Tiertex

Tiertex

Founded	1987
Headquarters	Manchester, England
Website	http://www.tiertex.com
Other Names	Tiertex Ltd. Tiertex Design Studios

Tiertex (also known as Tiertex Design Studios) was an English video game developer, founded in 1987 by Donald Campbell and John Prince. They were known for converting arcade games to home consoles and computers, sports games, and movie-based video games. Until around the time of their SNES and Game Boy Color development, the company rarely ever put credits in their games, but it is unknown why. However, it could be due to their rushed, therefore poor conversions.

Tiertex continued to develop games up to the sixth generation of video games. Because they struggled to keep up with the seventh generation, they switched to developing USB development boards and displays for industrial purposes.

The company closed its doors on August 5, 2021.

Games

Music Development

Commodore 64

Mark Tait programmed his own sound driver and wrote the music in assembler. He originally wrote demos, which were picked up by various developers as a result. Tiertex hired Tait through his demos to do the music to 1943 (C64), after which he was offered and accepted a full-time job with the studio.

Since 2008, HVSC credits four C64 game soundtracks to John Hancock. Unfortunately, they did not mention sources. Mercs (C64) is in Tait's driver, the other three are in an unknown driver.

Game Boy

MIDI files were converted to Donald Campbell's sound driver. Mark Ortiz was the only composer for their Game Boy games.

Listening to Ortiz's original MIDI files, either intentional or by error, the Game Boy sound engine plays the converted MIDI files a half-step higher.

Game Gear/Sega Master System

The music was programmed in assembly on a sound driver programmed by Donald Campbell. Most of these games lack credits, but Shaq Fu credits one of the founders, John Prince, as the game's sound designer.