Tape recordings of video game arcade in 1982-1988

This guy has posted tape recordings of the action taking place at video arcades during the 1980s, including the Just Fun video arcade in Ithaca, NY in 1982.

We recorded our video game experiences from 1982 until 1988 in a variety of locations on the east coast. Most of the recordings come from Ithaca, NY, Albany, NY and Ocean City, MD. Other locations include Lancaster, PA, Falmouth, MA, Rehoboth Beach, DE and Key West, FL.
Luckily I stored all fourteen audio tapes in a safe place and rediscovered them when I moved the rest of my stuff out of my parents house in 1997. In the last several years I digitized these nostalgic recordings to preserve and share them.
Experience the magic and the wonder of the early years of coin-op video games. Hear the classic arcade ambience like you haven't heard it in over a quarter of a century! The blend of several video games being played simultaneously, the kids yelling and the quarters clanking. We will never hear such beautiful chaos quite the same way again....

(via Cool-Mo-Dee)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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zuzu

Other locations include Lancaster, PA

An Amish video game? ;)
Bender

Ha! I had forgotten so many of those games (Burger-time !) .

So cool to hear the old sounds, really took me back to those days. If I only had hair left to feather.
starcadia

Amazing how some of those sounds transport me right back to the specific places I used to play those games. I knew from the sounds whether it was at the pizza joint, the mall arcade, the mini-golf course, the convenience store, etc. What a great time to have been a kid, and for specific memories to come streaming back a quarter century later.
Palilay

This should be marked “NSFW”. This is audio-nerd porn, of the highest degree.

Flashbacks, they haunt me.
Executor999

Re: #25. The coin changer was cool cuz he put the Defender game in demo mode since it goes through the entire soundtrack of sound effects. He was actually saying he would give us a free credit for the game after the demo was over. :)

Re #26. Ground Kontrol rules! That was one of the reasons I decided to move to Portland. I think what you’re hearing is real time audio from inside the place.
m2key

Ah 1982 – dropped many coins at Just Fun while waiting for a movie at the Cinema in the mall.
JudgeDredd

Cool. I always wanted those sounds in one place. If only there was some sort of program to emulate multiple arcade machines…
k386

Holy crap! This is the most amazing set of field recordings ever! Another exclamatory sentence!!
Anonymous

MAME needs to add a feature that lets you play these as a background loop.
webmonkees

#4:
Heh. Nothing quite replicates the cabinet, though, unless you put a emulator/computer in it.. or run the original cpu.. my Gravitar’s audio shakes the bezel glass during the game which I don’t think the emulators have quite gotten right.
andyhavens

Also Holy Crap! I went to that Arcade in Ithaca a bunch when I was at Cornell.

My brain is melting a little.
Bevin

@ #10: I thought that was really neat, too!

Kind of off topic, but I didn’t hear anything familiar in the recordings: I’m going crazy trying to remember the name of my favourite game… I’ll try to explain it: You controlled a small ship/vehicle of some kind. You had to clear the away at least 85% (?) of the screen by moving up, down, left and right. You were safe if you were on a line you already completed, but while you were making a line you were vulnerable to getting shot.

… I know my description is seriously lacking, but I hope someone knows what I’m talking about!
Anonymous

There’s a downloadable set of mp3s called “Arcade Ambience” here http://arcade.hofle.com/

This guy has made them loopable for playing as background fx.
Mr_Orion

This is nuts! I saw this just after finding an old Nintendo Power VHS preview of Street Fighter II, you know, before CD’s were sent out for demos.

Cuh-razy.
Nadreck

The truly priceless thing is that, over the six years that the recordings were made the guy’s voice starts out as a little kid voice, then it cracks, then it deepens to a teen-voice.
bearsinthesea

Another site has done a lot of work building mp3s from mames of the original games, not just recordings. And you can download and keep them as mp3s.

Arcade Ambience Project
http://arcade.hofle.com/
Executor999

Yeah but the Arcade Ambiance Project was done in a studio through the emulator, these recordings are the real deal! Dirty, analog and truly vintage.
MR808

Ground Kontrol Classic Arcade in Portland has a speaker outside their front door that plays a loop of vintage arcade sounds 24/7/365. I’m not positive, but it might be Andy Hofle’s 1981 Arcade Ambience track.

You don’t have to listen to it very long to understand why the arcade on The Simpsons is called Noiseland. Unsurprisingly, Ground Kontrol never has any homeless people sleeping in their doorway!
TharkLord

Congo Bongo?!! Is that you? Oh my god, it has been so long. So many hours we spent together, all those quarters. I still remember how special our high score together made me feel.

Ummm… Have you seen Scramble lately?
Anonymous

@ #19

I believe you’re talking about Qix.
spaceling

Listen to Video Games 1, track no. 5 – “Defender” to hear some adult worker hassling the kid over his recording the arcade game sounds.

Adult: “Are you recording this [unintelligible]?”
Kid: “Not for reproductive purposes.”
Adult: “Here, wait a second. You want to record something? Leave the game when you’re done… Leave the game when you’re done… when you want to [unintelligible]“
JJinBrooklyn

Possible my favorite boingboing post of all time. Instant time machine. Like someone else wrote, I can tell exactly what’s going on just by the sounds. Love that opening Defender swoosh.
elguapostrikes

Marty’s Funland in Ocean City, Maryland is probably one of my favorite places in the world. Until very recently you could still play skee-ball for a dime.
bbonyx

It’s awesome to listen to Defender and know exactly what’s going on in the game without visuals.

/Thank you, MAME for saving me millions of quarters
nosehat

I for one got just as big a kick of nostalgia from the picture of his 90 minute “Type I” ferric oxide cassette tape with “Label Maker” label. =D
A New Challenger

I love that the first clip is Jungle King, more widely known (probably) as Jungle Hunt, a name and theme change resulting from Tarzan rights issues.

Arcades (what little I got to see of them, being born in ’84) were awesome back when console games didn’t even come close. Also, pinball.

Speaking of arcades and pinball, the Pinball Hall Of Fame: The Williams Collection game for Wii/PS2/PSP has an option (defaulted to ON) to add a little arcade noise ambiance while you’re playing the various pinball machines, and you can make out several of the games distinctly from the audio.
Bevin

@ #20 Thanks! Qix was close, but not quite it… but a Wikipedia entry about Qix contained the info I needed. The game was Volfied! I am now happily playing online. :)