Collins audio supplement: An arcade audio history

Today I've been watching game play videos of some classic arcade games as I re-read the opening chapters of Collins Game Sound.  I'm marveling in how the internet makes it so easy right now to conduct this kind of research!  Thank goodness!-- the availability of this information is incredible!  I'm doing this in part because I plan to use Game Sound as my course text book and I want to be able to easily find links to these videos-- and also to make sure I've heard and fully understood the history of game audio as she presents it.  I can't find a couple of the gameplay videos so far and I probably won't link to footage from every example, but I will in most cases.  Other videos won't embed here, so I've posted links.  These videos correspond with the beginning of many of the examples in Chapter 2 of Game Sound.  The games here start with sound effects only and progress to having music at the beginning/ end of games, and then finally to having fairly continuous music and sound effects.

Computer Space (1971)-- first mass produced arcade game.  Advertising boasted interactive space battle sounds.

Pong (1972)-- first arcade hit.  Interesting to think Nolan Bushnell was asking for cheering and hissing of a crowd audience as you played.  Yet all that was possible were those iconic blooping and bleeping sounds.

Collins notes a drive toward realism in game audio throughout game audio history, as well as several examples early in the advertising of games.  Here in this video for Man Eater (1975), you can hear the "screams" of the swimmers as they're eaten.  

Space Invaders (1978)-- first continuous music that speeds up as gameplay progresses.  

Asteroids (1979)-- music here also speeds up, but as I play this game, I feel a disconnect between the music and the gameplay that I don't with Space Invaders.  Whereas Space Invaders' music gets faster at the same time the gameplay gets harder, there's a point in Asteroids toward the end of each screen where the music is very quick-- which I experience as trying to keep me agitated-- and the gameplay is actually getting simpler, since almost all the asteroids are destroyed.  

Rally X (1980) -- one of the earliest games using looping music.  A simple 6 bar loop, 4 in I (Bb as it plays here) and 2 bars in vi (G minor).  That movement from tonic down a third strikes me as a fairly common progression that would later occur in several games (Castlevania and Punch-Out, for instance).  

Carnival (1980)-- uses Juventino Rosas's "Over the Waves." (if you're impatient, go to :46 for the start of the tune).  I always think of this song in connection with Mary Poppins when Bert is acting out being on a tight rope (2:23) and also recently encountered this tune as I was doing some research on the cutscenes in Number Munchers.  I love how the music rises a half-step with each iteration and speeds up!  This must be one of the first uses of classical music in a game.

Frogger (1981)-- an early game to incorporate "dynamic music." Used at least 11 different gameplay songs.  Really cool to re-read this after having forgotten it and then discovering Frogger on my own a few weeks ago via my Buckner and Garcia research.   The music here doesn't loop-- it appears that the tracks play and simply switch to another track if you've not gotten your frog to safety by the end of the track.  When you get your frog to safety, this also launches a new track.  Unquestionably groundbreaking, interesting game audio.  

Gyruss (1983)-- continuing with the classical music in games, Gyruss makes extensive use of Bach's Tocatta and Fugue.  The music here, like Frogger, strikes me as sounding pretty incredible...  

Collins draws a distinction between games that have non-looping audio in '82 -'83 like Tutankhamun, Miner 2049er, Jungle Hunt, Dig Dug, and Congo Bongo and games in '84 whose audio primarily loops.  (Although Collins says these don't loop, several of these seem to loop to me-- Jungle Hunt for sure, Dig Dug only plays music when you move-- so if you move for long enough, it will loop-- and Congo Bongo, though mostly silent has looping percussion.  Maybe we heard different versions, which have totally different audio.)  '84 looping audio games: Gyruss, Sewer Sam, Tarzan, Burger Time, Antarctic Adventure, and Up N Down.  Collins: Hardware was mostly the same, thus this was an aesthetic choice.  

Finally, Star Wars (1983) was a fairly good incorporation of spoken word from sampled speech chips as well as music from the movie.  In fact, in the commercial for this game, the recognizable Williams' themes are one of the first selling points!    

Game Music as Pop Music: Buckner and Garcia's Pac-Man Fever

This morning I've watching and listening to classic arcade gameplay videos and then been listening to the corresponding tracks of Buckner and Garcia's Pac-Man Fever.  Every track incorporates some kind of game audio sound effects from the game they're singing about, and many have some of the game music (if there was music in the game) in the tracks as well.  I absolutely love this album.  Is this the first use of game audio in pop music?  Let me know if you know of earlier incorporations of game audio into pop music.

Probably my favorite thing about these tracks is that the lyrics are almost like a secret code for game players.  For instance, when you eat the power pill in Pac-Man, you the ghosts turn blue and Pac-Man can eat them; but if a person hasn't played the game, s/he wouldn't know this at all.  For people who've played it, "I'm gonna eat 'em all up just as soon as they turn blue" would've made perfect sense.  The reality is, these guys just love gaming and were inspired by it to create this album.  Having listened all the way through the album, I've got a feeling that part of what made Pac-Man Fever so popular was not just that the game was so popular, but also the call and response nature of the song that allowed for audience participation.  After all, who doesn't like a sing along?

Here's a video of them performing Pac-Man Fever on the Dick Clark show followed by an interview where they talk about writing this music.

While it was really cool to watch some gameplay of Berzerk, which has the first spoken audio I've heard in a game, to be honest, the best thing about this project today has been encountering Frogger.  Not a game I played or knew at all, but the music to this game is INCREDIBLE.  WAY ahead of anything else close to that era in diversity of audio.  The audio is inventive, Mozartian (melodic, tonal, regular), and integrated into the gameplay in that it changes as you progress through the level.  I can't believe I didn't know this game.  I wish I could find more about the composer and hear the audio without the game sound effects, but I've yet to track that down online.  If you don't know this game, give the video a listen.