The Raygun Conspiracy
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- Опубліковано 2 вер 2022
- Almost every toy laser gun makes one of the same few sounds, and it's been this way for close to 40 years. Why are these sounds so ubiquitous, and why do toy manufacturers keep using them? Let's find out.
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== Tracklisting (in order) ==
1. Undertale - Fallen Down (Reprise)
2. Synthescissor - Metal Man Stage Arrangement (from Mega Man 2)
3. Aries Beats - Beverly Hills Party
4. Yuuyu - endleSSStation
5. Super Mario 64 - Cave Dungeon
6. PilotRedSky - Clock Like Woz - Розваги
I distinctly remember having toys with those sounds, and I also remember noticing at the time that they all made the same sounds. My earliest memories of this are from about 2001.
Roughly same, thinking 1998-2001 personally
Me and my friends bought like 15 and brought them to oit high school just to annoy everyone, one of my favorite memories
Goes back at least as far as 1990, I had some of these as a little kid.
I got one new as late as '09 only because I remember my brother throwing it down the stairs and I wasn't allowed to be mad because "oh he's only one sweetie"
I remember owning a laser gun that made the “fire” sound, every time you pulled the trigger the sound file repeated. I could not imagine my parents annoyance at a small version of me running around the house a compressed sound bite of “fire fi- fi- fi- fire fire” ringing thought the hosue.
yup! dad's mom bought me one that made those sounds as a kid in the early 80s.
in retrospect, I figure she got a lot of sadistic joy from it.
I can hear it in my head. The weird accent on it. FIRE FIRE F-F-FIRE
The chip that predates all of the ones you mentioned is the TI SN76477. I remember bringing one into my college electronics lab to play with after I finished the assignments. That was in 1981.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN76477
Ha! I was hoping this would be mentioned. I too had one of those in 1981. It's a versatile chip that can generate similar sounds. It would not surprise me if the two sound chips are streamlined versions of it.
This makes sense. A couple of those sounds played in this video are very close to sounds made by Space Invaders, which the article you linked says this chip was used in. I assume a some of these sounds at least were developed for arcade games originally.
Here is the answer
@@Scarybug I was going to say that a few of those sounds HAD to be from or used in Space Invaders.
maybe. that chip is a general purpose sound generator, it implements a bunch of analog synthesis features but it's up to the application circuit to configure them all together to produce an effect. The example circuits on the wiki page show dozens of external components just to configure a single sound effect. On top of that you'd also need some other device (like a 3-bit counter or an 8-bit shift register) to hold the state for cycling through the different sounds, and then some unknown amount of glue logic to translate that state into all the different resistor and capacitor values used to configure the device. very optimistically I'd say you're in the realm of dozens of passive components, a dozen discrete transistors (or several discrete logic chips, depending on the year and the engineer's mood), and at least one additional IC for the cycling logic. at that point is it really the SN76477 making the sound, or is it just one small part of a much larger circuit?
The other problem is the package. That's a wide DIP-28, that's about a square inch of PCB already, not even counting the ocean of support components which will likely dwarf it. Remember that each resistor and capacitor is going to be a whole thru-hole package, even the grown-ups didn't get SMT parts in their televisions and radios yet. that's gonna be an expensive and bulky PCB, it'll be hard to fit inside a small toy both size and budget wise. and why would any toy company bother building an extremely complex mixed-signal circuit when a simple chirp generator using a dual 555 timer or a few transistors will produce a satisfactory toy-grade pew pew sound? The only way it would've been cost effective to produce such complex output on such a low-end device back in those days would've been with an ASIC or maybe some sort of (also application-specific) programmable ROM-based device.
in addition to all this, some of the 8 sounds are not continuous sweeps, but stepped sequences, suggesting the sound was generated by a digital circuit, not an analog one like the TI chip in question. The synthesis being digital is also supported by the probable presence of digital logic for the sequencing of the effects, it's not like digital logic was outside the pale for low-end gadgets of the time. And digital logic is exactly the domain where it gets easy to crank out arbitrarily complex ICs for dirt cheap, even back in the 80s.
I have a soundbox that makes all of these sounds that my grandmother passed down to me. She claimed at the time she got it in the late 1960's. I'll have to find it and see if there's a maker's mark or patent info.
