Collins Audio Supplement Supplement 2-1: Beginnings of Home Console Audio History

Continuing to listen to the audio of the games in Collins' Game Sound to make sure I've really heard the progression of audio gaming history.  Here are the links I've been exploring recently.

Pong for the Atari.  Very primitive, but iconic, sounds....

Space Invaders for Atari.  I think I've mentioned this before on the blog, but comparing the original arcade sound against the Atari sound below shows the big contrast in the audio capabilities of the different mediums.

Tapeworm for Atari.  Here she's pointing out how bizarre the theme song is at the beginning of game play, based on the limitations of the Atari tuning.

Burger Time for Atari.  Collin's contrast here is how the two audio channels available with the TIA chip for the Atari VCS didn't allow the bass and the treble voices to sound in the same key.  Again compare the arcade version and hear the missing bass line-- the second channel is used instead for sound effects.  This game definitely doesn't have the same harmonic unity that would arise later.

Up 'N Down for Atari.  Wow.  Collins explains that the music is "changed from a bluesy F-sharp minor groove to a very unsettling version based in C minor with a flattened melodic second."  That's basically a music scholarly way of saying it sounds like shit.  This is quite possible the worst game audio I've ever heard.  The port of this music is incredibly dissonant and shows very little care for being a positive audio experience for the player.  Was there QC with this game audio?  Give a listen to the arcade version to clear this from your ears and I hope you won't ever hear the Atari version again.  I warned you:

Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out for NES.  I've featured both of these on the blog before, so I'll skip posting videos on the page, but these games and their music are dear to me.  The NES audio setup with five channels, two pulse waves, one square, a noise, and a sample channel possible (but rarely used) were classic.  MTPO made use of the sampler channel for the scratchy sounding speech.  Gauntlet 2 used this feature a bit more successfully, although I'm still not able to understand what is said very easily.  Not a game I know, it's interesting to me that there's really only music at the beginning of each level.

Ultima (III) for NES.  Here's an early RPG I don't know.  Collins points out how in the battle music, all three channels of the NES sound were used to create chords.  Definitely a different compositional approach since all the voices sound in homorhythm.  Contrast this with the counterpoint in the overworld music.

Castlevania for NES.  Castlevania's battle music uses the bass voice as the melody and arpeggiation in one of the square wave voices to fill out the harmonies.  Again, I've already featured this game on the blog I'll skip posting a video about it here, but here's a link to gameplay.

Metroid is a game I never played but definitely want to.  One of my good friends in undergrad would always go on about how great the music to Metroid was.  I watched a longplay of the game about a month ago and definitely was impressed with the audio experience.  Collins includes an excerpt of this longer interview between Alexander Brandon and Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka.  If you watch a longplay of Metroid, notice that there's not really a melody until you beat the game... that's by design, of course.  Give a listen to any portion of the gameplay, and then switch over to around 50:25 to hear the contrast. I also learned from this interview that the Famicom had an additional audio channel from what the NES did, so the music sounds slightly different on that system.  Compare the end of Metroid on the Famicom with the below NES video to hear what I mean.

Manic Mansion for NES.  This is an incredible game that I was terrible at but loved.  Hope to play it again soon.  Here Collins is pointing out uses of the noise channel.  Here it is radio static and a skipping record.

Journey to Silius for NES.  Collins says that this is an "example of samples taking on the role of bass, such as in Journey to Silius (in which the triangle channel is used like Linn drum toms.)"  I don't know this game well at all, but below is some gameplay and here's a link to the soundtrack.

Contra for NES.  Uses sample channel as percussion.  I've featured this game before, so I'm going to leave it at that with a link to gameplay if you want.

Crystalis for NES.  This also uses the sample channel as percussion.  This isn't a game I know at all, so I'll have to give it a more thorough listen soon.  For now, here's a link to the soundtrack and some gameplay below.

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!    

My Gaming Audio History: Kaboom (1981)

Kaboom! is an Activision game for the Atari that, like Combat, has no continuous music, just sound effects.  One of the things I remember most is that you played with this paddle controller that I absolutely sucked at using.

