Allister Brimble
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Allister Brimble is an English musician famous for his C64 and Amiga music.
Brimble started with piano lessons at age 7. For his birthday, he received a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K computer and immediately started learning BASIC from magazines. Brimble felt very confined to writing music on it because of its limited sound capabilities. He sold his Spectrum in 1986 to buy the new and improved ZX Spectrum 128 which came with Glider Rider (ZXS), scored by David Whittaker. Brimble was mesmerized by Whittaker's work and continued learning music programming on the Spectrum. Later, he got a Commodore 64 and sent some of his music demos to Elite Systems, but they rejected his music. Even worse, one of his family members died. However, he received 100 pounds from the will. With the money, Brimble sold his previous computers in order to buy a Commodore Amiga. He started using Sonix and SoundTracker. He then sent his music as public domain to 17BIT Software. This led to Brimble's music getting heard more and more. Eventually, it led him to sending a demo disk to a game publisher. Brimble began working for Codemasters in 1988 and continues to write music for them. His first soundtrack to a game was Nitro Boost Challenge. Brimble composed a huge deal of Commodore 64 and Amiga music. Allister Brimble still continues to compose music and sound for games to this day.
Brimble's favorite computer for writing music is the Commodore Amiga.
Contents
Music Development
Amiga
According to an interview, Allister stated the Amiga is his favorite platform for writing music.
Commodore 64
First, Brimble used Ariston, and later, a driver and editor written for him by his friend Michael Delaney.
Game Gear/Sega Master System
Brimble used a sound driver by Jeroen Tel and wrote the music in assembly.
Cosmic Spacehead uses a unique sound driver by Codemasters.
Game Boy
For Mortal Kombat, Brimble used a sound driver by Jeroen Tel and wrote the music in assembly.
Game Boy Color
For some reason, for most of the Game Boy Color games he worked on, Brimble went by the handle AudioArts. He also did music for Full Fat Productions who would sometimes do audio for other companies. As a result, Brimble also used the company's name as an alias.
Brimble used QuickThunder, a sound driver by Michael Delaney.
For Chicken Run, Brimble began experimenting with the sound driver. He had this to say about the process of arranging the movie’s soundtrack for the game:
In some of Chicken Run’s music, an audible whistle sound can be heard. Brimble acknowledged this, saying:
Game Boy Advance
Brimble used Michael Delaney's QuickThunder for his earlier GBA scores. For his later scores, he used ProTracker and converted the files for playback with Engine Software's sound driver by Jan-Lieuwe Koopmans and LS_Play, a sound driver by Logik State.
Genesis
Brimble used GEMS.
NES
Brimble originally wrote his music in assembly but later made a tracker program that converted his compositions to Gavin Raeburn's sound driver.
SNES
For Toy Story, Brimble used piano samples from the Kurzweil K2000, which was a really great synth at the time, providing good SNES instrument sounds. Some of the other sounds were programmed with the SNES' DSP. He borrowed David Whittaker's sound driver for his first few SNES games, before programming his own driver later on.
Brimble explained how he wrote music at Virgin Games in a comment of a dual playthrough of Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story:
For the SNES port of Troddlers, Brimble used Software Creations' sound driver.
Jakks Pacific TV Games
Brimble wrote music for the TV Games in the XM format, From there he would convert them over to unSP Assembly and make final tweaks to each song, Then they would be assembled for the final game.
Gameography
Brimble's official portfolio can be found here: https://allisterbrimble.com/works
Aliases
When Allister did the music for Game Boy games, he usually went by the moniker AudioArts. This was an alias for a group he ran with Will Davis, and Michael Delaney.
In Flinstones: Burgertime in Bedrock, he is credited as Full Fat Productions, a game development studio. It is suspected that AudioArts provided audio to Full Fat Productions, who in turn provided audio to the main developer, hence the credit to Full Fat Productions.
He also went by the moniker Gameboyaudio.com once, but because the Game Boy name belonged to Nintendo, they told him to change the name.
Picture Gallery
From remix64 interview site.
From exotica site.
From exotica site.
2016-02-15; Facebook.
Links
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,790/ - MobyGames.
- facebook.com/allister.brimble - Facebook.
- exotica.org.uk/wiki/Allister_Brimble - Amiga Gameography.
- remix64.com/interviews/interview-allister-brimble.html - Interview from June 13, 2001.
- c64.com/?type=4&id=12 - Interview from December 8, 2010.
- kultboy.com/Allister-Brimble-Interview/42/ - Interview from November 7, 2013.
- youtube.com/watch?v=r462-FSOKDc - Video Interview.
- youtube.com/watch?v=I-21xKX-8_0 - Video Interview.
