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The Commodore Zone - Martin Galway

Martin Galway - a legendary pioneer Introduction by TCZ webmaster
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I think its fair to say that there were not many musicians on the Commodore 64 music scene that could rival Rob Hubbard. However, there was one, young and talented computer musician, who worked for Ocean software that could not only rival Hubbard but at times even surpass! It is of course Martin Galway. One of the criticisms of Martin’s music was that it could all sound a bit similar in that he found a unique sound and used it throughout his 64 music career. I suppose you could argue he was kind of like the 64 music equivalent of Stock Aitken and Waterman!! - aka the Hit Factory (that’s supposed to be a complement by the way!). The unique sound he created was a revelation.
Ocean 'Arcade Kings' Advert
HYPER SPORTS 'OCEAN LOADER'
The first time I was introduced to the amazing talent of Martin Galway was on the now infamous Ocean Loader tune that played while the game Hyper Sports was loading. The loader tune was astounding – using his unique sound it was like nothing you have ever heard coming out of your humble 64. It was that good. Just when you thought that could not be topped, after the loader tune finished and the Hyper Sports game loaded – you were hit with a stunning rendition of Chariots of Fire! The whole sequence from beginning to end – is a musical masterpiece. Lets just say if you were a Commodore 64 fan at the time and bought this game – your jaw dropped half way through the loading sequence!! It certainly helped to earn the 64 a fearsome reputation as the best machine for music - many other owners of competing machines like the Spectrum or Amstrad were not at all impressed by the superior sound coming out of the humble 64...
Ocean 'Hyper Sports' advert
Other games like Comic Bakery soon followed and would now have the familiar Galway sound, but Comic Bakery became one of Galway’s most popular tunes – and other music groups have covered/remixed this probably more than any other Galway music. However, nothing prepared you for what came next…
RAMBO
When Ocean licensed the rights to the Rambo franchise, Martin was the obvious choice to do the music. Just when you thought the Ocean Loader could not be beaten – along came this remarkable soundtrack. The loading sequence, simply has to be heard to be believed, it is actually one of my personal favourite 64 soundtracks. Its cinematic in every way, powerful, and one of those tunes you won’t easily forget. This had quite an impact on the 64 music scene at the time – infact a Commodore 64 music tape was released later called “Datahits” by a company called “Mupados” which had a special enhanced version of the Rambo loading music. The game itself had other great music. The familiar Rambo music from the film played during your missions in the game – which certainly helped to heighten the atmosphere. When you finished your game and you managed to achieve a high enough score – you were greeted by the high score table and one of Galway’s best music pieces ever! A treat to say the least. I think it is probably fair to say that the Rambo music was Martin Galway’s finest hour and one of those occasions where he excelled even the mighty Hubbard.
Ocean 'Rambo' advert
GREEN BERET and YIE AR KUNG FU
Ocean also licensed the arcade game Green Beret. Martin did all the music for this game as well. The loading sequence had a wonderful “slow” atmospheric tune that was well suited to the game. The title screen had another piece of music that although did not seem much at first, gradually built up to a crescendo. There is a sequence in this music that is just tremendous – it’s a kind of reverb effect and it sounds fantastic. I remember being so impressed with this section of the music that I actually sampled it at a later date to my Amiga and added an echo effect to it in Audio Engineer! It sounded amazing! The karate based game Yie Ar Kung Fu (arcade license) had another Galway music classic on the games title screen. A seering soundtrack that really showcased Galway’s talent. It was reasonably long and with some exquisite moments. This is one of my favourites and the music has been remixed by various computer musicians over the years, some of the remixes are excellent and capture the quality of the original perfectly.
Ocean 'Green Beret' advert	Ocean 'Yie Ar Kung Fu' advert
THE STREET HAWK AND KNIGHT RIDER DEBACLE
In the mid eighties Ocean software bought the license rights for two television programs - Street Hawk (which unfortunately only lasted for one season) and the hugely successful Knight Rider featuring KITT the talking car. Martin was asked to do the music for Street Hawk. However, it would never see the light of day until recent times - due to what happened during the games production. Apparently the programmer(s) on the Street Hawk and Knight Rider projects made a real hash of programming these games - there were constant delays and the games were being advertised for ages in computer magazines, unfortunately the games never made it to a finished release state and were eventually shelved by Ocean, along with Martin Galway's Street Hawk music. Its only in recent times that the game music was released on the internet and also on the superb Project Galway collection. Ocean certainly paid a lot of money for these licenses and to this day it is extraordinary how completely mishandled these games were. Certainly the programmers messed up but where was the oversight by Ocean managers? Ocean really dropped the ball on this one - when you consider the subject matter, these games could of been amazing - remember that computer speech was really taking off around this time - can you imagine what they could of done with Knight Rider! See Speech Box for more information about the use of speech in Commodore 64 games.
Ocean 'Street Hawk' advert
MIAMI VICE
Miami Vice was a popular, hit television show in the 80’s and was licensed by Ocean. Yet again the unique Galway sound was used to full effect. The in-game music was actually a rendition of the original television music - although some at the time did not rate it that highly – I disagree, I think it was a very good rendition and I don’t really see how it could have been done any better. The title music also had a pleasant and highly effective tune which became resonably popular – it also appeared on the Circlesque graphics demo that was distributed on a cover disk by Commodore Disk User magazine.
Ocean 'Miami Vice' game	CBM Disk User 'Circlesque' demo
WIZBALL and PARALLAX
Wizball was a highly original game by Sensible Software for Ocean. The music on the title screen of this game is reckoned to be one of Galway’s best. I have to be honest, although I do like and rate this music highly – I don’t believe it is as good as some of his other music in particular his Rambo masterpiece. It’s a strange and compelling piece of music that really does fit well with the game but I don’t think its as mesmerisingly brilliant as some seem to think! Parallax has an extremely long piece of music I think it is about 11 minutes in length. Its certainly a competent effort by Galway which has some magic moments – but again like Wizball I think this has been over-hyped at times – its very good but its no Rambo!!
Ocean 'Wizball' advert
LEGACY
Martin Galway has a music legacy in Commodore 64 game history that is only surpassed by Rob Hubbard. However, although its certainly fair to say that Hubbard’s music tended be a lot more varied and Galway’s a bit too similar – this does not change the fact, that what Galway did with Commodore 64 music was to give a competitive alternative to Hubbard and certainly put Commodore 64 music way ahead of other machines at the time. Also, Galway’s Rambo suite of music is simply amazing and it compares favourably with the very best of Hubbard’s work. Personally, I rate Rambo as one of the finest examples of home computer music ever produced. Chris Abbott of c64audio.com has released a number of "Back in Time" music CDs - with new compositions/remixes of Commodore 64 music with CD quality sound that will allow you to experience Commodore 64 music in a whole new way. The TCZ webmaster has purchased all the BIT CDs and highly recommends that you visit c64audio.com and check out the CDs available. There is a two disc CD set "Project Galway" that has all the best Martin Galway music reproduced from an original Commodore machine - no remixes, the real Galway sound but in CD quality. Also well worth purchasing is "Back In Time 3" which includes a great track remix of Parallax! It now comes with a free COMPANION CD-ROM. The CDs are reasonably priced and worth every penny. On the Collections page you will find a special collection pack of Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard music. Also, a shockwave cameo of the Rambo loading sequence is playing above – as you read this! Please find below an article about Martin Galway that appeared in the magazine Zzap 64! and an interesting article about the Rambo game that appeared in the magazine Commodore User which infamously got Martin's name wrong! Read, listen and enjoy! If you would like to comment on this article - then please email the TCZ webmaster, or talk about it in the discussion forum. If you notice any grammatical errors or incorrect historical information then please email us.