So... did you find it?
Can confirm I'd heard toy ray guns make that sound at least as early as 1991.
Let's talk a little bit about that 556 "space war gun" circuit. I bet it makes similar noises but doesn't play those 8 sound effects, it doesn't seem to have a way to store the sequence of waveforms to play in order. It looks like a variation on a stepped-tone generator, sometimes called the "Atari Punk Console" since it can produce similar noises to the Atari 2600. The Atari Punk Console uses a 556 (I've seen variants that use two 555s) to generate two square waves that are combined into (rough, craptacular) audio.
yeah, a 556 is just a timer, and since there's only a few passive components on that board, it's will only produce 1 sound, probably generating a tone with one timer circuit and modulating the volume with the other, this would make the alarm sound most likely.
Most of the other sound effects would require a noise generator and much more than just a double timer circuit.
@@EdgarsLS Yeah a 556 is pretty much two 555s in a package with a couple common pins tied together.
When I was a child I had this little plastic slab with buttons that would clip on to my bike's handlebars. It would produce one of those sounds when you depressed one of the buttons. Made 8-year-old me feel like Mach Rider.
Another person who knows what Mach Rider is? A pleasure to meet you!
Okay so I'm really excited to hear that you found out that the sounds may be from a Texas Instruments chip. One of the things I noticed straight away about this sound set is that several of these sounded like effects in old Texas Instruments cartridge video games. It drove me bananas that all of these electronic toys had the same sound set and I wanted to know whhhyyyyy! I was that kind of kid (still am haha). What I noticed about the laser gun sound is that several of them sound like truncated version of the sounds in the games, repeated quickly. See maybe "Zero Zap" or "The Attack"
Had to share this with my friends, it's utterly criminal that something this well-produced had only managed 13k views in 10 months. The algorithm damn well better pick this up
I had Snap Circuits when I was a kid in the mid-late 2000s. I had hardly expected it to be mentioned, let alone as an integral piece of evidence in the investigation.
These crazy old chips still being in production is so interesting to me. I bought some fake GBA games and found most of them use SRAM chips that have been in production since the early 90s.
Prior to the 556 I believe was the 555 which is likely similar. The reason the circuit set used it was likely as a teaching aid to demonstrate how to use wave generators and gain circuits in various feedback loops to create these sounds which a premade chip would simply defeat the purpose of. It does demonstrate why these sounds are used however.... Its because they can be made with a very very basic sin wave generator if you know what you are doing feedback wise using one wave to control timer frequency as you send the signal back for another round. You would be shocked how complex a synth sound can be made via such simple feedback looping with these 8 likely being the most basic of based likely involving one or two passes.
OK seems 556 is just two 555 so these are the sounds with one generating frequency of the wave and other controlling amplitude so that pretty much totally explaining it as these are the combos easy to deal with.
Thank you for confirming the theory I had when the timer chip was mentioned. It makes me want to see if can recreate these sounds using an old PC and some code to directly poke the PC speaker
and the NE555 was available in 1972, and made in USA by Signetics, not a Taiwanese company
I had quite a few toys that had the exact same sounds in the same order. Some were laser guns, others were planes or army tanks, and even a knockoff lightsaber. All were from dollar stores from 1993 through 2003. I just figured Chinese made toys used the same parts because it's cheaper.
555 timers (and the 556 which is just 2 555s stuck together) are still commonly used by hobbyists today, and even in some low cost commercial products. And as any hobbyist can attest, you definitely can NOT recreate all 8 of those sounds with just 2 555 timers. each 555 can be configured as either a one-shot or repeating timer (the repeating mode is the one used for waveform generation), and the timer runs by charging or discharging a capacitor through a resistor until the capacitor's voltage hits some threshold. this could be used to generate square waves, sawtooth waves, or triangle waves. since you get 2 of these in a 556, the best you can do is modulate the frequency (or amplitude) of one of the waveform generators with the output of the other one, meaning you could generate simple sweeps or sirens.
the images shown at 9:01 clearly show that the 556 is the only active component on the board, the rest are all passives supporting the chip's functionality. This is clearly an old single sided board so there's nothing hiding on the other side (no way an ancient hobby kit would have SMDs hiding on the bottom side). so any of the more complex tones could not be recreated with this circuit. As well, the only input devices on the board are a slide switch, a potentiometer, and a pushbutton (presumably the trigger). The slide switch is likely a power switch, but to be charitable lets say it alters the configuration of the modulating oscillator. And the pot probably sets the sweep rate or frequency range or something (or maybe just the volume). Best case scenario, this kit was capable of creating one or two sounds that are similar to a subset of the 8 sounds, and someone misremembered it as creating all of them on that basis. or maybe newer versions of the circuit use one of those "laser gun asics", and someone vaguely recalled that the old ones sound similar.
