Gray Matter

Gray Matter

Founded	1985
Closed	1997
Headquarters	Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Other Names	Chris Gray Enterprises

Gray Matter was a Canadian video game developer founded by video game programmer Chris Gray. His brother Nick Gray did some graphics for some of their games. The company was formed in 1985 after the successful release of Boulder Dash (which Gray designed with Peter Liepa).

One of its first games they developed as "Chris Gray Enterprises" was Whirlinurd, but the company's first hit and national best seller was Infiltrator. This was followed by Infiltrator II: The Next Day, before adapting the name "Gray Matter" in late 1987 during the development of Road Raider, and Technocop. After a stint in computers with the success of Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun and The Ultimate Ride, the company branched out into developing console games with the development and release of the NES game Dirty Harry. The success led to its development of movie and TV titles, like Wayne's World and The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots!, along with original titles like B.O.B. and sports games like NHL All-Star Hockey and Super RBI Baseball.

The company later went on to make games for 32-bit systems like Phoenix 3 and Perfect Weapon, before being dissolved completely in 1997 with The Crow: City of Angels being its final title.

Games

Music Development

C64

Gray Matter had no local composer, and it is possible that Gray designed sound effects. For Infiltrator II: The Next Day, the sound was outsourced to Artech, in which Paul Butler wrote the music in assembly. For Technocop, the sound was outsourced to Gremlin Graphics, in which Ben Daglish wrote the music in assembly.

NES

Gray Matter had no in-house sound staff, and so the publisher of their NES games, Mindscape, would contract musicians. Peter Stone, Steven Samler, and Elliott Delman were among these composers. However, the company needed a sound driver, so they contracted Nick Eastridge of Eastridge Technology to use his sound driver.

SNES

The game B.O.B. (SNES) used a driver that was possibly created by Rob Hubbard, which was a variation of Kanichi-kun used by the developer Nintendo. The instruments used are taken from various samples, such as Korg M1.

The game Super R.B.I. Baseball (SNES) uses Bitmasters' SLICK/Audio sound engine.

As for other games, the music and sound was outsourced to Eastridge Technology. Peter Stone composed the music on an Ensoniq EPS, using Dr. T's KCS, which was converted to Nick Eastridge's sound driver.