Chris Grigg
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Chris Grigg is an American composer and sound designer, best known for Maniac Mansion and several games by Epyx.
From 1983 to 1985, Grigg worked as a C64 developer at Waveform Corporation. When Waveform folded, Grigg co-founded the partnership Future Arts, which an acquainted Atari developer introduced to Lucasfilm Games. In 1987, Grigg freelanced for Electronic Arts and Epyx; after one game for Epyx, he became their music and sound director. After he left Epyx in 1991, he was a sound designer for various film studios including Pixar. He also worked for guitar amplifier manufacturer Line 6.
Grigg was also responsible for the primary sound driver for the Atari Lynx, as well as being one of the developers of GEMS.
Grigg is currently the chairman of MIDI Manufacturers Association and also works at MIPI Alliance.
Contents
Music Development
Amiga
Chris used Sonix. For Maniac Mansion, he used the SCUMM sound engine. For Impossible Mission II, his music was converted by Novotrade's sound team.
Commodore 64
At Lucasfilm Games, Grigg co-designed and used a sound driver (programmed by Randy Farmer for Habitat) and SCUMM's music driver (itself built upon Farmer's sound driver). Grigg arranged songs using Performer on a Macintosh 512K, transferred them over MIDI to a C64 running a self-programmed converter, and pasted them into assembly source code.
On Skate or Die (C64), Grigg used someone else's driver.
At Epyx, Grigg developed SPL (sound programming language) which also supported SID's built-in filter. Grigg knew that the filter varied between chips and used it sparingly, on shakers and noise sound effects. In VICE 3.2, they are most audible with 6581 (ReSID) and a bias of around -750, though how close it is to what Grigg heard is unconfirmed.
Genesis
For Andre Agassi Tennis, Grigg used the popular GEMS, which he also helped code.
NES
Grigg did not personally work on the NES, but his works were used in a few games:
- For California Games, his music was arranged by David Wise, who painstakingly wrote the music in assembly macros in a driver written by Chris Stamper.
- For Maniac Mansion, his music was arranged by David Warhol, who wrote MIDIs in Cakewalk and converted them over to his sound driver.
- For Impossible Mission II, his music was arranged by Peter Gosztola. He also wrote MIDIs in an unknown editor and converted them over to his sound driver.
Gameography
Picture Gallery
Manual of PHM Pegasus (C64).
LinkedIn.
Links
- chrisgriggdesigns.com - Official.
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,187/ - MobyGames.
- linkedin.com/in/chrisgrigg - Linkedin.
- csdb.dk/release/?id=127895 - C64 Disk Interview from January 20, 2014.
