C64.COM interview #8 — Charles Deenen (2010)

charles-deenen's own long-form C64 Q&A: the fullest first-hand list of what he actually did per game — and it is mostly sound effects, with music on a shorter list. Introduces himself as "co-founder of Maniacs of Noise and Scoop" (scoop-designs).

Key claims#

• Origin retold as in Designing Sound: PET audio attempts "around 1983"; on the C64 "music/graphic demos which we showed/traded at the monthly computer meetings in Venlo – through which I met Jeroen Tel. We wanted to make our own music, and wrote a music driver" (musicfile); the "odd" idea of earning "gum and floppy disks" money; "We travelled as young teenagers, all dressed up, to the European computer show in London where hewson gave us our first paid gig" (Battle Valley). Companies also found them "through so called scene demos in which we usually put our phone number and/or address".
• His credit list (his own, admittedly incomplete; "If I need a list, I usually look at other websites"): sound effects only on the famous Tel titles — Battle Valley, cybernoid, Cybernoid 2 (cybernoid-ii), Dan Dare 3, Eliminator, Myth, Nighthunter, Rubicon, Savage, Scout, Turbo Outrun, Golden Axe, Afterburner, Aspar Grand Prix Master, Gaplus, Hotrod, Iron Lord, Kinetix, Narco Police, Navy Moves, Tintin on the Moon, Zynon (music, unpublished) among others. Music and sound effects: After the War, Astro Marine Corps, B.A.T., Satan, Zamzara; music: Back to the Future 3 (+ conversion), F1 Simulator, Lord of the Rings, Mantalos, Mr. Heli; music conversion + SFX: Double Dragon, Soldier of Light. Unreleased: 2400 AD, Alloyrun, G.I. Hero.
• Rates and pace: "We were only paid $200-$1000, and so we worked on them for two to six days. Sometimes we only had two days to compose the music and do the sound effects."
• Memory budgets: "Some companies only gave us six to eight kilobyte of memory for music and sound effects. Those naturally became a challenge."
• Tools: "Turbo Assembler, baby! Turbo Assembler... and that was it." (turbo-assembler)
• A schoolboy's working day: up at 6 AM for homework, school to 4 PM, "5-11 PM: Worked on the music and sound effects. 1-3 AM: Was on party lines in the US. After I left school in 1988, I pretty much worked 18 hours a day."
• F1 Simulator: "The company who contracted me, wanted me to rip off a certain song, and I did, but it caused quite a bit of concern."
• Freelance clients he remembers: Hewson, Firebird, Dynamix, U.S. Gold, Probe Software, Interplay, 21st Century Entertainment; in-house later: Interplay, Shiny, EA (Senior Audio Director).
• Influence "during that time": Jean Michel Jarre. Memories: the Venlo and Nijmegen meetings, ~200 C64s powering off when the electricity failed, the nightly US party lines. Why he stopped: "The C64 was dying and no contracts were coming in. The Amiga was taking over."

Practical takeaways#

• The MoN division of labour in hard numbers: on the canonical Tel soundtracks Deenen is the SFX man; his own music credits cluster on the later Spanish/French imports (Dinamic, Ubi/Loriciel-era titles) and conversions.
• 2–6 days and $200–1000 per game, inside 6–8 KB — the commercial frame around every musicfile tune.

Notable quotes#

"Turbo Assembler, baby! Turbo Assembler... and that was it."

"Some companies only gave us six to eight kilobyte of memory for music and sound effects."

Relevance to the wiki#

First-hand confirmation of who did what on the Hewson classics; the memory budget and fee figures ground sid-player-routine's size talk; the Scoop self-description feeds scoop-designs.

Pages touched#

charles-deenen · jeroen-tel · maniacs-of-noise · scoop-designs · musicfile · turbo-assembler · hewson · cybernoid · cybernoid-ii · sound-effects