Making Music! - Sitting Down with Prison City's Composer!
Get an insight into how Prison City's soundtrack came to be and how its composer came across the project!
[h3]1. Tell us who you are, how long you've been in the industry, and what work you've done in the past.[/h3]
Matt: Hi, I'm Matt Creamer, I've been in this industry for about 12 years now. I think I started in 2012 with Retro City Rampage. It was actually the first game I ever worked on. Believe it or not, I was making chiptunes, which are like NES Nintendo-flavored music just as a hobby for a long time, and I got a little bit of a following on the internet for it. And it was actually on my MySpace page that the developer for Retro City Rampage contacted me and said, "You know, we're wondering if you'd like to work on this game," which was like an NES homage to Grand Theft Auto.
From there, it's moved to absolutely everything! I didn't realize I wanted to write other types of music until Mass Effect I came out, and I'm like, "That is it for me. I love synth music. I love--I want to make stuff that's not just chiptunes." And that was right around the time while I was at school I got the contact to do Retro City Rampage.
[h3]2. How did you get involved with scoring Prison City?[/h3]
Matt: So, I actually went through this big phase where I was on Twitter, and I would scroll down and look at any project that I thought looked cool. I would make a big spreadsheet of what their contact was, what their Twitter was, what their webpage was, and I actually just cold called dozens and dozens of developers for projects that I thought looked cool. And so Programancer was definitely one. It wasn't until many years later that he was working on a Game Jam for Prison City, and he asked me if I wanted to work on it. So I worked on this Game Jam for him; it was only like a day's worth of work or something, but it was a whole day written off, and I wrote as much as I could. So, I ended up giving him a lot of tunes for it and some of them actually made it in the official game, as well.
But yeah, something about it--I liked the way it looked, obviously. Prison City looked so cool. It's like Shatterhand and Power Blade, and Ninja Gaiden even. It's like all my favorite NES games and I was like, "I got to work on this because I've worked on NES before," and a lot of people sometimes describe my music as like Capcom meets Konami, but this was a game where I'm like, "I know what this game should sound like. I know it should sound like this," so it was not hard for me to dive all the way in on this one.
[h3]3. How did you find the sound of Prison City? Were there any specific influences?[/h3]
Matt: At this point, I've been listening to video game music more than I've listened to real music. All of those influences just come in and sometimes, as a creative, you have a little tool kit that you kind of dip into whenever you're in a jam. So, as a person that just listens to so much video game music, all of my toolkits are based on, like, this Freddy Krueger-style amalgamation of all the little tips I've learned now. I'll write a lick in a game, and then I'll think, "Oh, that's totally ripping off, you know, Mega Man 3 or something," and then when I go back and listen to Mega Man 3, I'm like, "It was nothing like it. It truly has taken on a life of its own."
We'll be continuing our sit-down with Matt next week!
You can listen to Prison City's soundtrack both separately and in the game--both available NOW!
Follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/retroware
[h3]1. Tell us who you are, how long you've been in the industry, and what work you've done in the past.[/h3]
Matt: Hi, I'm Matt Creamer, I've been in this industry for about 12 years now. I think I started in 2012 with Retro City Rampage. It was actually the first game I ever worked on. Believe it or not, I was making chiptunes, which are like NES Nintendo-flavored music just as a hobby for a long time, and I got a little bit of a following on the internet for it. And it was actually on my MySpace page that the developer for Retro City Rampage contacted me and said, "You know, we're wondering if you'd like to work on this game," which was like an NES homage to Grand Theft Auto.
From there, it's moved to absolutely everything! I didn't realize I wanted to write other types of music until Mass Effect I came out, and I'm like, "That is it for me. I love synth music. I love--I want to make stuff that's not just chiptunes." And that was right around the time while I was at school I got the contact to do Retro City Rampage.
[h3]2. How did you get involved with scoring Prison City?[/h3]
Matt: So, I actually went through this big phase where I was on Twitter, and I would scroll down and look at any project that I thought looked cool. I would make a big spreadsheet of what their contact was, what their Twitter was, what their webpage was, and I actually just cold called dozens and dozens of developers for projects that I thought looked cool. And so Programancer was definitely one. It wasn't until many years later that he was working on a Game Jam for Prison City, and he asked me if I wanted to work on it. So I worked on this Game Jam for him; it was only like a day's worth of work or something, but it was a whole day written off, and I wrote as much as I could. So, I ended up giving him a lot of tunes for it and some of them actually made it in the official game, as well.
But yeah, something about it--I liked the way it looked, obviously. Prison City looked so cool. It's like Shatterhand and Power Blade, and Ninja Gaiden even. It's like all my favorite NES games and I was like, "I got to work on this because I've worked on NES before," and a lot of people sometimes describe my music as like Capcom meets Konami, but this was a game where I'm like, "I know what this game should sound like. I know it should sound like this," so it was not hard for me to dive all the way in on this one.
[h3]3. How did you find the sound of Prison City? Were there any specific influences?[/h3]
Matt: At this point, I've been listening to video game music more than I've listened to real music. All of those influences just come in and sometimes, as a creative, you have a little tool kit that you kind of dip into whenever you're in a jam. So, as a person that just listens to so much video game music, all of my toolkits are based on, like, this Freddy Krueger-style amalgamation of all the little tips I've learned now. I'll write a lick in a game, and then I'll think, "Oh, that's totally ripping off, you know, Mega Man 3 or something," and then when I go back and listen to Mega Man 3, I'm like, "It was nothing like it. It truly has taken on a life of its own."
We'll be continuing our sit-down with Matt next week!
You can listen to Prison City's soundtrack both separately and in the game--both available NOW!
Follow Retroware's publisher page to stay up-to-date on all our games, news, and more!
https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/retroware