The original Xbox’s menu sounds were from NASA

21 Jul 2014

Steve Wright

Larry ‘Major Nelson’ Hryb took to Twitter today to detail the origins of the original Xbox’s menu music.

It’s surprisingly cool.

Fun Fact: When you were sitting idle on the dashboard of the Original Xbox the background sounds were actually . . (1/2)

— Larry Hryb 🏡🎮☁ (@majornelson) July 20, 2014

…public domain audio from NASA transmissions from the Apollo days that we tweaked for that sound (2/2) pic.twitter.com/gJr7HFUsnF

— Larry Hryb 🏡🎮☁ (@majornelson) July 20, 2014

Pretty neat, right?

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Steve Wright

Steve's the owner and Editor-in-Chief of Stevivor.com, the country’s leading independent video games outlet. Steve arrived in Australia back in 2001 on what was meant to be a three-month working holiday before deciding to emigrate and, eventually, becoming a citizen.

Stevivor is a combination of ‘Steve’ and ‘Survivor’, which made more sense back in 2001 when Jeff Probst was up in Queensland. The site started as Steve’s travel blog before transitioning over into video games.

Aside from video games, Steve has interests in hockey and Star Trek, playing the former and helping to cover video games about the latter on TrekMovie.com. By day, Steve works as the communications manager of the peak body representing Victorians as they age.