God of Retro is a reimagining of the 2018 God of War with a retro twist: campy 80s beat ’em up sound design.
Inspiration was drawn from classics such as Double Dragon (1987) and Altered Beast (1988), the latter being the closest to our game in terms of gameplay.
Initially the result of clever design techniques to combat storage constraints of hardware, 8-bit sounds have arguably become the defining feature of retro games. The limitations of 8-bit meant that the resulting audio was low fidelity sound – a far cry from today’s video game standards. I tried to mimic this quality by using a plug-in that “crushes” the bits by using a low sample rate of the sound as opposed to a 48kHz sound. Here is a sample of Kratos’ favorite word from the game (in-game music and sound effects turned off) receiving the bit-crushing treatment:
Before:
After:
The same effect was applied to multiple sound effects including the punches to give them the beat ’em up flair. Another interesting feature in games from the 1980s was the use of dialogue. To recall, Scorpion has been using his catch-phrase since the original Mortal Kombat that first came out in 1992.
There is an absence of footstep sounds from retro games with the exception of Sonic the Hedgehog. Thus, it was only fair to avoid that addition in God of Retro. Beat ’em up punches were, however, accompanied by swooshes to emphasize the movement corresponding to a button press; Kratos can finally get a taste of the imaginary swooshes as well.
God of Retro ends with an 8-bit rendition of the wonderful Bear McCreary score. The retro version was produced in GarageBand using a plug-in.
Assets: Epidemic Sound, OpenGameArt
Plug-ins: Magical 8bit Plug by YMCK, TimeMachine by ToneBoosters
DAWs: Adobe Audition, GarageBand
