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Fans of video game music from the ’90s know Matt Furniss’ music well. He scored dozens of games for consoles like the Genesis, Master System, Playstation, and computers like the Amiga and Spectrum. As both composer and converter of game scores, Furniss has a lot of history working with soundtracks from some classic games.
Many animators of the 16-bit era had a special love for the Genesis and its user-friendly hardware. With it, they were able to make some incredibly fluid games that still look beautiful today. Mike Dietz, as the director of animation for both Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Shiny Entertainment, shares that sentiment. Dietz was involved with such classics as Disney’s Aladdin, Cool Spot and the Earthworm Jim series, and he recently chatted with us about his time with the Genesis.
Several years ago, Sega announced a Playstation 2 sequel to its VectorMan games. Video was shown, and the game seemed on track for a 2004 release. Then, it was canceled without warning, and little was heard from it again. That all changed last month when the game’s former lead production designer released some concept art, and we just knew we had to talk to him.
Full-motion video games are something maost people think of whenever the Sega CD is mentioned. Love them or hate them, they had a major impact on the fate of the add-on, and Sega invested a ton of money into their development. Among the ranks of those behind the scenes was Christopher Bankston, a senior producer at Sega who had a hand in the creation of games like Ground Zero Texas and Double Switch. Before that, he worked at Accolade on games such as Onslaught and Super Off Road.
When the Genesis launched, it lacked something its rival, the NES, enjoyed in spades: third party software. Due to Nintendo’s strict licensing agreements, companies that published on the NES were forbidden to release games on competing hardware, and this left Sega’s new machine with a big problem. Thankfully, the U.S. court system put an end to this practice, and the support slowly began to pick up. During the dry period, however, a few small companies jumped at the chance to pick up the slack left by bigger publishers like Konami and Capcom. Among them was Kaneko, which was a staunch supporter of the little black box. Sega-16 spent some Q&A time with former Kaneko VP of marketing, Ellen Fuog, and she shared her insights on what it was like to be at a small publisher at the dawn of the 16-bit era.