Game Audio History
A Dialogue of Ideas and Constraints
Video game development can be seen a dialogue between artistic ideas and constraints.
Constraints can take the form of hardware constraints, such as fixed platform hardware, or development constraints, such as limited development time.
This dialogue was very present in the 1980s-1990s video games, especially clearly in the graphics. To illustrate this idea, we look at how this dialogue was present in the graphics production in a few select, starting with Sega's classic isometric brawler 'Golden Axe' from 1989.
Golden Axe: Perspective vs. Tilemaps
Makoto Uchida and his team at Sega we tasked with making a follow-up to Altered Beast for their System 16 arcade board, with gameplay similar to TechnoSoft's isometric brawler Double Dragon. Uchida was inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger's portrayal of Conan the Barbarian, Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' for the characters and setting. For the artwork, Uchida researched fantasy artist Boris Vallejo. [1]
Uchida created this concept art for the new game:
However, it was difficulty for the development team to bring this vision to life, specifically with recreating the isometric perspective on the System 16 arcade board. [1]
The System 16 hardware was based on 8x8 tilemaps and sprites, running at a standard resolution for the time period:
System 16B specifications ------------------------------------------ Resolution : 320 x 224 Colours : 4096 from a 15-bit palette Sprites : 128 Sprite colors : 16 per sprite Tile layers : 2 layers, 8x8 tiles Video RAM : 97 KB total Video ROM : Up to 2.8 KB
[2]
We can see how an 8x8 tilemap affects game graphics even more clearly on more constrained hardware, such as the Sega Genesis home console. This screenshot from 'Zombies Ate My Neighbors' clearly shows the effect the hardware can have on the final graphics:
We can observe how all of the background graphics follows 90-degree angles, 8x8 tiles are repeated over and over again. Games for home consoles in the 1980s would often exhibit these characteristics, because tilemaps with reused titles was the most efficient way of representing large amounts of background graphics. Specifically, on platforms such as NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Sega Genesis, and some home computer systems such as the Commodore 64.
TMS9918: One Chip, Several Platforms
Examples:
- Limited color palettes like the TMS9918 (15 fixed colors, 32 single-color sprites), games for the MSX, Sega SG-1000, and all ColecoVision share this palette, and the games look similar as a result
Audio Hardware
If you are a hardware designer, you get to choose between the different affordable options available to you at the time.
Video games initially evolved in the 1970s in two different types of environments:
- On university mainframes, accessed through terminals, often without sound.
- In arcades, where sound was essential to attract people to each individual machine (because they were competing for attention) and keep them entertained while playing to keep players putting quarters in.
Real-time game sound technology in 1970s-1980s was incredibly varied compared to now. Let's do a little thought experiment: It's 1980, and you are designing a brand new arcade game. Now the question arises:
So, what are we going to use for sound?
It turns out, that particular question could have many different answers:
- mechanical sound
- digital hardware synthesis
- analog hardware synthesis
- digital software synthesis
- programmable sound generators
- voice synthesis
- ROM samples
- Cassette tapes
All valid answers for arcade games in 1980. If we jump forward 4 years to 1984, we could add even more options:
- FM synthesis
- LaserDisc analog audio
So the sound reproduction techniques were incredibly varied, which makes this era particularly interesting to study with regards to audio. The first article below will go into some of these early techniques. The second article will do a deep dive on Pong and how its digital hardware synthesis works. The next couple of articles will focus on the software synthesis of Defender (1981). The final couple of articles will focus on music, and more specifically, the evolutions of tracker software on the Commodore 64 and Amiga.
Article: History of Audio Technology
This article goes through some of the earliest history of video game sound, focused on the 1970s-1980s.
Article: Pong - Digital Audio Hardware
Pong was the second video game to be released to the public, preceeded only by Computer Space (1971). Both games were created by Atari (formerly known as Syzygy Engineering). Pong was a two-player tennis game controlled with analog knobs, designed by Allan Alcorn in 2 months as a 'warm-up exercise' for the job. It ended up being very commercially succesful, selling 35,000 arcade cabinets, netting the newly formed Atari a profit of 17.5 m$ (~ 135 m$ in 2026).
Pong was designed using discrete TTL components, with no CPU and thus no software. The sound 1-bit digital and is generated directly from logic signals on the circuit board.
This article goes deep into the Pong hardware to investigate how the sound is generated.
Software Synthesis
The 1981 arcade classic Defender by Williams was a groundbreaking game in many ways. It had some of the most complex controls for any game at the time, with its two-way joystick, and 5 buttons. It was more difficult to learn than most arcade games, but once mastered, it was a very fluid and dynamic experience. It scrolled with variable speed in two directions - at its fastest very tricky to control, and it had a mini-map with enemy and human locations, a key feature for playing the game well.
The game had a unique sound design, brutal digital synthesis emulating laser fire, explosions, and strange alien voices. Only one voice at a time, but every sound was as intense as it could possibly be. The sound design and hardware came straight from Williams' pinball machines, where the tradition was to be as loud and noticeable as possible.
Article: The Hardware of Defender
This article is about the hardware of the Defender arcade machine from 1981, with emphasis on the sound board, which was originally designed by Eugene Jarvis for a pinball machine.
The chips that make up the sound hardware and how they work together is described, and
finally, there is a short analysis of the theoretical limits of the sound hardware in terms of sample rate and waveform duration, and how these constraints motivate custom sound algorithms over sample playback.
Article: Defender Sound ROM Disassembly
In this article, we will look into the audio software of Defender, 2 KB of MC6800 machine code located in a ROM chip. This code generates all the different sounds heard in the game. We will disassemble the sound ROM so we can inspect it in assembly code form. The disassembled code with some annotation is available for download. After disassembling the ROM, we will reassemble it and check if it is exactly the same as the original, verifying the correctness of our disassembly.
Article: Defender Sound ROM Analysis
The Defender Sound ROM is disassembled, and the boot sound is analyzed as a signal, spectrum, and in code.
Defender Sound Board Emulator
status: unfinished
2015-03-20
To further inspect what goes on inside the sound hardware, and to facility development of new ROMs, an emulation of the Defender sound hardware is created in C++.Defender Sound Board Emulator
Defender Sound ROM Experiments
status: done
2015-03-20
Different examples of replacement sound ROMs, written in MC6800 assembler, are discussed.
Tracker Music
In the late 1980s throughout the 1990s, a particular type of music software was dominating in home computer games and in the demoscene: trackers. They were bare bones music composition programs, you would even call them glorified hex editors. Especially the Commodore Amiga would be known for this type of software. Apart from the music written for many games and demos during this period, this class of software was also key in developing certain musical styles, such as jungle.
Article: Soundmonitor
One of the most well-known composers for games on the Commodore 64 and Amiga, Chris Hűlsbeck, wrote his own music software for the Commodore 64. It was named 'Soundmonitor' and was released in October 1986. It had a raw programmer-style interface with 3 tracks and music listed as a series of commands.
This type of music software would be known as 'trackers' and Soundmonitor would give rise to hundreds of different implementations of the same core idea, particularly on the Commodore Amiga and the PC.
Article: Soundtrcker and ST-01
The earliest well-known music tracker software was Chris Hűlsbeck's Soundmonitor for the Commodore 64. Inspired by Soundmonitor, Karsten Obarski created 'The Ultimate Soundtracker' for the Commodore Amiga and released it in 1987. Combined with the digital sampled audio capabilities of the popular home computer, the Commodore Amiga, trackers became a phenomenon in home music production in the 1980-1990s.