025 Summer Social!
This marks our first offical LIVE show as a band. We had an amazing time and loved meeting you all 🙌 We’re already looking forward to the next Mario Kart showdown!
We couldn’t ask for a better way to start gigging - working with the local game dev network in Northern Ireland to play some Mario Kart tunes. We also brought along small prizes for the winners of each race.
Everytime we put on this show we’re learning more and more about our sound and tech and what we need to improve on and what we can push. You may have noticed us using in-ears, not only does this help us hear ourselves but we also get to cue parts of the sheet music and call out the Starman Theme! We did it sparingly this time as there was a lot happening.
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FORMATION LAP
The Funky Kongs Test Show at Maddens Bar Belfast
Massive thanks to all our friends who came down to support our test drive!
We’re quite a tech heavy show so this was an opportunity to show what we’ve been working on and put our equipment through it’s paces 🙌 here’s a wee snippet of Mario Kart Stadium from last night also!
Shout out to Maddens Bar in Belfast for helping us get this show off the ground.
We hope to see you all again real soon! 🚗🏁🎉🏆
MARIO KART MUSIC IS AMAZING
The Music of Mario Kart is Amazing!
Honestly, we can’t fault any of the music. As a soundtrack there’s a lot of variety and learning about the music has been an interesting history lesson for those ludomusicologists out there. It’s introduced us to T-Square in the late 80’s (Check out their tune Truth). I’ve included some videos I’ve come across that go into more detail about Mario Kart 8.
Early Practice
Taking our positions at the start line!
With the help of other players in the group we set out by figuring out what we wanted to perform. You’ve probaly seen the Mario Kart Live Band trend going on. So we though, what the heck. And started transcribing music for our band. As a 5-piece we needed to take the music from Mario Kart 8 and condense it down to our setup. We listened to all the tracks, used resources available to us to fit the music in. Eventually we had enough to get rehearsals underway.
The thing we’ve noticed about Mario Kart is, although the music is challenging, and we can’t underestimate that, a lot of it is jazz, funk, fusion with variations in between. But the silver lining is, it’s video game music, which lends itself to being repetitive.
And after a few months, the layouts of the pieces started to stick. Here’s an early band recording we’ve made, bare, in mind this is early and we’re still exploring the music. Do not expect and epic piece. But as I see a use in documenting our progress here we our showing our working out.
Hey! It’s the funky kongs
We’ve all probaly seen the trend of live video game music groups, orchestras, jazz/funk bands. And in Belfast we’ve seen a couple of groups pop-up but we haven’t seen a dedicated band happen, yet. With The Funky Kongs, we’re hoping to tackle a lot of challenging video game music, and present it to an audience at a high standard of playing. Mainly becuase we want to push ourselves with music we love listening too!
