The Beginnings of Sound Design
Ever since the introduction of film and audio, sound designers have experimented with different technology to fundamentally change the aesthetics of the cinema and film-going experience. Game designers have implemented their knowledge and experience from film to create iconic music and sound effects in retro video games such as Atari 2600’s Pac-Man and Space Invaders.
These iconic games were first introduced in the form of penny arcades. However, the earliest electronic video games were developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Spacewar! (1962) that had no sound. Then came the first mass-produced video game by Nutting Associates Computer Space in 1971. This was both a single player game where the user controlled a rocket ship and faced flying saucers as well as a two-player game where the players went up against each other. As a sci-fi rocket ship game, this was accompanied by space war-like sounds: rockets, thrusters and explosions. Regardless of the many video games that came before it, the pioneer and the first hit game in the industry would be Pong (1972) developed by Allan Alcorn.
“The truth is, I was running out of parts on the board... I said, “Screw it, I don't know how to make any one of those sounds. I don’t have enough parts anyhow.” - Allan Alcorn (as cited in Kent, 2001)
An interesting observation to regard is that instead of utilising sound design principles, the designer behind Pong had instead created the game’s iconic sound effects as a result of a lack of experience and technology in the 1970s. Even so, the sound effects, including Pong, were the main selling point of video games as a whole.