A good place to try searching might be sound effects libraries from the late 70s. If all of these different companies were able to use it then it points to the source being something they could all license. Though also maybe not since Taiwan in the 80s was a lot less concerned about copyright so they have genuinely just been stolen and apparently no one cared to enforce the copyright later.
I think that's the case. At 4:21 if you've played Perfect Dark, it's the same sound the Mauler makes
I suspect that their original form would be code rather than audio. Maybe the manufacturers of the chip used to give out a floppy disk with a few examples of what you could do with them, and toy manufacturers just used that in production. The chip maker wouldn't bother suing their own client for what is essentially a few bytes of code.
@@WaruWicku why would a cheap plastic 70s-era toy use a microprocessor for that, it's waaay more likely to be a tone generator ic, but your point about manufacturer-provided examples does still hold true.
Unlocked a hidden memory of me owning one of those circuit creator kids toys back in probably 2007, where all the circuit parts clipped together like a popper button, and it had the exact same sound effects
I wouldn’t be surprised if:
1) Company A produces toy using off the shelf components
2) Company B/C/D/Etc. copies this design creating a market
3) Chip Fab A consolidates design
4) Chip Fab B/C/D/Etc. clones this chip
Funnily enough, I thought TI would come into play at some point albeit for the wrong reason, because they were a producer of sound chip/designs such as the SN76489 used in various systems e.g. Master System, Genesis/MD, ColecoVision, etc.
I own that first alarm clock you showed when talking about segmented displays. It was my mom's before she gave it to me and it still works just fine after all these years. I've only ever opened the case once to clean some dust out of it but that's the only servicing it's ever had.
Perhaps the sounds originated in late 70's arcade games such as Space Invaders ('78) and Galaxian ('79)? Or maybe they video game devs took them from earlier toy guns, movies, etc?
That where i recognize these sounds from
These sounds must have come from a sound library dating to at least the early 60s, I used to have a toy laser gun that played the classic Star Trek Original Series photon torpedo sound, and the sound from 4:15 is also used in several episodes of the same show (the Doomsday Machine shoots a laser accompanied by this exact sound effect).
I never had a gun, bit I had the small black keychain with buttons, seen at 4:40, over 30 years ago.
I was so confused when you played the sounds and I recognized them not from ray guns but from snap circuits. Very validating that they got tied in to the plot
The Billy Idol song “Rebel Yell” has a guitar solos spot features a Raygun that guitarist Steve Stevens had played through his guitar pickups. He ended up with quite a collection, once the original one quite working and he couldn’t find that exact sound anymore. Wild stuff.
The editing on this video is absolutely out of this world. You're gonna blow up, no doubt about it
Born 95 here and across myself and my friends and other homes I visited as a kid I can confirm that several different toyguns had these sounds in the late 90s and early 2000s. Usually it was one gun having multiple sounds and it would just iterate over the different effects with each pull of the trigger.
as an avid collector of cheap bootleg toys, I heard the sounds and immediately knew what the video was going to be lol
I have a black box that has the word "Equalizer" on the front and a line of different coloured led lights that light up on either end and approach the center, it has four buttons that play these sounds, and if I press two of the buttons together they make a bonus sound.
I also owned one that would play every sound, in order, one after the other, from a single press. The succession was so lodged into my memory that I knew which sound was going to play next based on the current one, almost like remembering a song you haven't heard for years but the lyrics instantly come back to you in real time whilst listening.
Suffice to say I was (understandably) not allowed to press the trigger much, maybe once every few hours.
I always felt those sounds were incongruous with my play. I removed the batteries and made my own sounds.
