Rebecca Heineman
| Rebecca Ann Heineman | ||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||
Rebecca Heineman (born as William Salvador Heineman) is an American video game designer and programmer. She was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California. In 1980, she was a National Space Invaders Champion, which increased her interest in video games even more. Some of Heineman's best known works include The Bard's Tale III and Out of this World (SNES), and has single-handedly programmed many games. In 1983, Heineman co-founded Interplay Productions. In 1995, she also co-founded Logicware. In 1999, Heineman founded her own video game development studio Contraband Entertainment, which was sold to Olde Sküül in 2013. In total, Heineman has programmed over 200 video game titles.
Heineman was married to artist and designer Jennell Jaquays (born as Paul Jaquays), for whose sudden and costly disease Heineman started a GoFundMe campaign on October 20, 2023. They both lived in Heath, Texas, and co-founded a video game company, Olde Sküül. Sadly, Jaquays passed away on January 10, 2024.
While Heineman has not actually composed video game music, she has programmed sound drivers for various consoles.
Contents
Audio Development
3DO
On Doom (3DO), Heineman didn't have time to port the music engine (originally coded for the Atari Jaguar) over to the 3DO, and so had Randy Scott create pre-recorded versions of the game's soundtrack, with Heineman writing a simple routine that called the music playback functions in the console's firmware in order to play the music files.
Game Boy
Interplay hired George Sanger to do the music for the game Track Meet (GB). Sanger wrote MIDI files in Performer for the Macintosh, which was then given to Heineman. She coded the music into the game using her sound driver she wrote in the Game Boy's modded Z80 assembly language on an Apple IIGS.
Her sound driver was used in one other game: Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.
NES
Heineman's NES sound engine was only used by Scott La Rocca. He would write MIDI files which were then given to Heineman to convert into her sound driver. The only two games to use her sound driver were Trog! and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.
SNES
Heineman programmed two different sound drivers for the SNES. The first one was for Interplay and was used in RPM: Radical Psycho Machine Racing only. She programmed it in 65C816 assembly language, and wrote a utility to convert MIDI files. It is unknown where the instrument samples are from.
Heineman programmed a second sound driver for id Software for use with Wolfenstein 3D (SNES). The source code credits both Heineman and John Carmack, though Carmack stated that Heineman programmed the driver. The instruments were taken from an Ensoniq SQ-1 keyboard. The driver was subsequently used in Super Noah's Ark 3D (SNES), as well as all the other game engine tools used for the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D. The source code for this sound engine was released when Heineman released the source code to Super Noah's Ark 3D.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991-10-?? | Trog! (NES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-11-?? | RPM: Radical Psycho Machine Racing (SNES) (Ｒ．Ｐ．Ｍ．レーシング) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-??-?? | Track Meet (GB) (トラックミート めざせ！バルセロナ) | Audio Programming | |
| 1992-02-?? | Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (NES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1992-??-?? | Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (GB) | Sound Driver | |
| 1994-02-10 | Wolfenstein 3D (SNES) (ウルフェンシュタイン３Ｄ) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1994-??-?? | Super Noah's Ark 3D (SNES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1996-04-26 | Doom (3DO) (ドゥーム) | |
Programming/Sound Driver |
Picture Gallery
Her personal website.
Links
- mobygames.com/person/343/rebecca-ann-heineman/ - MobyGames.
- facebook.com/burgerbecky - Facebook.
- linkedin.com/in/burgerbecky - LinkedIn.
- twitter.com/burgerbecky - Twitter.
- youtube.com/@RebeccaHeineman - YouTube.
- youtube.com/watch?v=rBbIil2HPSU - Heineman talks about the development of Doom (3DO) - YouTube.
