Beats, Bits, & Bytes
By thaChillCorner
Stella Blues
New Haven
May 22, 2026
I beat up over six Malcolms in two minutes. Do I even know anyone named Malcolm?
While the rugged street background melted into pixels, I did a quick look-around to see who everyone else was pummeling. Spongebob Squarepants body-slammed Jimmy Neutron. James Bond burned down a mansion to rescue the girl. Bulbasaur fainted to another Bulbasaur. Ouch.
Then the next level of Maximum Carnage faded in. I controlled Spiderman to knock out a bunch more Malcolms, Bretts, Pauls, and faced a small boss match against a strong duo, Dana and Lizzie. The hardest boss battle was a female duo! Refreshing and unexpected from a game released in 1994.
I was surrounded by classic consoles at an event Friday night called Beats, Bits, and Bytes, organized by thaChillCorner at the Crown Street bar Stella Blues. William Gonzalez created thaChillCorner last year, to create a space for beatmakers to perform and hang out. It was an idea borne in the pandemic. Luckily the alliteration worked so he could also combine his love for nostalgia and video games, with music.
The dim bar was only lit up by small, boxy TV screens, and vivid flashes of blues behind the DJ. The DJ Tropico Beats’ bass made my heart tremble, while the accompanying electronic music (with a twinge of tropical, of course) kept the set bright and light. The volume was inviting in the context of the event: have a drink, start a conversation if you’re up for it, bop your head subtly or with enthusiasm, or quietly try out a game. Anything was quieter than the music, so even an introvert like me was immediately convinced I could just be.
I would call myself a gamer, but only on more modern consoles. My first console was a Nintendo DS, back in 2005, so nothing that anyone would consider retro quite yet. The Nintendo Wii from 2007 was the newest console at the event. Gonzalez had modded it in a way I couldn’t even find online. Maybe I was too much of a vanilla player as a kid.
After defeating the female duo with a single life left, I was struggling with the sidescrolling beat-em-up Maximum Carnage. My spatial awareness was challenged, as I kept positioning myself on a completely different plane as my enemies. There were no tutorials even as the mechanics changed, and any expected ka-pow with each landed punch was drowned out by the sharp beats. Tropico Beats was drawing a small crowd at the front.
When I lost all of my lives, I gave up and instead watched an intense match of a Super Smash Brothers Bros. game. Terron the Light, one of two players, was DJing later that night. He described his sets as “underground abstract hip hop and rap”; the “abstract” referred to his willingness to take more risks with his beats, like rapping a long verse over a minute.
And until his set, he, like the other DJs of the night, slipped into the darkness to play a game, catch up with fellow beatmakers, and share their art form with a beat-making-newbie like me.
