Video Game Sound + Speech ( was RE: 80's Video...)

[J.D. McEachin]

On Tue, 27 Feb 1996, Clive Jones wrote:

> Williams employed their early ground breaking speech and audio into their   
> video games - Defender,  Robotron, Joust and so on.
> Bally went from using an industry standard 3 channel analogue chip to a   
> board known as "Squalk and Talk" which had both speech and sound. All   
> audio boards had a uP which operated independantly from the game uP (the   
> one that controlled the lights, solenoids, switches and so on).

What's really humorous is that the CPU on the audio board was often more 
powerful than the CPU on the main board.  Neil tells me that his Williams 
"Flash" machine has a 6800 for the main CPU, and a 6809 to pull wave data 
out of ROM for audio.

I know, not analogue.

I'd love to hear a Bally "Playboy" machine again.  Every time I listen to 
the "Scary Monsters" album by Bowie I think about it.

JDM