The Mystery of Early Video Game Explosions

The side-scrolling shooter game has fallen out of style recently. However, the things were fun and making them was an art. In preparation for my presentation on Tuesday, I took a good look at one of my favorite "old school' video games: Xevious.

If you don't mind registering at Gamespot, here's a quick video of Xevious.

To take a quick catalog of the sound effects in Xevious:
1. Opening Fanfare
2. 5 second music loop, repeats the entire game
3. the sound your guns make
4. the drooping sound for bomb shots
5. the "smack" noise for bomb hits
6. the crystalline shatter noise that enemy fighters make when they die
7. the "ping" that your shots make against indestructible targets
8. "1 up" noise

It's odd at first glance that the enemy fighters don't make a more realistic explosion sound. The same is true in other shooters like Axelay for example. The enemies that you kill most often disappear with a pleasant sounding crystalline wash, or a mild bubble-sounding "blop". Why don't they explode? Indeed, having just been shot out of the sky, you'd expect to hear anything up to a mangled alien death-rattle with fiery pieces of debris wooshing through the air (within the limits of early 80s technology of course). But no.

Contrast the sounds made by the waves of enemy fighters with your own bombs. They *do* blow up. Enemy tanks and buildings have a much more explosive splat noise.

I wouldn't chalk this up to "over-analysis" either. The fact of the matter is that Namco's sound designer probably sat down and tried to use more realistic explosion noises, and they didn't work for some reason. Why might that be? And more importantly, why *do* the current noises "just work"?

A more 'realistic' explosion sound probably would have been way too repetitive (i.e. annoying). Since you are blasting through waves and waves of enemies, if each one makes a bang - a high contrast noise - that bang is going to fight for your attention. Bomb drops, your ground attack in the game, happen with significantly less frequency in Xevious than gun shots or airborne enemy deaths. The bomb drops are also the subject of more player attention: you have to line them up carefully with your bomb site. Thus, a higher contrast sound is acceptable.

The enemy death sounds needed to blend more, however. It's my guess that the explosion and gun shot sounds were designed to harmonize with the swirling background loop, at least on a subconscious level. The end result is a sort of stack of musical contrast: moving makes no noise, shooting makes a very low contrast noise, explosions are marginally more contrasting, then finally the falling bomb and explosion noise highlight the bombing aspect of the game, which is one of the key gameplay features that makes Xevious different from space invaders.

The main point I want to make is that every single sound in a game needs to be taken in context. They do not exist in a vacuum. In a well designed game, the sound design should work with the gameplay, the art direction and the story to create one complete experience.