How "Hup!" became the standard sound effect for jumping in video games

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Originally published at: How "Hup!" became the standard sound effect for jumping in video games | Boing Boing

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https://nerdist.com/article/the-dark-crystal-age-of-resistances-hup-tribute/

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The power of the “hup” should never be underestimated.

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I need to go fire up the MAME console and play Shinobi now, I loved that game in the arcade…

Except for the in-between bonus levels, those were sometimes more frustrating than the regular levels!

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The article gives credit to some 90’s video games, but I’m pretty certain it first found traction with the Blues Brothers. (I’ve hit my Wired limit this month, so I haven’t been able to read the whole article, just summaries.)

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It’s older, though. I knew it as carnie/vaudeville slang, but it’s probably older than that … from a nifty website: Alley-Oop — An Acrobatic or gymnastic act. The performers (often European) were often heard to cue their team members (in French) “allez” (“everybody”) and then either “up” in English, or a simple vocalization like “hup” to coordinate timing.
I’d suggest a visit to the website itself if for nothing else than the nostalgic geocities vibe.

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There are some articles that work best as prose, and there some articles that would work better as youtube videos…

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Agreed, if you’re going to write something about sound effects it really helps the reader/viewer to be able to hear those effects. I think the written version of the article would still work if they would just embed samples of the sounds in question.

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Dark Castle had a very similar if slightly lower pitched “hup” sound for jumping in 1986.

That game had excellent sound design throughout.

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