Swag Daley Thompson	Yie Ar Kung Fu Hyper Sports Kong Strikes Back The Neverending Story Roland's Ratrace	Mikie Ping Pong Comic Bakery Terra Cresta Green Beret Helikopter Jagd Highlander Hunchback II Match Day Miami Vice Parallax Rambo Short Circuit	Arkanoid Athena Game Over Rastan Slap Fight Yie Ar Kung Fu II Combat School Wizball	Microprose Soccer Times of Lore	Insects in Space

NIGHT TRIPPING ON THE LATE FANTASTIC

By Sean Masterson

Music has become such an important and interesting aspect of Commodore 64 games that the people who write it are worth catching hold of for a chat. SEAN MASTERSON was sent 'home' to Manchester to talk to the man behind so much of Ocean's great compositions MARTIN GALWAY. But he found the maestro had flown.

It's not every week that I get a good excuse for a long weekend (just most weeks). Last week I was asked to take on British Rail once more in an attempt to get back to my home city of Manchester and interview the man responsible for some of the most remarkable music in arcade games at the moment, Martin Galway. No problem with that, I thought in my usual innocent manner. What could be easier than getting a train straight from Ludlow, interview the man himself and relax for the rest of the weekend? Oh, but there was plenty that could go wrong, if only I knew...