Who created the audio?  Larry Kaplan, who was the game designer.  Here's a link to a Digital Press interview with Larry Kaplan where he recounts creating the game.  He doesn't really discuss the audio creation, but does mention an awards ceremony where Kaboom! won best audio.  Wow, we've come a long way!

What's the audio experience?  There's the sound of the bombs being lit, the sound of them going into your water, the sound of them exploding, and a celebratory sound when you reach thresholds of points/bombs (1000, 2000, 3000, etc-- I never heard this sound when I played).  The sound as you extinguish the bombs has a musical pitch that rises in a somewhat chromatic scale fashion similar to the sound of your bouncing shot in Combat Pong.  I really quite like the 1000 point sound-- the way it glisses up from low to high definitely feels like a huge accomplishment!

How does the audio draw the player more deeply into the game?  The sound of the lit fuse is one that I think simply we grow up hearing when we use sparklers, hear bombs on cartoons, etc, and simply know and react to with urgency and care.  Also, the raising in pitch when you catch more of the bombs mirrors the Mad Bomber's increased speed and undoubtedly raises the intensity the player feels.

It's been interesting for me to hear how these Atari sound effects aren't really in tune as we would consider the modern musical scale.  I've read about the Atari tuning problems in books, but it's very interesting to actually hear it as I listen to these sound effects.

If you're feeling retro, I've also been checking out how these games were marketed.  Here's a link to a TV commercial for Kaboom!

While it's not a game we owned or I really played, I've got to mention that between Combat and Kaboom! came one of the most famous game audio sounds of all time: Space Invaders.  I've featured the four note pattern that speeds up with the alien ships earlier in the blog.  It seems that different versions of the game played these notes in different ways and the Atari 2600 version sounds so percussive, it's hard for me to hear a descending pitch with the thumping, not even really sounding much like the arcade game.  Compared with Combat and Kaboom!, I can see what made Space Invaders audio groundbreaking...  first, it does have sound going on continuously during gameplay, and even more importantly, the sound is tied so perfectly and emotionally into the visual experience.  It just hadn't been done before!  Still, though, I've yet to hear something on the Atari that is really what I think of as game music, but it's cool as I work on this to hear the beginnings and understand where we've come from.

Game Music Online: Audio Mentioned in G4 Top 100 Video Games of All Time: Part 4

Continuing my journey through G4's Top 100 Video Games of All Time whose audio was worthy of special highlighting in the series.  A best of the best list, if you will.  I'm having a blast getting to know these games, (re) experiencing their music, and thinking more about their soundtracks.  Hope you will too....


40 Space Invaders:  Tim Schafer: "I remember hearing... this thumping... strong bass sound.  You had this emotional reaction to it.  It was really the first to use audio in that way... to make you feel something."  Space Invaders is often cited for the first continuous soundtrack, as well as Schafer's credit for being the first game to use music to heighten the game play experience as the descending bass line and alien ship movements speed up.

37 Halo Combat Evolved.  Scott Porter  "There are certain songs you hear from games that just make you so happy or take you back to a time that was so awesome.  And every time I hear (sings the opening theme)...  the theme song is so incredible...."  Not a game I've played, but one whose music I'm currently listening to.

32 Mike Tyson's Punch Out.  "It was awesome watching him run along with his coach and that song..." (he sings the song) Danny Pudi.  I've been thinking about this cutscene music for a really long time and seeing this finally got me to look it up.  Of course the best one was the nighttime training-- love it!

I also watched this awesome video, a 40 min longplay of the Punch Out, to remind myself of the music experience.  When I hear this music, it strikes me as straddling the ear between arcade and home entertainment systems.  If it just played the transition music, start of the fight, winning fanfare, etc this game music could be for arcade.  However, once home entertainment systems started to become popular, game designers needed to create a more specific audio experience.  Presumably, a household only had a TV or two-- that's how ours was, at least-- and if someone were playing games in one room, it needed to create a continuous soundtrack with underscoring that builds tension and keeps players and observers engaged.

