Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
oscillators and basic tone generators like sine and square waves. Sound
designers and composers of this era are very technically oriented,
frequently being electrical engineers, and the act of creating these
sounds involves a lot of complexity and is in many ways similar to
programming computers.
Pong
(1972): The First Arcade Video
Game—With Sound!
The name Atari is often associated with the earliest arcade games.
Founder Nolan Bushnell got his start making
Computer Space
, a version
of
Spacewar!
, for a dif erent company, but soon created Atari, convinced
that video games were the future of entertainment.
Atari's i rst big success was
Pong
. Atari engineer Allan Alcorn originally
programmed
Pong
as an exercise based on versions of a simple paddle
tennis game Bushnell had seen on the Magnavox Odyssey game console.
The i rst
Pong
prototype used an ordinary black-and-white TV installed in a
four-foot-tall cabinet.
During development, Bushnell decided the game should provide
sound ef ects and feedback, so Alcorn used a sync generator to create a
primitive sound set. When Atari tested
Pong
at a local bar, Andy Capp's
Tavern, the response was extremely favorable. The game itself was
popular enough, but the digital sounds attracted crowds curious to
discover the source of the noise.
Pong
became one of the i rst arcade video games, the i rst to use sound,
and the best-selling game to that point. In the process, it propelled Atari
to preeminence in the brand new i eld of arcade video games.
An original
Pong
Console.
Credit:
Rob Boudon.
So how does the sound work in the game? There are only three sounds
in a
Pong
game: First is a short low pitched blip, that plays when the ball
hits the side walls. Next is a longer and higher pitched blip when the
ball strikes your paddle. And the last is a higher pitched bleep that gets
triggered when you score a point. Simple, raw and quite elegant when
you factor in how it was made.
Pong
also became a home console game that spawned dozens of clones
and led to the i rst video game slump. Atari led the industry out of this
stagnant period with the i rst signii cant video game console with a
sound chip, the Atari VCS or 2600.
The Atari VCS or 2600: this was the
company's i rst and most well-known
game console.