The trip was simple enough and yes the train was on time (so much so that I almost missed it - I was beginning to wonder why BR didn't simply reschedule their trains to arrive twenty five minutes late). I wandered through the packed city centre, past the monumental Central Library and before you could say Taumatawhackatangihangikua-uotamateaturipukakapickimau-nghahoronuka -pukawhena-whackatanatahumatakuaitanat-urikapamikitura, I was being confronted by Ocean's legendary Tropical Fish Tank.

Now this is where things began to go sadly wrong. Martin wasn't there. He had been rushed off to London at short notice and would not be back until the evening. Hmmm, tricky. But thanks to a miraculous piece of technology (courtesy of British Telecom) and a timely piece of Newsfield-Ocean co-operation, I managed to interview Mr Galway while he was cruising up the M1 via the car phone (who says programmers aren't jet-setters?) and so what follows must be one of the fastest long distance interviews ever carried out for a computer publication (Mad Masterson sets a new record).

First I was sent deep within the bowels of the Ocean Empire and cast into the programmers' pit. Actually, they're a marvellously friendly bunch who set me up with the first decent cup of coffee I'd had that day before unveiling their masterplan. They seemed pleased too, that sub-titles would not be needed to speak to a fellow Northerner (we at Newsfield try to please, you see). Soon after being treated to a glimpse of how the Oceaners develop games in-between get-ting different computers to talk to each other, the phone buzzed and I was talking to the nephew of the famous flautist James Galway about how he created his kind of music.

But before I go on any further, I had better explain some of the complications of interviewing somebody who's doing the better part of a- er, seventy miles an hour. Throughout this country of ours, there are a number of different Cellnet receivers to cope with signal reception of radio phones in different areas. These work in a relay to get the call back to you. If you exit one area during a call, the system disconnects you while it finds a better route for the call. Is no-thing simple? The result in this case was, of course, that I was never on the phone for more than a few minutes at a time so our conversation was crackly and disjointed-but interesting nonetheless.

The first thing to sort out was exactly how many games Martin had been involved in. The list is quite impressive, The Never Ending Story, Hypersports, Roland Rat, DT's Decathlon and more recently Streethawk, Transformers, Comic Bakery but perhaps most outstanding is his work on Rambo which employs a variety of themes - not always complex or indeed remarkable in terms of stretching the SID chip to its limits' but certainly brilliantly designed musically with atmosphere and character that often makes the work of his competitors' seem barren by comparison.

One thing Martin seemed to stress very strongly was his faith in that remarkable device, the SID chip. 'I've already found an interesting way to get more than one sound from a single voice simultaneously but it's a trade secret,' he said. But more to the point, 'I don't believe in using something like MIDI to transfer something (from a synth) to the machine which the voices might not be able to handle. I prefer working purely within the limitations of the machine itself.' CLICK! I was confronted by a dead phone line! Martin was obviously entering a new reception area.

While waiting to be re-con-nected, I wondered whether he had any reservations about taking advantage of some of the Commodore's capabilities such as the filters. 'No, the filters are too unreliable. A brilliant result on one machine is no guarantee of satisfactory sound on ano-ther. The filters have been gre-atly improved on the C128, though. Perhaps when more people have upgraded to that, I'll take advantage of them not until then though.'

So how do the tunes get from his mind into the silicon maze of an eight bit micro? He is inspired by a number of sources; the electronic orchestrations of Jean Michel Jarre and frantic, jazz-funk slapping base sounds from UB40 are two diverse but prominent influences. Colin, one of the programming team has souped up an assembler with the result that once Martin has constructed his work on a small keyboard, pure data is all that needs to be transfered to the computer. In a way, this is a pity because the explanation belies the complexity of such a fine tuned (if you'll pardon the pun) process.

There are other considerations as well. Martin develops the music at the same time the game itself is being programmed. He only has a relatively small space in which to work, in terms of memory. Rambo's eight or nine major themes had to fit inside 8K! How he did it is another of his 'trade secrets' no doubt. But it appears to cause no real problems and he seems content to work in whatever memory environment he has to.

Some of the voices and effects have seen their way onto more than one game (though in a modified form). Martin does have a few favourites. 'There's one that resembles a trumpet sound I used in Hypersports (CLICK- wait- another coffee) which I like to re-use as long as it doesn't become repetitive.' So does he think he's taken the use of old SID as far as is possible? 'No. In that piece you did on Rob Hubbard, you said that he had stretched the SID chip to its limits and that's ridiculous. There are plenty of things you can do with it yet.' Well, that sounds promising if nothing else. CLICK - Thank goodness for that. I was running out of ideas for questions. Interrogation over the phone was never one of my strong points.