Also, I LOVE the classical music references: Glass Joe: La Marseillaise, Von Kaiser/ Super Macho Man: Ride of the Valkyries, Don Flaminco: Carmen Overture.  Is this kind of stuff happening in contemporary games, or have we lost these references?  Also read that Soda Popinski plays a Russian folk song-- wouldn't know it, but I do like how the music introduces each character.  I don't know if I recognized these musical themes as a kid, but much like the Looney Tunes episodes, I liked the music when I was a kid, and now, I get the musical references on a completely different level.


30 Super Street Fighter II Turbo.  "The best thing about Street Fighter II was all the sounds they made when you were fighting.  -Mo Mandel  I didn't play this Street Fighter, but I did play Street Fighter II on the SNES.  When my friends and I played together, we totally imitated these effects for our super powered punches and kicks.

Surveying Literature: From Pac-Man to Pop Music, Introduction

Using a Google search, I came across a collection of essays edited by Karen Collins entitled From Pac-Man to Pop Music: Interactive Audio in Games and New Media. I'm so excited to read this book and will, of course, chronicle my doing so here. I'm able to access the book through my UM library connection, but I believe parts of the book to be available through Google view.  Even though I've just started the book, I'm so excited to read it that I want to go ahead and post about the beginning of it.  Plus, the multi-author, collection of essays format allows for easy dipping in and out of the book for the purpose of reading and research. In contemporary academic style, the authors aren't only scholars, they are cross-discipline, industry experts.  This isn't your typical easy, light read; these are dense, well constructed essays that require, for me at least, a thoughtful read and good digestion.

In the Introduction, Collins provides a brief history of game music from the late '70s to present. I've been wondering what the first game with a soundtrack was; according to Collins, it was the descending bass in Space Invaders.  The intro ends with a short explanation of the various chapters, almost all of which-- except perhaps those on ringtones-- will be applicable to my study here.

Here are my reactions to reading the intro:

NES game soundtracks follow this standard four voice format: melody, voice fleshing out melody, bass, percussion. That's exactly what my study of Super Mario Bros music found. I'm interested to compare that against some other classics.

Collins mentions popular songs from the late 70's/early 80s that are about video games. An interesting side study might be to get familiar with music about video games.  I didn't even know songs like this existed!  Here's a Wierd Al song she mentions.

A distinction is made between music/sounds that happen as a result of player action-- jumping, or swinging a sword-- versus music/sounds that happen as a result of the parameters of the game: the music for a given level, or the speed up timer in Mario.  Collins names this distinction interactive audio versus adaptive audio.

In homage to the first game with a soundtrack:

SurveyIng Literature: The Evolution of Video Game Music (NPR, All Things Considered)

Today I'm listening to an NPR story from 2008, The Evolution of Video Game Music. If you've not heard it, I totally recommend it.  Not overly technical, but for a video game/ music lover, it's a good intro. One of the best parts is hearing the video game music in the background!

Some highlights for me are:

The mention as far back as Space Invaders of game designers testing to see the effect of the sound effects to have an effect on the player's emotional state. This has me thinking about the interplay between marketing and video game music-- wondering what sort of marketing video game music principles exist. 

The program compares video game music in comparison with film music-- but, says that unlike film music which has, according to Tommy Tallarico, "background" music, video game music has "foreground" music.

A question seems to be resounding as a theme in several of these sources: Is video game music serious music?  I wonder, why does it matter?

The audio story goes on to mention Video Games Live and how successful these concerts are selling versus a classical concert.  Video Games Live concerts are a multimedia experience where the audience is encouraged to be loud and energized compared with the "stiffness" of a classical concert.

Very interesting to learn that Berkley and USC are teaching video game music composition.  As a college teacher, I'd be interested to teach a video game music history course.

Just hearing the music excerpts in the background of the NPR story as the music becomes more contemporary in time is awesome!  Or follow links on the left side of the NPR page for live performances of a Final Fantasy piano medley and some of your favorite classic themes from Tetris, Super Mario Bros, and Myst.