The folks at RoboBand have created a robotic band that plays the soundtracks to famous Nintendo games using a Raspberry Pi, a Yamaha Disklavier, and a robotic drum kit. The system took the audio output from the NES, converted it to MIDI, which in turn either controlled the solenoids on the drum machine or the piano keys. The result is a sometimes cacophonous, sometimes sublime rendition of some NES classics including the Legend of Zelda, Duck Hunt, and the Mario series.
To their credit, the band admits that things weren’t perfect. “In full disclosure, there is normally a half-second audio delay that was removed in editing, but it’s still very playable live,” they wrote on YouTube. Given that most sprite-intensive NES games ended up with more than a second lag, it’s a pretty impressive feat regardless.
Personally I’d love to see some Metroid played this way. It would be like watching The Matrix at one of those silent movie theaters with a dude up front playing the organ.