The game that would ultimately be released as Asteroids was well into development as a standard raster game when Lunar Lander started appearing in our labs. It wasn't long before the game's designers wanted to use the vector graphic technology in their game as well.
Asteroids had different hardware needs from Lunar Lander, so before I could provide the team with their hardware, I had to modify a Lunar Lander PCB with additional memory and sounds.
The memory part was easy. The audio part was the challenge. My goal was to give the player as much audio excitement as video excitement. Programmable sound chips had not yet been developed, so each sound in Asteroids had to have its own unique circuit. After annoying my fellow engineers for weeks, I finally settled on seven distinct audio circuits. The "heartbeat" sound that underlies the other audio is paced to (hopefully) track the players own heartbeat.
I still have that original modified Lunar Lander PCB, with its large hand-built audio board hanging off of one edge. It is the womb that gestated the most successful coin operated video game ever designed in the United States
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