So this is an awkward post. I like the Six Million Dollar man. Even now, I enjoy the cheese-filled crust of the show. It has one (actually two) iconic bits of sound design. The beep-beep-beep sound used to convey Steve Austin's bionic vision but the reason you're reading this post is because of the 'bionic man' sound used in the show to show Steve Austin utilizing the strength in his bionic right arm and both legs. If you don't know what sound I'm talking about...
A combination of a mechanical sound augmented with a lot of delay and feedback, the bionic sound is now an icon- only able to be used as a reference to this show (and of course its spin-off, The Bionic Woman). In the 70's, people perceptions of robots as mostly mechanical devices rather than electronic so the sound effects used sounded chunky as people would expect.
For a short scene of Steve or Jaime Summers flexing their muscles, the sound words and works very well as a way to inform the audience the bionic implants are working but in scenes of extended bionic use, such as running fast (in slow-motion), the sound would often be played over and over again without really synchronising it to the on-screen action. This is the awkward bit. Watch any scene of his power being used for an extended period (such as the third video of Steve lifting a car or any scene of Steve running) and you'll see what I mean when i say it's actually a pretty good piece of sound design ruined by poor implementation.
That said, it was used in hundreds of cartoons in the 70's and 80's, most notably by Hanna Barberra. It's so closely associated with this show (and of course its spin-off, The Bionic Woman) that most people will be surprised if they settle in to watch any episode from the Six Million Dollar Man's first season that the iconic sound is only heard once and that's made by another character.
The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman were two incredibly popular series from the mid-70's, which no doubt helped popularise the 'bionic' sound effect.
That's why it's funny when it is heard in a Ben Stiller movie (Mystery Men, Zoolander, etc). It's 2'10" into this clip.
Monday 6 February 2012
Pac-Man
Our first video game and it's a videogame where almost every single note of audio is iconic.
From the opening musical sting to the wakka-wakka sound of Pacman munching the dots to the deflating sound of Pacman being overwhelmed by a ghost called Clyde, Pacman's audio is burned on the brain of almost everyone. Very few people don't know these sounds, and of those that know the sounds, fewer still are unaware it's from something called Pac Man. Space Invaders and Asteroids may have had some simple and effective sound effects, but Pacman was the first game where everything about the game has become an icon. All arcade games of the time were abstract due to technical limitations but were generally based on some kind of reality. Pacman is based on nothing in real life, it's a complete abstract. Its soundtrack needed to be different.
The game itself and the cultural phenomenon it briefly spawned (which publisher Namco still milks) aside, the sounds were (and still are) unique. The only way to use a sound from Pacman is to reference Pacman.
Pacman is aurally a very busy-sounding game even though sounds don't overlapping due to the lack of polyphony. The only time there's any silence after you've started is that split second between Pac Man being overcome by a ghost and the deflating sound of Pac Man dieing. A little subtraction from a busy mix can go a long way (rather like the floating space mines from Attack of the Clones whose detonations are preceded by a second of silence.
Now, home consoles of the era were a lot less powerful than the custom boards powering arcade machines of the time and the most popular home system was also one of the weakest in terms of computing power. Pac Man was ported to the market leading Atari 2600 in a very short time and manufactured in such huge quantities that the many unsold piles of the cartridge were buried in a landfill. Its failure bother critically and commercially is considered to a contributing factor behind the Video Games industry crash of 1983. Here's a video of the 2600 port so you can see how this titles disappointed a generation of gamers who had little expectation of pixel-perfect ports
It's churlish to have expected an exact port at the time but it does show how important the audio experience was to Pac Man. Most of the other ports of Pac Man to the admittedly more powerful competitors to the 2600 were much closer to the original.
The follow up, Ms Pac Man had a different set of sounds and while the game itself may have been better, it did not have the same sonic impact as the original. Other early arcade games had memorable sounds (Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Berserk, etc) but none have had the lasting impact of Pac Man.
Pacman is aurally a very busy-sounding game even though sounds don't overlapping due to the lack of polyphony. The only time there's any silence after you've started is that split second between Pac Man being overcome by a ghost and the deflating sound of Pac Man dieing. A little subtraction from a busy mix can go a long way (rather like the floating space mines from Attack of the Clones whose detonations are preceded by a second of silence.
Now, home consoles of the era were a lot less powerful than the custom boards powering arcade machines of the time and the most popular home system was also one of the weakest in terms of computing power. Pac Man was ported to the market leading Atari 2600 in a very short time and manufactured in such huge quantities that the many unsold piles of the cartridge were buried in a landfill. Its failure bother critically and commercially is considered to a contributing factor behind the Video Games industry crash of 1983. Here's a video of the 2600 port so you can see how this titles disappointed a generation of gamers who had little expectation of pixel-perfect ports
It's churlish to have expected an exact port at the time but it does show how important the audio experience was to Pac Man. Most of the other ports of Pac Man to the admittedly more powerful competitors to the 2600 were much closer to the original.
The follow up, Ms Pac Man had a different set of sounds and while the game itself may have been better, it did not have the same sonic impact as the original. Other early arcade games had memorable sounds (Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Berserk, etc) but none have had the lasting impact of Pac Man.
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