Nick Eastridge
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Nick Eastridge is a American computer programmer. He developed several games for Mindscape and Majesco through his company Eastridge Technology. Though Nick received numerous music credits, he wasn't a composer and only knew sound implementation and programming. Nick single-handedly developed several games for Mindscape for the NES and Game Boy, the first games being the Game Boy and NES adaptations of Paperboy. Because Nick wasn't a composer, he outsourced music to local musicians. Unfortunately, he was left uncredited in most games he worked on.
Shortly before retiring from working on video games, he programmed games for Majesco Games for a short time under the name "Ned Ludd", as verified by his former co-worker Scott Marshall.
Contents
Music Development
GB
Nick programmed a sound driver using the Game Boy's modified Z80. He wrote the music in assembly.
For WWF King of the Ring, Nick reprogrammed his sound driver that he used at Gray Matter and Mindscape.
GEN
Nick programmed his own sound driver which utilized both the Genesis' Z80 and 68000 processor. He then created a program to convert MIDI files to his Genesis sound driver. The only Genesis game to use his sound driver was Wayne's World. It is unclear what the driver is, but it was possibly a variation on the GEMS sound driver used by Sega themselves.
NES
Nick programmed a sound driver in 6502 assembly language. The music was entered in a custom MML consisting of hexadecimal values for note duration and pitch. According to Rich Shemaria, Nick would send him the hexadecimal/numeric values for the note pitches and lengths, and while he (Rich) wrote the sheet music sketches, he'd write down the hexadecimal values alongside the notation. He would then hand over the sheet music to Nick, who would code the music into his sound engine. His music style sounds similar to Masaaki Kikuta.
For Dirty Harry, the game's two composers Steven Samler and Elliott Delman wrote MIDI files in Performer for the Macintosh. The MIDIs were then transferred to Nick, who coded them into his sound driver by hand. Peter Stone and Mark Knight also used the same methods, the only difference being the programs used to create the MIDIs (Dr. T's KCS for the Atari ST for Peter, and Cubase for the Atari ST for Mark). These were also coded into Nick's sound engine by hand.
For the Mindscape version of Days of Thunder, Chris Oberth made modifications to Eastridge's sound driver. In particular, he edited the pitch table, removing the double flats and sharps. This particular version of the driver was also used in the aforementioned Dirty Harry.
Nick later wrote a utility that could convert MIDI files to his sound driver. This can be heard in games such as Paperboy 2 and WWF King of the Ring.
SNES
Nick created a MIDI conversion tool, and composers' MIDI files were converted to his sound driver. His instrument samples were taken from different keyboards, including a Korg M1 for the slap bass. The instruments may have been provided by Sony. Because of the way his music engine was programmed, SPC files for games using his sound engine are undumpable. However, KungFuFurby has managed to reverse engineer the sound engine to make SPC dumps possible, and has dumped the SPC files for all games.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1987-??-?? | Dark Castle (DOS) | Arranger? | |
| 1987-??-?? | Infiltrator II (A2) | Arranger? | |
| 1987-??-?? | Infiltrator II (DOS) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-??-?? | Gauntlet (A2) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-??-?? | Gauntlet (A2GS) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-??-?? | Gauntlet (DOS) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-??-?? | Paperboy (A2) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-??-?? | Paperboy (A2GS) | Arranger? | |
| 1988-12-?? | Paperboy (NES) (ペーパーボーイ) | |
Arranged Hal Canon's music. |
| 1989-??-?? | Captain Blood (A2GS) | Arranger? | |
| 1989-??-?? | Gauntlet II (DOS) | Arranger? | |
| 1989-??-?? | Super Pac-Man (DOS) | Arranger? | |
| 1989-12-?? | Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (A2) | Arranger? | |
| 1990-01-?? | Infiltrator (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-06-?? | The Last Starfighter (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-07-?? | Mad Max (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-07-?? | Paperboy (GB) | Arranged Hal Canon's music. | |
| 1990-09-?? | Gauntlet II (NES) | |
Arranged Hal Canon's music. |
| 1990-09-?? | M.U.L.E. (NES) | |
Arranged Roy Glover's music. |
| 1990-10-?? | Orb•3D (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1990-12-?? | Dirty Harry (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1991-??-?? | Paperboy 2 (DOS) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1991-02-?? | Conan (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1991-05-?? | Marble Madness (GB) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1991-07-?? | Klax (GB) | Sound Driver? | |
| 1991-09-?? | Captain Planet and the Planeteers (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1991-09-?? | Gauntlet II (GB) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-09-?? | The Chessmaster (SNES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-11-?? | Paperboy 2 (SNES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1992-??-?? | Pit-Fighter (GB) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1992-03-?? | Pit-Fighter (SNES) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1992-04-?? | Paperboy 2 (GB) | Sound Driver | |
| 1992-04-?? | Paperboy 2 (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1992-10-?? | James Bond Jr. (SNES) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1992-10-?? | Miner 2049er (GB) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1993-??-?? | The Incredible Crash Dummies (SNES) (クラッシュ・ダミー スリック坊やの大挑戦) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1993-??-?? | The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! (SNES) | |
Arranger?/Sound Driver |
| 1993-??-?? | The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! (GB) | |
Arranger?/Sound Driver |
| 1993-02-18 | Wayne's World (GEN) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1993-04-?? | The Terminator (SNES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1993-04-?? | Wayne's World (SNES) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1993-06-?? | The Great Waldo Search (SNES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1993-09-?? | Battleship (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1993-09-?? | WWF King of the Ring (GB) (キングオブリング) | ||
| 1993-11-?? | Steel Talons (SNES) | Arranger?/Sound Driver | |
| 1993-11-?? | WWF King of the Ring (NES) | ||
| 1994-05-?? | Relief Pitcher (SNES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1999-12-?? | Pong: The Next Level (GBC) | Sound Driver | |
| 1999-??-?? | Tonka Raceway (GBC) | Sound Driver | |
| 2000-09-23 | Frogger II: Swampy's Revenge (GBC) | Sound Driver | |
| 2000-09-25 | Galaga: Destination Earth (GBC) | Sound Driver | |
| 2000-??-?? | Nicktoons Racing (GBC) | Sound Driver | |
| 2001-06-10 | Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure (GBA) | ||
| 2003-??-?? | Operation Armored Liberty (GBA) | ||
| Unreleased | Wing Commander: USA Version (AMI) | Arranger? | |
| Unreleased | Days of Thunder: Mindscape (NES) | |
Sound Driver |
Aliases
In WWF: King of the Ring and Pong: The Next Level, he was credited as "Eastridge Technology", although when he was at Majesco, he was credited as "Ned Ludd". This was the case for Galaga: Destination Earth for GBC and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for GBA.
Image Gallery
Linkedin.
U.S.1; Issue 1991-10-09.
Links
(The link to the Eastridge Technology website has been removed. For more information, see the Discussion page.)
