Mario Gonzalez
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Mario Gonzalez is an American composer who was born in Key West, Florida on November 8th, 1969. At age five, Gonzalez became interested in music due to receiving an electric organ for Christmas.
From 1988-1990, Gonzalez attended the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale for a degree in music and video production. In 1991, he was working as an audio engineer in a Miami recording studio and met with Active Enterprises who hired Gonzalez and a couple of his friends to design and develop Action 52 (NES). Gonzalez did the initial design for the majority of the games, and composed their music. All 52 of the games were finished in 3 months by order of Active Enterprises. Gonzalez then worked on Cheetahmen II (NES) and ported Action 52 to the Sega Genesis. After that, Active Enterprises went out of business.
Gonzalez worked at Univision Network from 2001 to 2002. In 2011, Gonzalez was hired by indie game developer CNG Studios where he continues to work both as a composer and a game designer and programmer. He composed the music and sound effects for every game the released after 2011.
Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer both are inspirations to Gonzalez, and he looks forward to the day when one of his songs is performed by a full orchestra, rather than just in this gag video.
Gonzalez currently lives in Miramar, Florida. He married in 1996 and has two children.
Audio Development
NES
Gonzalez said this when asked about developing the music for Action 52/Cheetahmen II:
Gonzalez used Ken Moore's sound driver from Sculptured Software. According to an interview, Gonzalez said that he and the Active Enterprises team were taken to Sculptured Software so they could use their official Nintendo development tools for the game. While Gonzalez did not remember the name of the developer they went to, he said they were in Salt Lake City, Utah and were developing Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (NES) when Active was brought to their development studio. This, along with the sound driver (which was reverse engineered and the source code released) proves it was in fact Sculptured Software.
Action 52 consists of various songs that are both original and also taken from The Music Studio for the Atari ST and Amiga. According to Gonzalez, as various developers of the game quit the company, he had more and more responsibility to finish the game within the given time restraints, so he did not have time to compose anymore original songs, and as a result, arranged music from The Music Studio, all of which were composed by Ed Bogas.
For Cheetahmen II, Gonzalez was not involved with its development, but his music was used.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991-??-?? | Action 52 (NES) | Features original music by Gonzalez and arranged music by Ed Bogas. | |
| 1992-??-?? | Cheetahmen II (NES) | ||
| 2014-??-?? (Unreleased) | Rebirth (W32) |
Picture Gallery
The Action 52 team, circa 1991. Gonzalez is in the center with the black T-shirt.
Working at Univision Network, May 2001.
From his Facebook page, circa 2009.
Links
- cngstudios.com - Official.
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,106051/ - MobyGames.
- linkedin.com/pub/mario-gonzalez/69/52/ab3 - LinkedIn.
- cheetahmengames.com/MYQUESTISOVER.html - Interview of Action 52 development.
