PinkPantheress has revealed that she sampled a cult Nintendo DS game for her viral Jimmy Fallon performance.
PinkPantheress was the musical guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday night (July 30) where she performed a medley of hits – ‘Illegal’, ‘Girl Like Me’ and ‘Tonight’.
“It was a real good time and I cannot emphasise enough how happy, fortunate and honoured I am to perform [on] Jimmy Fallon in my first live tv debut performance,” she wrote on Instagram shortly afterwards before calling it her “Top Of The Pops moment” on X.
The ‘00s-inspired performance has been praised across social media but now PinkPantheress has revealed it included a nod to her love of video games. “Thinking about how I chose to musically direct my Fallon performance just so I could discreetly slip in Rhythm Heaven sound bites to match our dance moves. It’s the game that got me through my teens.”
this being the edit too like omg 😭 https://t.co/fr4cwRhyid pic.twitter.com/FoLjcz8cB0
— pinkpantheress source (@pantheressluv) July 31, 2025
2008’s Rhythm Heaven is the sequel to 2006’s Rhythm Tengoku but was the first game in the series to be released internationally. The Nintendo DS game spawned a number of sequels and saw players use the touch screen to play through a number of rhythm-based levels, each with their own rules.
Earlier this year during a Reddit AMA session, PinkPantheress revealed she was a huge fan of Red Dead Redemption 2 and was currently playing through co-op game Split Fiction. “It’s fire and it’s the second kinda instalment to It Takes Two, which is also fire,” she wrote.
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During a 2023 interview, PinkPantheress said she liked Fortnite but stayed away from The Legend Of Zelda games. “They’re too complex. I don’t get what’s going on [and] I don’t like fantasy.”
‘Illegal’ is taken from her ‘Fancy That’ mixtape and has been one of the breakout hits of the summer. Speaking about its success in a new interview PinkPantheress said it was “harder” for her to be “taken seriously and rise the ranks,” because she’s a Black woman making dance music.
“I always feel like I’m cutting through and I’m in a very privileged position musically. But I can feel a little bit like I’m hitting all these markers and it still feels like I’m getting overlooked, simply because there’s a lot of people that don’t necessarily understand what I represent, nor do they want to take a look because I think it just doesn’t make sense for them,” she explained. “People are less willing to listen to electronic music made by a Black woman. That’s just a fact.”
In other news, Bloober Team’s cult 2021 horror game The Medium is set to get a film adaptation courtesy of Annabelle’s writer, Gary Dauberman.
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