Sculptured Software
| Sculptured Software, Inc. | |
 |
|
| Founded | 1984-??-?? |
| Closed | 1995-10-09 |
| Headquarters | 3269 S. Main St. Suite 270 Salt Lake City, UT 84115 |
Sculptured Software was an American game developer founded by Bryan Brandenburg, George Meteos, and Peter Adams. The company was known mostly for porting arcade games to home consoles. One for example is Pac-Mania. In the NES days, Paul Webb was the only sound designer for Sculptured Software. Later, Neuromantic Productions and other composers worked there with Webb. Neuromantic Productions would usually port Webb's Nintendo music to Sega consoles. Due to the success of the company, in October 1995, Acclaim bought out the company and renamed it to Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City, but closed down a few years later in December 2002 due to Acclaim closing its doors. Some staff moved on to Saffire.
In the early '90s, Active Enterprises sent their developers over to Sculptured Software so they could use their official Nintendo development systems to make NES games.
Contents
Games
(Note: Sculptured Software did not publish games.)
Music Development
Amiga
This section includes games for Arcadia, a coin-op platform based on the Amiga 500.
The following games use the same driver:
- Aaargh! (AMI)
- Aaargh! (ARC)
- Destroyer (AMI)
- Global Control Program (ARC) (the only game out of these six with no known relation to Sculptured)
- Ninja Mission (AMI) (arranged by Brad Dahl)
- Ninja Mission (ARC)
Magic Johnson's Fast Break (ARC) a.k.a. Magic Johnson's Basketball (AMI) uses Sonix.
NES
Paul Webb used his Ensoniq EPS sampler to sample the sounds of the NES, so he could get a better idea on how to make music on it. Ken Moore programmed Sculptured Software's sound driver, with supervision by Webb. The music then had to be painstakingly entered in 6502 assembly machine code.
Genesis
The company used GEMS, but Paul Webb used a custom sound engine for Pac-Mania. Because of how much time has passed, Paul Webb does not remember who programmed the sound driver, though it could have been the game's programmer Arti Haroutunian.
Most of Sculptured's Genesis games were composed by Neuromantic Productions, and if the game was a port of a SNES game, Dean Morrell would usually (but not always) arrange the music.
SNES
Paul Webb wrote some pieces of software. One of these was BMUS (the B meaning Berlioz), which was used to create music and sound effects. It was a very tedious program to use, according to some of the audio staff that used it. Another program was Wolfgang which sampled the instruments. He would then convert MIDI files to Sculptured's sound driver. Three versions of the driver are known to exist: The first by David Ross and Bill Williams; the second by Ross, Steve Aguirre and Ricky Loynd, and the third by Aguirre.
BMus was licensed to several different developers including Mindscape, and Synergistic Software.
The documentation for it was released by Rob Schmuck on 2023-06-04 and announced on Twitter.
Audio Personnel
These are the composers that worked at Sculptured Software:
- Brad Dahl arranged Ninja Mission in 1987
- Bob Dayley (Sound effect designer from 1993-1998)
- Dan Forden (Contractor from Midway Games)
- Dean Morrell (In-house composer from 1992-1998)
- George Sanger (Contractor; scored on the Tecmo NBA Basketball series.)
- James Hebdon (In-house composer from 1994-1998)
- Kingsley Thurber (Main in-house composer from 1992-1995)
- Mark Ganus (Main in-house composer from 1992-1996)
- Neuromantic Productions (Contractor)
- Paul Webb (Lead/main in-house composer from 1987-1998)
- Roy Wilkins (In-house composer from 1995-1998)
- Sam Powell (In-house composer? from 1992-1994)
Picture Gallery
1985-1993
1993
1994-1995
1995-1998
Links
- mobygames.com/company/676/acclaim-studios-salt-lake-city/ - MobyGames.
- gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/72582-sculptured-software - GameFAQs on Sculptured.
- gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/80817-acclaim-studios-salt-lake-city - GameFAQs on Acclaim.
