Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1538144
M OT I O N P I CTU R E S O U N D E D I TO R S 113 together. So, Razorback came out, and I was like, "This is great, let's try this in the game." I approached Peter and we made it work for this game. The Epic Games team was really great. They trusted me with whatever the heck needed to go in there. Cliff, you did have the specific request for something along the lines of Propellerheads' "Spybreak!" which was used in The Matrix during the lobby shootout scene. You were just like, "I want a song that sounds like this." So, I made "Go Down," and then Michiel made "Bot Pack #9." We both presented those at around the same time. Mine sounded roughly like "Spybreak!" Michiel's sounded almost like "Spybreak!" And Cliff, that's when you were like, "We're gonna get sued." We didn't, nobody came at us. I mean, we wrote all these tracks from scratch. CB: We went and saw The Matrix, and then I encouraged Dave Ewing to make a map that was low gravity, that was basically like skyscrapers. The idea was to simulate the scene where Neo learns how to do the jump. The Matrix really defined an era. AB: One of the best things about Unreal and UT is that we pretty much had creative reign. Cliff would come in and say, "Okay, we've got this specific scene with this specific thing, and this is what I want for it." And the reference would be great. We'd just get fired up. We would sometimes see Roger Dean or Rodney Matthews' concept art and get inspired by that. We'd grab our samples—people took anything from anywhere at that point. Nobody had issues with copyright infringement, and we didn't rip whole sections of songs. We would just be like, "This bass drum from this released song is isolated, and it sounds great. I'm just gonna use it." MVDB: Yeah, I didn't use any live recordings. I did a keyboard melody for the Propellerheads-like track, but that's the only recording I did myself. The rest was just painstakingly listening to soundtracks, trying to find and isolate that single string violin or French horn or the breakbeat that needed to be without any other instrument to use. It was painstaking going through my entire CD collection, just trying to find that one thing. CB: So much of the music would alternate, especially in Unreal, between action and mystery. That sense of wonder, which you guys really tapped into quite well. Sometimes I'll just go up and look up old school video game music, because I remember when I was a kid, I'd sit there and record Nintendo music, like Rygar. Oh my god, yes. In Castlevania. AB: And Zanac? CB: Oh yeah, greatest shooter ever. I just played on my cassette tape, just because I love all the old school stuff, the chiptune stuff. EM: Michiel, how did you and Alex go about splitting up your music responsibilities for this game? MVDB: I was working on UT remotely in the Netherlands, so I was nowhere near the entire development process. Alex just knew, "You're going to do these, and I'm going to do these." Not all the maps were predetermined—there were a bunch of people making maps and we had no idea what the end result Unreal Tournament rocket launcher gameplay Unreal Tournament pulse gun gameplay