Peter Clarke

Peter Clarke

Born	1958
Birth Place
Nationality	British

Peter Clarke is a musician best known for scoring Commodore 64 games in 1986 and 1987. His Ocean Dries Up and Mission of Mercy (C64) were voted 38th and 94th favorite top SID in 2000.

Since 1978, Clarke plays guitar and keyboards in musical and comedy acts. He used to play with analog synthesizers and Roland TR drum machines.

In 1983, Clarke bought his first computer, a Commodore 64, to play games. He regularly visited the Blue Chip Computers store in Wigan, Lancashire, where aspiring game programmer Paul Hughes worked on weekends. Clarke later started buying music editors, but found them all lacking. Upon Hughes' recommendation, Clarke bought the brand-new Electrosound 64. Over the next weekends, he played Hughes his arrangements: first of Money, Money, Money, and then his own compositions.

Stunned, and inspired by the young We M.U.S.I.C., Hughes suggested he offer Clarke's music to developers. In this vein, they scored Repton 3 (C64) for Superior Software and Scooby Doo: Elite (C64) for Elite Systems. Coincidentally, Repton programmer Richard Kay had left Ocean Software and was co-founding Software Creations. Hughes introduced Clarke to Kay, while Hughes joined Ocean, both in Manchester. He wanted Clarke to join Ocean, too, though this was ultimately triggered by a misunderstanding around Double Take Theme.

At Ocean, Clarke worked in one room with Martin Galway. At weekends, he played in a comedy band and freelanced for competitor Software Creations. After 10 or 11 months, Clarke unsuccessfully asked Ocean to let him freelance and left Ocean. Clarke also wanted to focus more on his comedy band than video games, but didn't want to let Creations down. To everyone's luck, Tim Follin met Creations.

Since July 2011, Clarke remixes Commodore 64 music. He resides in Blackburn, Lancashire.

Audio Development

Commodore 64

Clarke used Electrosound 64, Soundmonitor and Martin Galway's driver (also for Software Creations). Hughes converted Repton 3 (C64) and Double Take (C64) to his own, faster driver.

Clarke explains:

“

For the very early tunes, (before I worked at Ocean) I used Electrosound to compose.. Paul Hughes used to tweak the 'save file'

Once I was at Ocean, I used Martin Galway's music driver.. It was written in 6502 assembly language. I gradually tweaked and rewrote MG's driver as I became more knowledgeable about assembly language.. After Ocean, when I worked 'freelance' I used a re-written version of the MG driver for games like 'Bubble Bobble' etc...

„

Gameography

Released	Title	Notes
1986-11-??	Scooby Doo: Elite (C64)
Unreleased	Mission of Mercy (C64)
1987-0?-??	Repton 3 (C64)
1987-01-??	Double Take (C64)	With Ocean Loader 2 by Martin Galway
1987-04-??	Gunstar (C64)
1987-05-??	Head Over Heels (C64)
1987-05-??	Kinetik (C64)
1987-0?-??	The Big K.O. (C64)
1987-06-??	Denarius (C64)
1987-06-??	Ocean Loaders (C64)	Ocean Loader 3.
1987-08-??	The Mystery of the Nile (C64)
1987-09-??	Tai-Pan (C64)
1987-09-2?	Bubble Bobble (C64)
1987-0?-??	Wizball (ZXS)
1987-10-??	Top Duck (C64)
1987-??-??	Tai-Pan (AST)
198?-??-??	Iron Hand (C64)