NanoLoop is one of those weird little Game Boy cartridges that makes you wonder how it even exists. It's basically a full-on music tracker squeezed into a tiny grey brick—no fancy graphics, just grids of numbers and waveforms. At first glance, it looks like some kind of spreadsheet from hell, but after a few minutes of poking around, you realize it’s actually kind of genius.

You start by picking one of the Game Boy’s four classic sound channels (that crunchy square wave, the tinny noise channel, etc.), then build loops by punching in notes and tweaking parameters. It’s way more hands-on than modern DAWs, but that’s the charm—every adjustment feels physical, like you’re soldering the sound together yourself. I spent way too long trying to recreate the Pokémon battle theme before giving up and making weird glitchy techno instead.

If you’ve ever wanted to compose music but found regular software overwhelming, this might actually be the perfect middle ground. Just don’t expect any hand-holding—half the fun is figuring out what the heck all those numbers actually do. The Game Boy’s sound chip has limits, but that’s what makes it so satisfying when you finally nail a melody that doesn’t sound like a dying robot.