Great video! I remember those sounds very distinctly from the 80s & 90s. Even used them as inspiration for a project where I digitally synthesized similar sound effects so a spray bottle would make “pew pew” noises when you pulled the trigger!
One factor you’re missing is clones of those ICs. Those early chips were trivial to reverse engineer and they could be built on relatively low tech but reliable chip fabrication processes, so things that were in large-scale demand became commodities with multiple suppliers. To cut costs further, they often wouldn’t bother packaging the IC, opting to mount the bare silicon die directly onto the PCB, wiring it up by welding tiny gold bondwires to it, and covering it with a blob of black epoxy. You see those black blobs inside so many of those cheap toys.
Similar things go on today, with more practical things, like flashlight control ICs or USB battery banks. When a product is produced in such volumes, it becomes cost effective to develop these Application-Specific ICs, and multiple manufacturers will start producing interchangeable (more or less) versions to meet demand. That said, modern manufacturing and, crucially, design processes are a lot faster, and that flexibility allows for more variation.
The 556 ( a double 555 ) is as jellybean as they come. It's used as a timer, oscillator, trigger and what not. My guess is those dedicated chips, who have 2 extra pins, have the dual 555 configuration plus a trigger input and led driver so all is in 1 package.
Btw the 555 isn't just made by TI, it is made by many vendors. Like the 74 series it's so generic everybody makes them.
Even as far back as me being about 4 years old - and we are talking 1988 here - I kind of figured it was some sort of common part in the toys. I don't know where this thing came from, but we had one of the handheld noise maker devices or if you pressed one of three buttons or buttons in combination it would play all of the sounds. I then noticed a toy gun I got for Christmas one year doing the same thing making the same sound. I just intrinsically figured that that was the sound you got for everything.
i always heard the FIRE FIRE one pitch shifted down
That sounds like it would be hellish
@@applesaurusrex8075 It sounded like a big mean cop or something.
I had a little, for lack of a better term, bicycle bell that did the same thing, back in like 1989 or so. The idea is that, while riding, you can activate your lasers or bombs or machine guns. The one closest to your thumbs was the alarm, so you can use it as a bell, although that may have been more of a happy accident than a deliberate design. But the sounds were the same and the order seemed the same, since there was one button that did all of them in a sequence... presumably in an all out attack.
Wow this brings back memories. And yeah, it was back when I was like 8, back in 1988-1989.
My siblings and I each got one of these guns(like the one on the title screen), orange with 5 LEDs under transparent red plastic for Christmas in 1989 or 1990. Thanks for this awesome video.
Odd you didn't mention/stumble across any old Atari games or arcade cabinets from the 70s and 80s either. A lot of those sounds were used in games like Space Invaders, Pacman, Tanks!, etc.
I sat through the whole video wondering when he’d make that connection! When he played the sounds at the beginning I was like “that’s from space invaders, and that one’s from Pac-Man!”
I remembered all of the sounds, specifically in the order you played them. I could hear the next one before you’d cue it in, and I just heard you mention that you had a friend that had all the sounds. I believe I did too
Omg this is exactly something I noticed years ago but never looked into it. In the 90s my mom got me a laser gun at a garage sale. It looked old even then, it has to be from the 80s and makes all these sounds (you show it in the video). Then probably around 2005 I was at a dollar store and found the mini version of it and it too made the same sounds I remembered!! It’s just like what you explained in the video lol
8:36 had that when i was younger, its very epic
I can confirm the ubiquity of these sound effects in the 1980s, not just the 90s. As others have mentioned, they weren't only used in toy guns - they were also used in novelty keychains and these little black boxes you put on your car dashboard and used to pretend like you were blowing up cars while you were stuck in traffic during your commute. Point being, they go way back, and even going way back, the circuitry involved was small. Box on your keychain small - and powered by a coin battery.
This editing is top tier holy shit dude, you're gonna be one of the GOATS
It's basically the same reason that every toaster has a button for bagels and cancel, and a slider or knob for light to dark. One company made a good enough, very cheap controller that any manufacturer could stuff in a toaster and not have to do any electrical design
Laser gun: "pew pew"
Captain KRB: 🤨🧐
(Which is great)
Wow, a video essay on a weirdly specific topic with actual engaging investigation going on. Very nice.
