archive

Video Game Arcade Sound Recordings from the 1980's

Thank god for the interwebs! Without them, so many wonderful, delightful, mysterious things would be lost forever...or we'd just never know that they ever existed in the first place. For example, back in 1982, a guy named Daniel took a tape recorder into video game arcades up and down the east coast, recording without ceremony what it sounded like if you stood three feet away from some of the most popular games of the day for a few hours. Whether he knew it or not, he was engaging in an journalism in its purest form—completely un-distilled, unbiased observation. Even more remarkable is that after a few years of doing this, he simply abandoned the project without taking any further action, leaving the tapes in storage until 1997, when he accidentally discovered them while cleaning.