A C change in videogame music
In July/August 1985 Rob was on fire! Well, not literally, but coming off stellar reviews of Thing on a Spring, some of the companies and people who had seen previews of Thing and Monty at computer shows were sending work his way, and the results would be seriously classic.
The letter C was seriously important.
Crazy Comets had come to Rob via a computer show where Simon Nicol saw Thing and Monty being previewed and hassled Gremlin for Rob’s contact details. By the end of July, the music and sound effects were finished and amazing, taking advantage of some of the frenetic instrument-switching that had been perfected in the previous job “Gerry the Germ”; a game full of hiccups and burbles.
During that job, Rob had to break off and do one thing: he had to go to Elite Systems and do Commando for them in time for them to exhibit the game at the Personal Computer World show in September. So much of the feel of Commando is infused with the spirit of Crazy Comets.
Chimera came out of Crazy Comets: Shahid Ahmed, author of Chimera, was visiting ZZAP! 64 one way when he saw a preview of Crazy Comets. Seriously impressed he also got in touch with Rob asking for some fretless bass: Rob obliged by mining his pre-SID back catalog a little bit to produce a tune that sounds like nothing else.
As the last of the three C tunes, Chimera benefitted from the creative and sonic development that Rob had done with Zoids and Master of Magic.
Rob didn’t do many other C tunes, but he did do Confuzion, Chain Reaction and Centurion. C? I told you!