Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
still quite basic, you might even say primitive. However, even with that
being said, the sound of games really came to life for the i rst time in this
decade, and made its way into our collective unconscious as a nation.
Later in the decade we started to see the very beginnings of MIDI
(Musical Instrument Digital Interface) being used, along with mono low
bit rate audio i le formats. With these new innovations, the sound and
scope of music was on the rise.
Pac-Man Fever
1980 also brought us the birth of a video game icon. Pac-Man boasts
many memorable sound and music elements and truly represents a giant
leap forward in overall music and sound conception. The opening ditty
is one of just a few video game melodies to seriously penetrate into pop
culture. One must also consider the sound of Pac-Man dying (blinking
out), which has become a universally accepted “defeat” or “loser” sound.
Pac-Man (Namco, 1981).
Donkey Kong (1981)
The i rst major success of Japanese video game company Nintendo,
this game featured some of the very i rst use of animated cutscenes
to join actions and levels together into a coherent story. It introduced
Jumpman, a character that was the forerunner of Mario.
Berzerk (1981)
This game featured the most recognizable voice synthesizer module of
the early arcade era: “Get the humanoid!” “Intruder alert! Intruder alert!”
“The humanoid must not escape!” “Chicken! Fight like a robot!”
The electronic voices and sounds from this era of games are really fun
and somewhat retro to listen to today. However, they are pure classics,
like a good B-movie cliché, and often mimicked and mocked in modern
games.
Tempest (1981): Sound and Fury
Also in 1981, Atari's i rst color vector game, Tempest , hit the arcades, and
brought with it a new next generation set of audio tools. Atari's POKEY
chip was one of the i rst to primarily generate sound. Sound was written
in a new format, Atari's own in-house SAP music format. It is no wonder
that most of the well-known tunes for Atari machines used this chip
and format between 1981-1987. The chip had four separate channels,
and the pitch, volume, and distortion values of each could be controlled
individually. Tempest used two chips, for a total of eight “voices”. Atari
Top: Atari's POKEY audio chip. Bottom:
Tempest , one the many Atari games that
used the POKEY chip to generate sound.
Credit: SC: Jeremy Engel, Pokey: Rod Castler.
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search