VGMPF wiki: Chris Hülsbeck

The most detailed dated timeline of chris-huelsbeck's C64 years anywhere on the web — a fan wiki, so every date below is second-hand, but it cites the interviews it was built from (listed at the end of the raw page).

Key claims#

• Christopher Friedrich Martin Hülsbeck, born 1968-03-02 in Kassel; mother, aunt and grandmother piano teachers; piano lessons at 5 for two years; electric organ at 11 (circuit-bent "until it exploded"), drum lessons at 12; taught himself BASIC on an uncle's Sirius PC.
• Bought the C64 in December 1984 (500 DM from a paper round plus 100 DM from his grandmother, "without which he almost bought an Atari 800XL"). School friends Artur Wystub and Peter Thierolf; Wystub "helped Hülsbeck getting started in assembly and programmed the first two games Hülsbeck scored".
• 1985: started the driver Musicmaster "in Profi-Ass 64 and composed in hex". Summer 1986: wrote an editor for it, soundmonitor, because hex was tedious.
• February 1986: heard of the 64er music contest and composed shades "from 8 PM to 4 AM, merely aiming for top ten, but to his shock reached first place, earning 1500 DM". Sold Soundmonitor to the same magazine, which made it Listing of the Month.
• Spring 1986: found a partly-BASIC program "Digidrums" that played samples; built a userport sampler with Thierolf ("breaking CIA chips") and "added percussion, bass and vocal samples to Musicmaster as a 4th voice". None of it was released until July 1987 — martin-galway's Arkanoid (February 1987) got sampled drums out first; "They met in 2005 and had a laugh about this" (chip-samples).
• By July 1987: an optimised Musicmaster, The Final Musicplayer, "only available to Georg Brandt and himself". Sound effects (and the echoing jingles of Jinks) first in separate routines, later inside the drivers.
• Summer 1988: "noticed that newer SID chips did not support samples anymore and programmed an early version of tfmx for the C64" (sid 8580).
• Rainbow Arts: phoned the boss, played a few songs, "hired on the spot"; two games freelance, then quit the Wirtschaftsgymnasium and moved to rainbow-arts' offices in February or March 1987. 1990/91 co-founded A.U.D.I.O.S. and Kaiko; 1994 Chris Hülsbeck Medienproduktion; 1998 Star Wars: Rogue Squadron and the move to Factor 5 in the US; freelance again since 2009.
• On the SID: "likes the uniqueness of the SID sound and highlights the pulse width modulation, but dislikes how unpredictable the filter sounds on every machine". VICE note: most songs "sound best with 6581 (reSID) and a bias of 180", but the melody at 2:00 of Madness in-game is inaudible there — "individual filter settings have to be found".
• Amiga: A1000 bought late 1986 for 4200 DM; RAW format 1987, own DNS format 1988-01-18 to 1988-07-31, then TFMX. Atari ST: a few 1990s conversions with TFMX-Editor driving a YM2149F on a board plugged into the Amiga. Later TFMX-based formats for DOS (AWS 1992; MDT/SMP 1993; MDAT/SMPL 1995), SNES (TFMX) and N64 (MusyX, "based on TFMX"). First synthesizers: Ensoniq ESQ-1 and Korg M1.
• His view: making 1980s game music "was about being 70% of a programmer and only 30% of a musician"; no formal training, "still has limits at reading musical notation".
• C64 gameography (selection, VGMPF dates): Planet of War 1986; 1987 The Antics, Jinks, Madness, Soldier!, The Baby of Can Guru, Bad Cat, To be on Top; 1988-01 The Great Giana Sisters; 1988 Katakis, R-Type, Starball, Danger Freak, Down at the Trolls; 1989 Hard 'n' Heavy, Oxxonian, Grand Monster Slam, Spherical (with Ramiro Vaca); 1990 Turrican, X-Out (arranged by Adam Bulka, Michael Hendriks, Vaca), StarTrash title; 1991 Gem'X; 1992 BugBomber.

Practical takeaways#

• Three generations of one composer's driver in three years — Musicmaster (1985) → The Final Musicplayer (1987) → TFMX (1988) — each forced by a practical problem: hex entry, size and sound effects, and the 8580's quiet samples. Useful framing for sid-player-routine.
• The "4th voice" of samples on top of three SID voices is the earliest dated attempt in the wiki at chip-samples in a music driver, and the reason the 8580 changed his instruments rather than his tunes.

Relevance to the wiki#

Timeline backbone for chris-huelsbeck, soundmonitor, tfmx, shades and great-giana-sisters; cross-checks the two interviews (s-remix64-huelsbeck-interview, s-emuwiki-huelsbeck-interview).

Pages touched#

chris-huelsbeck · soundmonitor · tfmx · shades · great-giana-sisters · rainbow-arts · martin-galway · chip-samples · sid · sid-player-routine · 64er