Paul Norman
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Paul Norman is an American composer and programmer.
Norman grew up listening to Tchaikovsky, Chopin, other classical music, and later film soundtracks, especially to historical dramas from the 1950s and 1960s. His favorite composers are Miklós Rózsa and Hans Zimmer.
At age 13, he taught himself to play the guitar and started as a professional musician and composer in 1970, playing the lead guitar in several groups, studio gigs and opening acts.
In summer 1982, when disco had made work harder to find, he saw the Commodore VIC-20 in a music store and, as a life-long sci-fi fan, bought it. He taught himself BASIC, wrote a game called Psychopants and an Asteroids clone, and answered a newspaper advertisement for videogame programmers from a small shop called Synchro. He got the job, was given a Commodore 64 on his first day and was told to write a bow and arrow game in order to learn 6510 machine language. Before the game was finished, Synchro was bought by Cosmi. Norman worked with Cosmi until 1989.
Music Development
Commodore 64
Norman composed songs on his guitar and typed the notes in hex using Hexmon. For each sound effect, Norman wrote code in machine language and tweaked it until he heard something he liked.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984-??-?? | Aztec Challenge (C64) | ||
| 1984-??-?? | Caverns of Khafka (C64) | ||
| 1984-??-?? | Forbidden Forest (C64) | ||
| 1984-??-?? | Slinky (C64) | ||
| 1985-??-?? | Super Huey (C64) | ||
| 1985-??-?? | The Trivia Monster (C64) | ||
| 1986-??-?? | Beyond the Forbidden Forest (C64) | ||
| 1987-??-?? | Chernobyl (C64) | ||
| 1992-??-?? | Murder Makes Strange Deadfellows (DOS) |
Picture Gallery
Caricature from Murder Makes Strange Deadfellows (DOS).
1992, posted by himself on MobyGames.
Taken for composers.c64.org in 2000.
C64.COM, 2009.
Links
- digittarius.com - Official.
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,25824/ - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Norman_(game_designer) - Wikipedia.
- c64.com/interviews/norman.html - Interview from May 13, 2009.
- csdb.dk/release/?id=97680 - C64 Disk Interview from January 31, 2011.
- retrogamer.net/retro_games80/the-making-of-the-forbidden-forest/ - Interview from April 23, 2014.