I've had Toy Lazer guns with the more electronic sounds, and a large action figure with the "FIRE" sound effect. That's insane that we've been using the same sounds for 40-ish years.
Such a deceptively intriguing topic. You're the best, keep up the great work!
I remember having a weird clear revolver thing (not sure about this though, could also have been a rifle) that had a man screaming "fire,fire!" (like the one you mentioned in the video) but with realistic automatic gunshots
Not too big of a mystery. These are straight off early video arcade games, instantly recognisable to anyone who was a teen in the late '70s
I owned a disc shooter gun which played all of those sounds in order. Was green and gray, shot yellow discs about 5cm in diameter. This was early 2000s, UK
Did the disks have a small hole in the center along with two separate arc slots on two opposing edges?
@@skindianu Yes they did, actually
@@rjdjdjdj5623 I had one, too. Mine didn't make noise, but it was in the shape of an automatic pistol and my brother has one that looked like a tommy gun. The disks were of all different colors; red, white, yellow, and green. I don't remember the manufacturer. We would play with those things for hours. This was the late 70s, early 80s.
i had several toys that made these sounds and i was always interested in how they all got the same ones. a few were guns but i remember specifically a koosh-style ball that would light up and play these sounds when hit against something. each time, it was all of the sounds in sequence. this would have been mid 90s - early 00s
This video is not what I expected based on the title. Very interesting!
I'll throw my memory into the ring: I won a cheap toy from Dave and Busters, c. 2003. This toy was an orange box with individual black buttons that played several (if not all) of these sounds - like a dollar-store soundboard of sorts. It may or may not have been a keychain, but it was slightly smaller than the palm of an average adult male hand. Curious if anyone else remembers these, since most of the comments are about guns and swords.
"None of which sound like an actual real laser gun" Oh, really? What does a real laser gun sound like?
Underrated comment
wow what a great video. i have actually wondered about this in the past. awesome stuff, liked and subbed!
I remember circling, cutting out, and sticking on the fridge, an ad for that exact fazer at 1:32 as a child in the late 90s, and it had that exact same collection of laser gun sounds.
Arcade cabinet Missile Command (1980) uses the same sounds
"I was born a few years after the year 2000" is the most terrifying part of the whole video.
I had these toys in the 80's. Answering the real questions on this channel. Love it.
LEGO had a space ship with an electric rocket motor module. It played all of these sounds.
My grandfather had a small soundboard like thing that played all those sounds you've played. Each sound was assigned to a button with a label like "bomber" or "laser cannon". It had maybe 7 buttons with different colours and was a simple black rectangle with some graphics in the corner.
Great video! Just wanted to mention, I was born in the early 70's and my youngest son was born 10 years ago, I too had noticed that nearly every single Laser/Phaser/Gun/Spaceship I ever bought him, sounded exactly like they did back when I was a kid. I just thought I imagined it. Thanks for helping me confirm im NOT as crazy as "they claim".
I remember having a version of a toy laser gun where it had a "cockpit" that you opened up on put two small spaceman figures into it.
Captain Power had something like that.
I Remember this
Snap circuits make me think of the old Radio Shack electronics projects kits I was just thinking about the other day, one with a set of components mounted on a board with springs you'd place wires into to connect them together. This had to be like 1976 or so. Damn, I miss those. And proper chemistry sets!
I know I wanted to buy a Chem set shits damn near illegal to get without applying for some bs.
Hell yeah! My grampa used to go to the thrift store and buy old, partially complete/used chemistry sets and give them to me. I had test tubes, beakers, a microscope and a hodge podge of small plastic containers of different chemical compounds. I would mix them together and try to see what wiuld happen. One experiment dyed the kitchen table purpleish blue, another made what ended up being glue and the rest did absolutely nothing. I probably came close to blowing up the house without realizing it. Sure miss my grampa.
My dad owns a PHOENIX arcade cocktail table, it came out ca 1980, and it makes all those eight sounds you mentioned in various situations.
A fairly common thing in the computer chip industry is something called an intellectual property transfer agreement. Big chip companies basically sell their older chip designs and IP rights to smaller chip companies. I suspect that this chip started life at TI in the 70s, then was part of one of these transfer agreements to Taiwan sometime in the mid to late 80s.
Also had one that played all of the sounds in a row with a trigger pull...