Finally, I asked Martin if there were any other things he would enjoy working on. He wouldn't mind doing an entire game him-self but realises that his forte is obviously programming orig-inal musical themes for others' games. But you never can tell. Apart from that, he sounded distinctly enthusiastic about playing on an Amiga and putting that through its paces (but who can blame him). Whatever the Micro Maestro turns his digital fingers to next, it's sure to add hitherto unforseen depth and attraction to the game to which it. is applied. In a field which is rapidly becoming the domain of specialists, Martin Galway is becoming set to leave the others behind.

And so I headed out of the Ocean offices and off to see some friends. The cold winter night had fallen. The city grime and gloom alleviated only by the Christmas lights across town failed to deaden my enthusiasm for a city so full of remarkably talented people (after all, I come from there). I reached Piccadilly and caught my (late) bus. Listen-ing to a treasured recording of Duke's Travels on my Walkman, I sat back and thought, now that was a different kind of interview!

Article scanned from Zzap 64! magazine February 1986 edition.


RAMBO - THE MAKING OF THE GAME By Mike Pattenden
The paste had hardly dried on the film posters before we heard that Rambo was to be made into a game by Ocean. How did they get it? And just how do you go about turning a 90 minute feature film into a game? Mike 'Hotshots' Pattenden travelled away to Manchester to find out. Since the success of Ghostbusters, games based on films are now a major source of income to the software world. But these days it's no longer a case of basing a game upon a popular film, A View To A Kill changed all that. Now the game is launched while the film is still rolling in the cinemas. Rambo had to be an obvious choice for a computer game. Few films have stirred up the fever of enthusiasm that Sylvester Stallone's explosive return to Vietnam has created since its release here in August. Over in America it's grossed $130 million and looks set to be the biggest film yet. It has gone down well all over the world, packing out cinemas in war stricken Beirut and even El Salvador. Everyone loves a shoot 'em up, and that is really all Rambo is, an indestructible comic strip hero who goes around destroying batallions of enemy troops, tanks and helicopters. It already sounds like a number of com-puter games on the market, so it came as no surprise to learn that Ocean had scored the deal to make the game of the film of the game.
BIG DEAL
"We had the Rambo deal fixed up well before it got here, before all the hype about banning it and Reagan making those comments," says Ocean director John Woods. In fact the deal was fixed up back in June when the rights to make the game were handed to Ocean on a plate by the company responsible for fixing all licensing deals for Rambo in this country, Movie Media Marketing. Tim Massey was the man responsible for offering Ocean the deal. "One of the offshoots from the film we discussed with its owners was a computer game, and as it turned out we went straight to Ocean, because they have such a good reputation. Ocean came back with an offer which was very reasonable and that was it." The sum? Well of course no-one is say-ing but Tim Massey quoted "a substantial amount". We have to be talking telephone numbers. With the deal fixed up, all Ocean had to do then was produce the goods. The only criteria being that it's produced quickly and that it's not naff. Looking at the track record of many games based on films that's a tall order.
MEET THE TEAM
"The first we knew about it was when John Woods comes in and says `I've got a present for you, we're doing Rambo'. We just went YYEEESS!!" The enthusiasm boils over from the sandwich-filled mouth of chief pro-grammer and software development manager David Collier. He along with Tony Pomfret and Merton Gallway makes up the Rambo team. At twenty-six he's not exactly your programming whizz-kid, but he has got a good track record behind him, which is apt because he was responsible for Hyper-sports and before that Daley Thompson's Decathlon.
The Rambo team: Pomfret and Collier - you've seen more meat on a butcher's apron!
I was surprised to learn, though, that nineteen-year-old Tony Pomfret has had a computer for longer. They work as a team and they work fast. Nor are they your identikit programming types. "Look, tell them we don't come from good schools and we haven't been to university. We're both from Atherton, that's near Wigan, and we're layabouts, we're not stiffs!" says Tony. As if to prove the point we head off to the pub and shoot pool. It sounds as if they have an easy time of it, but of course they don't. It takes a lot of thought and effort to produce a game. Not in quite the way I thought, though. I had expected to find 'the team' ensconced in front of a video of the film, eating endless TV dinners, memorising every move. True to form, Pomfret and Collier [listening to them it's more like Cannon and Ball actually) don't work that way. They saw the preview and that was it.
WHAT DO WE DO NOW?
"We loved it, it was bloody marvel-lous," laughs Tony. "We came back and wrote down all the major elements of the film and broke it down into four phases." I look around for a detailed storyboard. Naturally there isn't one. A pile of A4 printer paper is spread all over the table. On it crude childlike drawings of Rambo and trees and weapons are scrawled in biro. "We'll probably get around to doing a story-board in a bit," says Dave to allay my fears. I relax a little. "We've got it all sussed anyway," says Tony. "It's a weapons game, part arcade, part adventure. We plan to follow the film very closely." Evidently, by the arguments they have while I'm sitting there, they haven't got it all sussed. The end of the game in par-ticular causes some problems. "I've got it, I've got it!" shouts Tony, leaping from his chair. "No I haven't," he says sitting back down again. "What do you think?", says Dave, "You write the reviews!" I duly give my considered opinion, and for a change it's well received. "Yeah, great, we'll do that." I'm not telling you what I said either.

