Antony Crowther

Antony Crowther

Born 1965-05-10 Birth Place Sheffield, England Nationality English   Aliases Tony Crowther WEMUSIC THE RETURN Anthony Crowther

Antony Crowther is an English programmer and musician. When he was 16, a friend of his father's gave him a Commodore PET 4032. Crowther figured out how to program on it and programmed Mastermind for it, a popular game at the time. Later, he bought a Commodore VIC-20 and ended up programming a game similar to Galaxian. He took the game to Superior Systems. They said they were not interested in the game, but were interested in Crowther's programming skills, so they lent him a Commodore 64. He then created his first commercial game Lunar Rescue.

Crowther almost attended an art college, but when he worked at Alligata Software, he never looked back.

Later, he ended up meeting Ben Daglish in school. Crowther created the game Percy the Potty Pigeon (C64) and he needed help with the death music, so he had Daglish help him with that. They were astonished by the sound quality and Crowther later started doing video game music himself. In 1985, he founded Wizard Development Ltd. In spring 1986, he and Daglish started We M.U.S.I.C. (We Make Use of Sound In Computers). In spring 1987, Crowther quit to focus on game programming again.

Music Development

Commodore 64

Crowther developed a compiler, one version of which he released in March 1986 as Music Master. In 1988, he got a Commodore Sampler and added samples.

Captain Planet

Crowther said this about the music for the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST versions of Captain Planet:

“

I think I wrote the music player (many years ago.)

It may have been based on a tracker player. As we used a known tracker editor to write it. I think the samples were done by me and Ben, using a Mike and some software on Amiga. Can’t remember the name.

I wrote the ST player, can’t remember any stand out moments except it wasn’t as good as the Amiga.

„

Gameography

Released	Title	Sample	Notes
1983-??-??	Bug Blaster (C64)
1983-??-??	Killerwatt (C64)
1984-0?-??	Percy the Potty Pigeon (C64)
1984-??-??	Gryphon (C64)
1984-??-??	Loco (C64)
1984-??-??	Wanted! Monty Mole (C64)
1985-??-??	A View to a Kill: The Computer Game (C64)
1985-??-??	A View to a Kill: The Computer Game (ZXS)
1985-??-??	Black Thunder (C64)
1985-??-??	Blagger Goes to Hollywood (C64)
1985-??-??	Suicide Express (C64)
1985-??-??	William Wobbler (C64)
1986-??-??	Ark Pandora (C64)		Sound Effects
1986-??-??	Challenge of the Gobots (C64)
1986-??-??	Trap (C64)
1987-??-??	Battle Droidz (ZXS)
1987-??-??	Deathscape (C64)		Sound FX
1987-??-??	Dogfight 2187 (C64)		Sound FX
1987-??-??	Kettle (C64)
1987-??-??	Killer-Ring (C64)
1987-??-??	Zig-Zag (C64)
1990-??-??	Captive (AMI)
1990-??-??	Captive (AST)
1991-??-??	Captain Planet and the Planeteers (AMI)		With Ben Daglish.
1991-??-??	Captain Planet and the Planeteers (AST)		With Ben Daglish.
1993-??-??	Liberation: Captive II (CD32)		Sound Effects
1994-12-31	Liberation: Captive II (AMI)		Sound Effects
1996-??-??	Normality (DOS)		Audio Programming
1998-??-??	N2O Nitrous Oxide (PS1)		Sound FX

Picture Gallery

• 

  captive.atari.org

• 

  Linkedin.

Links

• mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,97124/ - MobyGames.
• facebook.com/antony.crowther - Facebook.
• linkedin.com/in/antony-crowther-3aba2a41/ - Linkedin.
• youtube.com/watch?v=SufkUYgwvG4 - Video Interview.
• www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/displaypage.pl?issue=016&page=040&magazine=zzap - Group Interview with Rob Hubbard, Daglish, Crowther and David Whittaker from summer 1986.
• web.archive.org/web/20101228160110/http://www.c64.com/audio/Ben%20Daglish%20and%20Antony%20Crowther%20%5BBack%20in%20Time%20Live%202001%20interview.mp3 - Group Audio interview with Daglish and Crowther from 2001.