Gamasutra - Game Audio Gallery: George "Fat Man" Sanger


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	The Fat Man: George Alistair Sanger Legend of Interactive Audio Home: Austin, Texas Email: fatman@fatman.com Web: www.fatman.com
Current Project:
Designing new "Fat Sound" speaker systems and sounds for Slot Machines (under NDA), Designing "The Integrator" Audio Integration System for Games, operating GamePlayMusic, composing various Dance Music projects for no reason, Jams with the Tuesday Night Gods of Music, planning and hosting the GameBalance Rave for GDC '02, Audio Advisor for Game Developer Magazine, producing audio CD of music from Wing Commander.
Credits:
Wing Commander, Origin Systems The 7th Guest, Trilobyte Putt Putt Goes to the Moon, Humongous Wing Commander II, Origin Putt Putt Saves the Zoo, Humongous US Navy Fighters, EA Advanced Tactical Fighters, EA Master of Orion, SimTex Zombies Ate My Neighbors, Lucasfilm Games Ultima Underworld, Blue Sky NASCAR Racing, Papyrus Pajama Sam 3, Humongous Clue, EAI/Hasbro Cyberstrike: The Clan Wars, 989 Studios Dawn of War, Illusion Machines Qwxyz, JW Associates Tanarus, Sony Interactive Studios WarSport, TimeSink The 7th Guest part 2--The 11th Hour, Trilobyte Zhadnost: The Peoples' Party, 3DO Shannara, FAR Productions Master of Magic, SimTex SEAL Team, EA Loom, Lucasfilm Games Freddi Fish, Humongous Star Trek-25th Anniversary, Interplay Son of MULE, Danny Bunten Marine Fighters, EA This Means War, Starjammer/Illusion Machine Welcome to Bear Country, Compton's NewMedia Windows Sound System Microsoft General MIDI tones for Yamaha chips Yamaha Faceball 2000, (SNES) Xanth Mech Wars, SimTex Indy Car Racing, Papyrus Junior Encyclopedias, Humongous 1830, SimTex Invaders From Glixer: Rescue The Scientists, Compton's NewMedia Berenstain Bears Learn at Home Vol. 2, Compton's NewMedia Q Bert 3, (SNES) Realtime Berenstain Bears Learn at Home Vol. 1, Compton's NewMedia Castles II, Interplay SSN-21 Seawolf, John Ratcliff Chuck Yeager's Air Combat, EA Tony LaRussa II, Beyond Software Castles, Interplay Martian Dreams, Origin Savage Empire, Origin Star Trek III, Interplay Lexi-Cross, Interplay Rules of Engagement, Mindcraft Software Maniac Mansion, (SNES) Realtime Star Trek: Judgement Rites, Interplay Tony LaRussa's Ultimate Baseball, Beyond Software Defenders of Dynatron City, Lucasfilm Rocketeer, (NES) Realtime LHX Attack Copter, EA Mario Teaches Typing, Interplay Battledroids, Lucasfilm Socks Rocks the House, Realtime Hong Kong Mah Jong 9, Dragons The Secret Codes of Cypher: Operation Wildlife, Tanager Magic Candle II, Mindcraft Wings 2, Acme Interactive Q Bert, (Gameboy) NBA Basketball, Sculptured Heroes of the 357th Midnight Ultima-Runes of Virtue, Origin Mutanoid Math Challenge, Legacy Mutanoid Word Challenge, Legacy MicroLeague Baseball MicroLeague, Sports Double Trouble Ramp, EA Track Meet, Interplay Spellcraft, Tsunami Marvin the Moose, John Ratcliff Total Recall, Interplay Dick Tracy, Realtime Gameboy Dick Tracy, Realtime Funhouse, Realtime RPM, Interplay Frogfoot, EA Might and Magic III, New World Planet's Edge, New World Swords and Serpents, Interplay Rad Gravity, Activision Home Alone, (NES) Bethesda Capture The Flag, Sirius Cybernet, Trilobyte Battle Chess II, Interplay Pools of Darkness, SSI Shadow Sorcerer, SSI Thin Ice, Mattel Electronics Monster Truck Rally, INTV Death Knights of Krinn, SSI Cartel, Access Word Hai, Realtime The Flash, Bethesda Battlecruiser 3000 AD, 3000 AD Hard Nova, EA Buck Rogers II, SSI Omar Sharif on Bridge, Interplay Arrow Realtime Super Pro Pool Billiards, Realtime Discography: Surf.com: "Texas Surf Music from a Communist Game Show" (Music from 3DO's "Zhadnost: The Peoples' Party") 7/11 (Music from Trilobyte's "The 7th Guest" and "The 11th Hour") Flabby Rode: "Go ahead: laugh at the funny Fat Man" Coming: Music from Wing Commander I
Bio:
The Fat Man, George Alistair Sanger, has been creating music and other audio for games since 1983. He is internationally recognized for having contributed to the atmosphere of over 130 games, including such sound-barrier-breaking greats as Loom, Wing Commander I and II, The 7th Guest I and II, NASCAR Racing, Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo, and ATF. He wrote the first General MIDI soundtrack for a game, the first direct-to-MIDI live recording of musicians, the first redbook soundtrack included with the game as a separate disk, the first music for a game that was considered a "work of art," and the first soundtrack that was considered a selling point for the game. On a 380-acre ranch on the Guadalupe River, The Fat Man hosts the annual Texas Interactive Music Conference and BBQ (Project BBQ), the computer/music industry's most prestigious and influential conference. His current project, GamePlayMusic, is aimed at redefining the business and creative models of music for games, to benefit users, developers, and musicians alike.
Overlooked Heros :
Marvin Glass, inventor: Mr. Glass started in 1949, his first inventions were a pocket theater, Yakity-Yak teeth, and a little chicken you pushed down and it laid a gumball. Remember that one? Joe Bonomo, philosopher: In a world full of blowhards and phony baloneys, Joe Bonomo was an everyman evangelist of joy, power, truth and all things noisy and smelly and exciting.