It was rather annoying because of that, actually.
Hatts off to the research & the vintage Computer like effect/theme perfectly suits the topic of thia video i must say
What the hell you mean, born a few years after 2000, you seem like an incredibly deep and refined person, didn’t expect that
Finally someone talks about this! Yes, I've noticed! I had roller blades that made those sounds, and once saw an ambulance make them!
Thank the algorithm. Been binge watching your videos
I have one of those "Snap Circuits" under the company of 'Hot Wires'!
Born in 1984 and my toy laser gun played that exact audio clip in full.
Oh my gosh I saw the foam disc toy and all the sounds came back.
Lol i have a tiny keychain one that makes those exact sounds from my late 90s early 2000s childhood memories
damn i assumed this would have over a million views, and then about 3.6 thousand. amazing video, you deserve more attention.
nevermind, 3.2 thousand. youtube is gonna boost this channel to the moon at some point
My memory on this one might be a little different than the rest of the content you presented. I first heard these sounds played by a Kamov Ka-50 attack helicopter toy I owned in 1990 (I was VERY young but the sounds match)
Wow! Who knew that such a nostalgic set of sounds has such a profound and deep history, thanks for the video!!!
In the early / mid 90s gas stations had keychain noisemakers that would have all of them accessible
complete speculation here: these sounds probably originated in arcade games from the 70s and 80s likely in the us, and in a similar fashion to what happened with the amen break, made their way around into various sound libraries that chip manufacturers would pull from to put into their stuff, and all the toy companies would put these really cheap components that all had this sort of shared (and effectively public domain) dna
Yeah, I had one of those. Would have been in the early or mid 90s. Very similar if not identical to the one in the thumbnail. Made all of those sounds, I'm pretty sure.
Great video as always!
2001 and I had one that cycled through all of them
I owned like four different sizes from keychain to large and both white and clear versions of the same gun that played all of those sounds in that exact order.
I was about to make a comment about Snap circuits right before I got to that part of the video, lol. Snap circuits were the best toy I had as a kid!
A lot of the raygun sounds were just sound effects from galaga, but idk if that came out before the toys showed up, and that might open more questions tbh
This is what happens when you cross a super-dedicated person and a shower thought
The timer played it in sequence every time you pressed the trigger.
The later chip had hold trigger and press twice for sequence.
I've been wondering about this for decades.
I had laser guns from like 1992 that made that exact set of sounds in that exact order.
I had a box with lights and selection buttons that bolted to the handlebars of my bike that played these sounds.
I had a laser gun toy where you could press a button to change the sound effect
Had one that made the noise represented by the green and blue cassette, kinda trippy.
I think every toy raygun i have come across has had those sounds.
I remember a toy like thingy from the 70s where it was just a tiny box with a button that played these sounds as well. Being born in 82 ive seen untold amount of toy not just guns that made these sounds.
I imagine it was a patented and recognizable sound pattern that was cheaply available for toy manufacturers.
I remember having a key chain that looked like a car alarm remote with 8 little buttons that made all those noises, must have been the early 90s
Had one of those myself! Probably late 80s. Also had a electronic "firecracker" that made the "falling" and "exploding" noises, and my friend had a pet starling that loved the "falling" noise and could repeat it exactly.
I’ve heard absolutely all of these i was born in 05, The one I had had a lot of buttons on the side that would change the sound effect
Keep up the good work your videos are great
"I was born a few years after 2000" im only a few years older and ive taken psychic damage
I had a little toy sword (yes, _sword_) that a friend gave me that made those sounds all in sequence. I can't remember if they did it all at once or with each button press. I lost the toy within months of having it because it was about as long as my hand (I was six) and probably got buried in among other toys I had. It was a one-trick gadget and I got right into lego around that time so...
Someone else laid out which chip was the OG. My guess is that these Chinese semiconductor companies bootlegged the chip used for making the sound effects and started selling it for cheap, and that ended up being put in toys.
In the Owen and Simon video you show a clip from, you can see a sound fx Keychain, which makes the same sounds. I had these as a kid around 1989-90. Also the first consumer add on car alarms from thos Era had the same sfx.
4:18 is the exact sound the ray gun I had would play back in 2015
Thanks for posting the track listing, now I listen to pilotredsky!