Hewson Consultants

aliases Hewson

created 2026-08-30 · updated 2026-08-31

The British publisher that gave maniacs-of-noise its first job — Battle Valley, commissioned at the PCW show in September 1987, "our first paid gig" — and for whom jeroen-tel wrote "the music and sound for most of their Commodore 64 games until he left in July 1990", including cybernoid and cybernoid-ii (sources: s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise, s-charles-deenen-interviews).

Facts#

matt-gray freelanced for Hewson too: Maze Mania (1989, "about two weeks") and Deliverance: Stormlord II (1990), his last SID — "Ironically, it was for Hewson Consultants, who folded soon after" (source: s-c64com-matt-gray-interview).
Other MoN titles for the label in VGMPF's list: Eliminator, Stormlord, Zamzara (source: s-vgmpf-maniacs-of-noise).

The end for Gray: Hewson "went into liquidation" owing him for Deliverance (or Maze Mania) — "that was my only source of income"; no hard feelings later, he met Andrew and Rob Hewson at the From Bedrooms to Billions premiere and planned a Deliverance remake for their book's soundtrack (source: s-vandalism63-matt-gray-interview). Deliverance was "the last C64 music set I ever made"; Maze Mania "not my best work, but not my worst" (source: s-retrogamesmaster-matt-gray-interview).

The 1989 origin variant: C=Lehti says Deenen, tired of demo coding, mailed a disk of demos to English software houses, and Hewson — which "had a serious music shortage at the time" — phoned a day later with work; the retrospective accounts put the Battle Valley commission at the September 1987 PCW show instead (source: s-c-lehti-maniacs-of-noise).

Deenen's own 2010 wording of the first job puts two teenagers at a trade show: "We travelled as young teenagers, all dressed up, to the European computer show in London where Hewson gave us our first paid gig" — and Hewson heads the list of labels he freelanced for, before Firebird, Dynamix, U.S. Gold, Probe, Interplay and 21st Century (source: s-c64com-charles-deenen-interview).
The label also scouted composers by post: JCH's 1980s papers include a draft reply to Barry Simpson of Hewson, "that had showed some interest in my music for C64 games. I don't think much came of it" (source: s-chordian-player-editor-notes).

source file wiki/entities/hewson.md · graph