Arcade beeps: how the first game sounds were wired, not written

Landmark scores of the era

1. 1972Pong Allan Alcorn (sound effects)Alcorn found that the game's sync generator could produce different tones and used them for the paddle and wall sounds.
2. 1978Space Invaders Sound by Michiyuki Kamei; game designed by Tomohiro NishikadoA four-note descending bass loop speeds up as the invaders advance, tying music directly to the state of play.
3. 1979Asteroids Atari (sound circuit by Wendi Allen)A two-note 'heartbeat' quickens as the game goes on, produced by a custom discrete sound circuit rather than a sound chip.
4. 1980Pac-Man Toshio Kai and Shigeichi IshimuraIts short opening jingle and eating effects became some of the most recognisable sounds in arcades.
5. 1980Rally-X Toshio KaiCredited as one of the first games with background music that plays continuously during play.
6. 1981Donkey Kong Yukio KaneokaShort pieces accompany the levels and story scenes, an early sign of music being used to frame a narrative.
7. 1982Pole Position Nobuyuki OhnogiNamco's racer is one of the early arcade titles with a credited composer.

Sound made from spare parts: Pong and the sync generator

When Atari's Pong reached arcades in November 1972 it had no sound chip, no music and no composer. What it did have was an engineer, Allan Alcorn, who noticed that a part already on the board could do more than its main job. The sync generator kept the television picture stable, but Alcorn found it could also produce several different tones. He routed those tones to a speaker, and the familiar blip of the ball hitting a paddle was born.

That approach set the pattern for the decade. Sound in early arcade machines was built, not written. Each effect was the result of a circuit design choice, so changing a sound often meant changing components on the board. There was no file to edit and no instrument to play. The people responsible were usually engineers rather than musicians, and the sounds were short, functional signals: a hit, a miss, a point scored.

It is worth remembering how new this was. Pinball and electromechanical games had bells and chimes, but a television game had to generate everything electronically. A blip told the player the ball had connected, which made the game easier to read. Sound was feedback first and atmosphere second.

Four falling notes: how Space Invaders turned tension into rhythm

Taito's Space Invaders, released in Japan in July 1978, is often cited as a turning point. Its marching aliens are accompanied by a loop of four descending bass notes. As the invaders move faster and lower, the loop speeds up with them. The result is simple, but the effect on players is strong: the music tells you how much trouble you are in without you looking at a single number.

Sources differ slightly on credit. The game was designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, and Wikipedia's account of its development credits Michiyuki Kamei with creating the sounds using analogue circuitry and a Texas Instruments SN76477 sound chip. Pitch and length were adjusted by swapping resistors and capacitors, which again shows how physical the work was.

Music scholars point to Space Invaders as an early example of what would later be called adaptive music: sound that changes according to what is happening in the game. A year later, Atari's Asteroids used a similar idea. Its two-note heartbeat quickens as play goes on, and it came from a custom discrete sound circuit designed by Wendi Allen that produced 13 different effects. Neither game had a melody in the modern sense, yet both used tempo to create tension, a technique that composers still rely on today. You can read how that idea grew up in our explainer on adaptive music.

From effects to a tune that keeps playing: Namco's 1980

The year 1980 brought two important Namco games. Pac-Man arrived in Japan in May 1980, with sound credited to Toshio Kai and Shigeichi Ishimura. Its brief opening jingle and the chomping effect as Pac-Man eats dots became widely recognised. According to the game's development history, the sound effects were among the last features added.

A few months later, in October 1980, Namco released Rally-X. Again Toshio Kai provided the music, and this time the tune did not stop after an introduction. Rally-X is credited as one of the first games to feature continuous background music during play. That small change matters. Once a game had a melody running underneath the action, sound was no longer only a set of alarms and confirmations. It became a mood, something closer to a film score.

Not every claim of a 'first' in this period is clear-cut, because many machines were released in Japan, North America and Europe at different times, and some records are thin. Where sources agree, we say so; where they hedge, we hedge too. What is certain is that by the early 1980s arcade makers were treating music as part of a game's identity.

Sound chips arrive in the cabinet and the living room

Building a new circuit for every effect was slow and expensive. Through the late 1970s, general-purpose sound chips offered another way. A programmer could send numbers to the chip and get pitches, noise and volume changes back, which meant sounds could be altered in software instead of with a soldering iron.

Three chips from this period are worth knowing:

• Atari TIA (1977). The Television Interface Adaptor in Atari's home console handled both graphics and sound. It had two audio channels and could only produce a limited set of pitches, many of them out of tune with standard scales. Composers had to work within those frequencies or use tricks such as alternating between two detuned notes.
• General Instrument AY-3-8910 (1978). A programmable sound generator with three tone channels, a noise generator and a shared envelope. It appeared in arcade games such as Frogger and Bomb Jack, and versions of it later went into the ZX Spectrum 128, the Amstrad CPC and MSX computers.
• Atari POKEY (1979). Designed by Doug Neubauer, it provided four semi-independent channels and was used in Atari's 400 and 800 computers as well as arcade games including Centipede and Missile Command.

These chips are the direct ancestors of the sound hardware described in our next era, the 8-bit era. For a closer look at how square waves and noise channels are turned into music, see sound chips and chiptune.

Jingles that framed a story: Donkey Kong and the early 1980s

Nintendo's Donkey Kong (1981) shows how quickly ambitions grew. Yukio Kaneoka wrote music to accompany the levels and the short story scenes between them. The arcade board kept the sound hardware from Nintendo's earlier Radar Scope machine, so the team was reusing equipment rather than designing from scratch, but the use of music to introduce characters and mark progress was a step towards the cinematic scoring of later decades.

By 1982 composers were being named in the credits of some arcade games. Namco's Pole Position, for instance, is credited to Nobuyuki Ohnogi. That may seem a small detail, but it marks a change in how the work was seen: game music was becoming a craft with its own practitioners.

Across this whole period, the limits were severe. Memory was tiny, so tunes were short loops. Channels were few, so melody and bass competed for space. Many effects still came from dedicated circuits. Yet those limits shaped a recognisable style: brief, catchy motifs that repeat without becoming tiring, and sounds that tell the player something useful. Those two ideas, memorable themes and informative sound, run through every era that followed.

Listening to arcade sound today

If you want to hear this era, the most reliable route is official re-releases. Several publishers have reissued early arcade games on modern consoles and PCs, and some include sound tests or museum modes. Emulated versions vary in accuracy, especially for games whose sounds came from analogue circuits, because those circuits are harder to imitate in software than a sound chip.

Museums are another option. In the UK, the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield displays playable historic games; check its website for what is currently on the floor, as exhibits change. When you listen, try paying attention to tempo rather than melody. Notice how often the speed of a sound, not its tune, is doing the work.