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Carnival of the Penguins: This is the first game music I did, for the 1983 Intellivision game Thin Ice. The tune was 10 seconds long, commissioned by the programmer (my brother's college roommate), Dave Warhol (now Realtime Associates). Recently, the producer of that game, (now Intellivision Lives' Keith Robinson) won a Golden Ticket to come and visit my studio and get a free tune. For his prize, he chose to have me do a surf update of the Thin Ice theme, presented here in full.[MP3]

Swan Lake from Loom: The arrangements of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake for Lucas Arts' Loom put game music as an art on the map. It was producer Brian Moriarty's idea to use Swan Lake. I merely learned and implemented the dynamics and tempos from a Seiji Ozawa performance of Swan Lake--but evidently before Loom, nobody had ever cared enough about game music to use dynamics and tempos before, so all of a sudden we had something emotionally powerful on our hands. [MP3]

Wing Commander Fanfare: Team Fat's music for Wing Commander changed game music forever. This is a peice of Dave Govett's famous fanfare. [MP3]

Wing Commander Bonus Track: We'll be releasing the music from Wing Commander I soon on CD. Here's a bonus track--the original theme as a surf tune, played live at the CES show by Team Fat.[MP3]

Son of MULE: I probably shouldn't post this. Here's an arrangement of the theme to SON of MULE, based on the original MULE melody. There was a rumor that the late Danielle Barry nearly finished work on a sequel to the classic MULE, to run on a Sega Genesis. The legend is true, we did the music, and I have a cartridge. A fan site: http://www.eidolons-inn.de/mule/! [MP3]

Aeila: Origin's Savage Empire needed a love theme--an ode to the primitive princess Aeila. In order to write this love theme, I needed lyrics to be going in my head, just so I could have something credible to sing while composing to make certain that the melody flowed like a proper song. When one requires only a bit of inspiration, and one is not planning on publishing the finished work, one may take liberties in the songwriters art that one may not normally take. I offer you the proof, in the "With George's Insane Lyrics" version of Aeila, featured on our "Flabby Rode" CD. [MP3]

The 7th Guest Intro: The 7th Guest was the first CD ROM game to sell more than 20,000 copies. Quite unexpectedly, it quickly sold over a million and a half, ending the joke that "Multimedia is the Zero Billion Dollar Industry." The developers accepted my bizarre suggestion of putting 20 minutes of "CD music" on the disk as a bonus. But the technology wasn't understood well. A week before release, Virgin nearly cancelled all redbook audio from the game because they couldn't figure out how to burn it. Also, T7G was the first General MIDI game, which caused some trouble when it turned out that General MIDI was not a
complete specification. We fixed pretty effectively by implementing the Fat Labs Testing Service and working with the Midi Manufacturers Association. On the MAC, Virgin released the game in two CD's: Disk 1--the Game, Disk 2--the Music. [MP3]

7th Guest Game Balance Mix: Now we get into trouble. I confess, I'm getting into repetitive beat dance music for my own head, but I haven't published any. Here's a dance version I completed 10 minutes ago of the above song.[MP3]

Voices of Dispair: Orchestral theme music for Sony/989/Verant's online tank game Tanarus. It's a good tune, not often heard.. [MP3]

Dangerous When Shaken: From Pajama Sam III. When Humongous asked me to make "kind of rumbly" music for some soda cans who are pogo dancing in a stomach, holding an old lady apple hostage by keeping her crowd surfing, I probably should have run like hell. But instead of doing the smart thing, I ran towards it and tried to create even more backstory. Why are they dancing? Why is there a hostage? Because it is a Revolution!! Because they are college students who are going through their pseudo-communism phase. This song's lyrics explain the revolution in terms of an extended metaphor that relates burping to social uprising.. [MP3]

Metal Chicken Suit: If they had used it in the game, "Metal Chicken Suit" might have made Cyberstrike II stand out a little more from the other Mech games, don't you think? Bad Fat Man. Just write the music.[MP3]