classic arcade sounds!

i stumbled across this when i was looking for a sample from the old 'defender' video game to scare the bejeezus out of someone with. (you know the one, the one at the very beginning of the game? i love that sound.) well, this guy apparently used to bring his sony TCS-310 Stereo Cassette Recorder with him to the video arcade as a youth. this was back in the heyday of Galaxian, Missile Command, Asteroids etc. i was there, man. i remember those days all too well.

lucky for us, his mom never threw away his old cassettes, and now he's digitized them and put them ALL online. it's amazing stuff. field recordings of real early 80's suburban mall video arcades, complete with nerdy kid voices and jingling change. you may be saying 'wow, what kind of geek would do that?' i just can't believe i didn't think of doing this myself. basically in that odd period of 1980-84 i only did two things, play video games at the mall and record stuff. it's mind-boggling that i never thought to put the two together.

bless you Daniel P. Hower. hearing these recordings actually gave me more of a rush of nostalgia than when i stumbled across macMAME a few years ago and started playing the games themselves again, after two decades. if only more of us were as careful about documenting our misspent youths.

...and yes, if you listen to the entire 'defender' recording you can hear an attendant ask if they are recording the game and in true 80's computer nerd fashion our man replies 'not for reproductive purposes.' you can say that again.