Rainbow Arts
"The first big german games developer", which hired chris-huelsbeck on the phone after shades and had him in-house from February/March 1987: great-giana-sisters (label Time Warp), Katakis, R-Type, Turrican (sources: s-remix64-huelsbeck-interview, s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck).
Facts#
- Gave Hülsbeck "a lot of freedom and a decent salary" and his first synthesizer, an Ensoniq ESQ-1; the boss's taste (Bob Marley, Madonna's True Blue) shaped the Giana Sisters tunes (source: s-emuwiki-huelsbeck-interview).
- Ramiro Vaca, the only other user of Hülsbeck's C64 tfmx editor, scored Garrison (1988) and co-wrote Spherical (1989) there (sources: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx, s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck).
- Withdrew The Great Giana Sisters under pressure from Nintendo (source: s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx).
- 64'er 2/88 visited the Gütersloh offices ("Von der Spielidee ins Regal"): Geschäftsführer Marc Ullrich, programmer Armin Gessert, graphician Holger Flöttmann and Hülsbeck as the sound man; the pipeline runs concept → graphics → programmer → sound last → testing by uninvolved players → copy protection; base routines alone take 4–6 months; a C64 production like Bad Cat cost "rund 25000 Mark"; To Be On Top, "das erste Spiel von Chris Hülsbeck", is a music adventure with five voices, digitized effects and a ten-song hit parade (source: s-64er-rainbow-arts-feature).
- How the hiring happened — two accounts. VGMPF and Remix64 have the company ring him after shades and take him on over the phone; in his own March 1987 telling the initiative was his: "In der Zwischenzeit habe ich mich mit Rainbow Arts in Verbindung gesetzt, bei denen ich nun fest angestellt bin" — said while he was still a schoolboy facing the choice "entweder Computer oder Schule" (source: s-happy-computer-soundprofessor). In 2011 he described it as two steps: "I started offering my services to games companies and was first contracted, then hired by 'Rainbow Arts', the first big developer out of Germany" (source: s-audiogang-huelsbeck-interview).
- Bad Cat and the sample priority. Hülsbeck's sampled drums were to debut in a Rainbow Arts release, and its slipping schedule is what he blamed in 1996 for losing the credit: the "first release 'Bad cat' … that featured 'my' trick was delayed about 3 month until the program was finished. So Martin Galway got the fame with 'Arkanoid'" (chip-samples; source: s-imr-huelsbeck-interview). Both sides of that dispute are set out on martin-galway.
- 1990s, and a Danish C64 connection: Rainbow Arts commissioned the DOS platform game Lollypop from Brain Bug in Aarhus, with the audio done by Vibrants — JCH on all the AdLib sound effects, Drax and Metal on the music, JO converting to Amiga and Roland MT-32, Drax's brother Ole Mogensen as project manager; started November 1992, released on PC in 1994 and Amiga in 1995 and, in JCH's words, "didn't create quite the stir we were hoping for" (source: s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles).
Related#
chris-huelsbeck · great-giana-sisters · tfmx · soundmonitor · chip-samples · martin-galway · chordian
Sources#
s-vgmpf-chris-huelsbeck · s-remix64-huelsbeck-interview · s-emuwiki-huelsbeck-interview · s-vgmpf-soundmonitor-tfmx · s-64er-rainbow-arts-feature · s-happy-computer-soundprofessor · s-audiogang-huelsbeck-interview · s-imr-huelsbeck-interview · s-chordian-my-computer-chronicles