THE PLOT
Without giving away the plot [Michael] this is a rough outline of what happens in the game. It is, of course, subject to change without notice and no doubt will be. It will begin with a teletext-type message on the screen that simply says "It's up to you", just like the commander tells Stallone in the film. You naturally accept the mission - you wouldn't have bought it otherwise - which is to rescue imprisoned POWs from a Vietnamese camp in the jungle. At various points you must pick up weapons littered around the place and use them in the correct order. For example, it's no use trying to break into the camp with a bazooka. "All the way through you'll have to ask yourself what would Rambo do now?" says Dave. I ask him if it might be predictable if you've seen the film. "Well now you say so I suppose it might have been, but it won't be because you'll always have a number of options and there will be other ways of succeeding. Nor will it be easy." After you've rescued a prisoner you move on to Stage Two. This is you, Rambo, being chased on foot by the helicopter. You must not only survive its attempts to kill you but capture it too. Once you've secured the helicopter it's back to the prison camp for the next phase: blast hell out of Charlie and rescue the rest of the prisoners. Then it's on to the final stage with the classic helicopter chase you see in the film. How do you survive a gunship that's faster and more heavily armed than you? It's up to you to find out, Rambo. It all sounds very impressive - with all the puzzle and zapping it should be a dream game to play. If anyone can do it then Collier and Pomfret can, their blase attitude inspires a kind of blind confidence. The set-up in the room they call 'the Tip' provides rather more concrete evidence.
A FEW TECHNICALITIES
"No-one has the kind of development system we're working with here, because we've built it ourselves." Basically they have two 64s linked up via three communication lines. This allows the machines to talk to one another in a "complicated handshaking technique". This in turn allows them to utilise 128K of memory, though not of course at the same time. (Why not buy a C128? - Ed.] So what you'll get will be the same kind of technique used on Sabre Wulf where entire blocks are repeated all over the place to generate the effect of a changing landscape. What of Rambo, will he be a little blob drifting around the screen? "No way", says Dave vehemently. "He'll probably be two, maybe even three sprites big. We'll give him the head-band and the muscles. You'll know it's him" - maybe one sprite per muscle. The scale is big as well. Fifteen screens tall, maybe thirty [they haven't decided yet) by three wide. The view you will get is a sort of elevated camera angle, situated 180° behind Rambo. You will be able to see him in profile, though, because he can turn. As you move him up-screen the land-scape scrolls past. They had finished the scrolling before I left and it was smooth and surprisingly quick. There will be musical accompaniment - not just when the game loads, but all the way through, and not one of the horrible la-la tunes you get with many games. This is where Merton Gallway comes in. He was the man responsible for that superb loading music on Hypersports. He'll be looking to get that pompous Rambo music on-to your 64, plus a variety of sound ef-fects, like jungle noises and drums. Typically, the expensive looking synth in the corner of the room is discarded for a piece of home-made junk that looks like it came out of a rubbish skip.

SPEED FREAKS
So there you have it, now all they've got to do is put that all together before the November deadline. Sounds impossible. "We did have a minor setback just before you came actually," smiles Tony. "We lost everything we'd done so far when the power failed. It was really funny, one minute there was that little buzz of activity you get when everyone's busy. Next minute, com-plete silence - then the air was filled with obscenities!" So you're behind then? Tony again: "Not really, we work very fast, I can't understand these programmers who spend a year on their games - it'd bore us senseless. Roland Rat took three weeks. We'll beat the deadline." I wouldn't give you odds on them missing it either. That, then, is how the Rambo game got underway, but the story has only just begun and Commodore User will be keeping in touch with the 'team in the Tip' to keep you up-to-date on the game's development. Article scanned from Commodore User magazine October 1986 edition.

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