Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual

Trigger Happy

videogame developers were to experiment, say, with weird and unexpected sound effects to accompany supposedly “realistic” visual action, this might open up new avenues of strangeness and even comedy—the amusing disjunction of small action with epic sound, say—to future digital experiences. Videogames are best at imagining whole new worlds of their own, so why can’t they invent more new sounds to bring them to sensual life?

Moreover, given that in real life all sorts of information about our environment is constantly flooding into our ears, videogames ought perhaps to think of cleverer ways to let us use this gift in their imaginary worlds. After all, a videogame player, unlike someone watching a film, needs to use information from the senses to decide what to do next. Any sound can become a clue, a spur to action. One fascinating new idea has been tried by Rare, which in Perfect Dark (2000) has engineered a quasi–surroundsound system that lets the attuned player know which direction enemies are in purely by listening to their footsteps.

This is one example of sound design that is not merely decorative, but functional. Many games, particularly in the popular horror genre, are already

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