Mike Riedel
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Mike Riedel is an American game programmer who was the founder of Riedel Software Productions in 1986. Riedel started his work on games while attending the Rochester Institute of Technology. Later in 1982, he started work for Atari and ported their arcade game Robotron 2084 to the 2600, a daunting task. One of the first games he developed was Spy vs. Spy for the Commodore 64, which is probably his most popular work. Riedel's later games were based on television shows. On the NES, his company only made four games; two of them for Sesame Street, and the other two based on game shows. He designed the sound driver for some of their games. His NES games were revolutionary for the time in that they had very good digitized sound, as well as being the first NES games to feature voice acting, thanks in part to ESS. Riedel later licensed his NES sound driver to Radiance Software.
Ever since March 2008, Mike has been working for OpenText as a software development manager.
Music Development
NES
Mike wrote a sound driver for the NES. He also wrote a tool that converted MIDI files to his sound driver. He loaned his sound driver to Radiance Software for The Great Waldo Search and Rollerblade Racer and The Software Toolworks for The Chessmaster. According to Mike, the reason Big Bird's Hide and Speak uses only two instruments is due to all the digitized speech, which required him to scale down the driver for cartridge space.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984-??-?? | Spy Vs Spy (C64) | |
Arranger and programmer |
| 1990-01-?? | The Chessmaster (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-03-?? | Win, Lose Or Draw (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-05-?? | MTV: Remote Control (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-10-?? | Big Bird's Hide and Speak (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1992-02-?? | Sesame Street: Countdown (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1992-12-?? | The Great Waldo Search (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1993-02-?? | Rollerblade Racer (NES) | Sound Driver |
Picture Gallery
Staff photo from Win Lose or Draw (NES); Right.
Staff photo from MTV: Remote Control (NES); Left.
LinkedIn profile picture.
