Retro Gamesmaster — Matt Gray Interview (Peter Ward)

The interview with the most complete game-by-game commentary from matt-gray — dates, fees, what was cut — and his one-paragraph description of the C64 workflow.

Key claims#

• Timeline: dabbled on the C64 from 1985 while still at school; as an office clerk from 16 "I really got into coding & developing my C64 SID player in my spare time with a view to making commercial games tracks. That was late 1986 and within a year I was getting commissions and was able to go full time games musician in Jan 1988."
• Game by game: Quedex — "my first big break … the loading tune already made as a Compunet demo … It was the first game to feature my own SID player which I would go on to refine & expand as each new game came along"; driller — "several weeks … the hurrican of '87 left me without power for nearly 2 weeks"; Hunter's Moon — "I did all the music for this contrary to what some believe. Martin Walker the programmer was a musician but didn't have a SID routine at the time"; Bangkok Knights loader — "my trial by fire at System 3 … I literally turned it around within a few days"; last-ninja-2 — "I started on LN2 in January 1988 and it was completed by May with about a month gap. 13 tracks were made and they used them all. It was great to just do what I felt was right and not have to do any SFX. A dream project really."; Tusker — at System 3's new offices, "especially the Desert & Village levels"; dominator — "several tracks for this & the dreaded SFX. But they left the best track off the game. It was used for a demo but taken out of the game"; Vendetta — a dark intro track used, a second one "a straight cover of a Yello track" unused; Deliverance — "the last C64 music set I ever made"; Maze Mania — "Not my best work, but not my worst"; Treasure Island Dizzy C64 & NES — "By then Codemasters had me working on the NES whch was 6502 also but the sound chip was not in the SIDs league. It also had limiting factors across it's channels, they were not all the same"; Micro Machines (NES) — uncredited, no promised royalty, £300, "I left the games industry shortly after"; KGB Superspy; Hyperion 2 (unreleased, "a favourite of mine"); Pro BMX — "used a gazillion times for scene demos"; Motocross; Fruit Machine Simulator — "My first Codemasters commission for £150. Took an evening to do"; Mean Streak — "the music was re-coded as I didn't have a proper SID player at that time. They ruined the music"; Yogi Bear.
• Briefs were thin: "Often you only got see some screenshots or maybe a storyboard … very often all you had to go on was a phone conversation."
• Workflow: "On the C64 it was basically working out melody & chord ideas on a small 3 octave casio keyboard and then inputting the data manually via a 6502 assembler. I designed all the sounds within my SID player from scratch usually. If you wanted any mod routines on the sound you had to code them. It was real low level coding. Nothing much existed unless you coded it. Once you had something going it was just the usual process of refining it and maybe coming back to it in a few days with fresh ideas." Today: "A 5 minute track on the SID could take several days or a week."
• Easiest/hardest: "Last Ninja 2 was mainly easy because I had a free hand & could try things out. Driller was challenging because it was so long. The real challenges came once you hit the ceiling of the SIDs capabilites though. My last few games tracks I did on the SID were starting to become a chore."
• Reformation: inspired by Hülsbeck's Kickstarter, "synth rock tracks which is basically what I wanted them to sound like originally"; the 2014 Central Park loader remake as the trial run (5 000 SoundCloud plays in two days); later in-game music for Thrust 30 (Hayesmaker Games).
• Cher's Believe: "I'm a credited writer on it."

Relevance to the wiki#

Dates and fees per game for matt-gray, driller, last-ninja-2 (13 tracks, January–May 1988), dominator (the cut track); the workflow paragraph for matt-gray-player and tracking-workflow.

Pages touched#

matt-gray · matt-gray-player · driller · last-ninja-2 · dominator · system-3 · codemasters · hewson · compunet · tracking-workflow · sound-effects