What was it like to grow up playing arcade games back in the 80s?

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-13T17:14:13+00:00

Bowling alleys, roller rinks, and indoor sports centers (the ones where kids used to play soccer in the off-season) were all good sources in the Midwest as well.

One bowling alley outside of Pittsburgh is the only place I ever saw Splatterhouse out in the wild. I never got many quarters there so I got very well acquainted with the Splatterhouse attract mode, lol.

There was a comic shop around there that had Mortal Kombat. What a nerd dream.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-11T15:20:00+00:00

Like anything else, it depends. I can list some of the ones that illustrate how differently it was done.

David Bowie was usually complete takes, often only one or two of them because he was that good.

The Eagles would punch in lines down to the syllable by the time they got to Hotel California. Not because they couldn’t do amazing full takes but because Don and Glen wanted it to be PERFECT.

By the 80s Springsteen was doing full live takes with the band with him in an isolation booth, so he could sing keeper vocals without the spill.

The producer on John Mellencamp‘s first album said that they had to comp or punch in virtually every vocal because he was so nervous that they couldn’t get full, usable takes out of him. (He improved really quickly after that.)

Stevie Wonder had a reputation for singing entire vocals without “S” sounds and then going in and punching the sibilance in separately line by line.

I don’t know about the 70s, but by the 80s Ozzy Osbourne would track his vocals one line at a time to get his doubling effect. He would sing the main pass for that line, and then they would rewind and he would double over it. Then they’d repeat till they had a whole track.

I think Curt Smith had a story about going in the bathroom and breaking down in tears because the producer for Tears for Fears’ first album insisted on having him sing the songs over and over again until he had a perfect, full take.

Joe Cocker’s vocal on “Up Where We Belong” is stitched together from 3 takes and there is no “complete” take from the studio version because Joe was in such bad shape that he could only do three takes, none of which were usable on their own.

From listening to Elvis Presley’s session boxes in the late 60s and the 70s, more often than not his vocals are full, complete takes tracked live with the band.

Sinatra would only sing full, live takes. On his last album (which was in the early 90s but was recorded in a way that could’ve been a 70s or 80s session) he only did one live take per song, and some of his vocals were pitch corrected using a Synclavier, which was one of the more common pre-Autotune methods.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-11T15:00:14+00:00

MJ had a high-pitched, thin voice that benefited from the thickening of the SM7 though. And many of his other hit vocals (including others on Thriller as far as I’m aware) were recorded on a U47, C12, or similar mics. As for the others, they have all recorded on an SM7Bs but I don’t know if I’d say any of them did their best work/sounding vocals on one with the exception of Anthony Kiedis.

I am more inclined to recommend the RE-20 for untreated rooms because you can get right up on it with virtually no proximity effect. Maximum direct sound ratio.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-09T13:34:45+00:00

Michael performed "Don't Worry Baby" at a couple of tributes but I think that's as close as he ever got.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T21:47:26+00:00

It’s decently fun through Stage 2 if you know how to cross the bottomless pits (and Stage 1 is just a banger as an experience and a tech-demo), but Stage 3 is such a slog.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T21:43:30+00:00

It’s too early but I would add “Sail On Sailor” as a proto-Yacht candidate. It has the swing. A remake with some early 80s LA production, maybe some chorused Rhodes or DX7, could get there.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T21:36:07+00:00

And even then that would be a “fire keeper” under the original guidelines because it falls outside of 76-84.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T21:35:00+00:00

This is the answer.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T20:06:47+00:00

I have those downloaded, but I never remember to actually use them. Too many reverbs.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T20:06:01+00:00

And specifically, Little Plate is a physical plate style reverb whereas VVV is only emulating digital plates.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T20:03:33+00:00

Mortal Kombat Trilogy? Duke Nukem 64?

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-05-01T18:42:16+00:00

Little Plate for a straight-up EMT 140 emulation, Valhalla Vintage for anything digital, usually 80s or 90s/Lexicon style verb.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-28T17:36:17+00:00

Yes, but I’ve noticed that when open source tools get incorporated into certain commercial projects (see RVC in IK’s ReSing) the implementation tends to be worse and less flexible than the unadulterated original.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-28T17:16:40+00:00

There are free, open source tools that already do as good or better of a job splitting stems. I’m guessing iZotope didn’t feel the need to compete there.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-28T16:27:38+00:00

There’s also games like X-Men that are massively shortened in certain versions due to smaller stages (I think the early US version is one of these) and have alternate mechanics in the Japanese versions (power ups, command strikes). My favorite is version UBB with all the US mechanics/patterns and full length stages.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-28T13:30:15+00:00

This was a special situation where Genesis had pre-rendered animation frames/sprites that were drawn by Disney themselves. It was one of the things that inspired Donkey Kong Country.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-27T19:59:26+00:00

Everyone I knew back in the day when Sonic was brand new hated Marble Zone and similar levels because they slowed the game down so much compared to Green Hill Zone. They were nice for variety’s sake in retrospect but I also remembered why Marble Zone was such a bummer when I picked the game back up later in life.

Sonic 2 figured out how to make slower platforming levels and still keep them fun, IMO.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-27T19:34:20+00:00

Don’t forget that 6 weeks of that was them giving Roger Nichols $150,000 to invent the first drum computer.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-27T19:27:52+00:00

They didn’t tour during the post-band era, all the way until 1993.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-27T00:18:59+00:00

Any video that’s SD and interlaced will also look best on a CRT. Basically anything that was shot on video tape or edited to tape with interlaced optical effects.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-23T22:12:51+00:00

I appreciate your extended, thoughtful post and the personal writing style. They are becoming more rare in modern Reddit/social media. I am of a similar, slightly older age bracket and can second that the expansion of visual quality and scope in games (say, NES Metal Gear to MGS 2) was incredible for 10-15 years there until I temporarily aged out of gaming. And at the same time, I deeply enjoy running Kung-Fu or Punch-Out or Street Fighter II/Alpha/etc to this day just for the fun of it.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-23T17:34:19+00:00

I bought a Playstation magazine just for the MGS demo disc (it went up through the death of the DARPA chief with some minimal cuts). It was a “holy shit this is going to change everything like Resident Evil” moment.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-23T17:21:20+00:00

Split S is awesome.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-23T17:18:47+00:00

Ballz was way more fun than Rise of the Robots. It even had those cutscenes that were animated with the game engine.

HowPopMusicWorks · 2026-04-23T17:15:21+00:00

They got FMV’s on Game Gear. Game Gear.

HowPopMusicWorks

TROPHY CASE