John Phillips
| John M. Phillips | ||||||||
 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
John Phillips is an English game developer. He originally created his games single-handedly, handling programming, graphics, and sound. His first game appears to be Nutcracka for the Commodore 64. Around 1987, he started doing games for Hewson Consultants, including Impossaball, Tower Toppler, and Sunburst.
In the world of video game audio, he is perhaps best known for being the sound programmer for the Genesis versions of Back to the Future Part III and Xenon 2: Megablast.
It appears that his last game was in 1992 and he left the industry after working on an Acorn version of Tower Toppler.
Contents
Audio Development
Genesis/Mega Drive
Phillips programmed a custom sound driver using Motorola 68000 assembly.
For Back to the Future Part III, he arranged Barry Leitch's score from the computer ports of the game; the Amiga version in particular. Phillips likely had the MOD files from the Amiga version for reference. He either coded the music himself by hand on the Mega Drive, or wrote a utility to convert Leitch's MOD files to the Mega Drive.
Game Boy/NES
While Phillips never worked on the NES, his title music from Tower Toppler was adapted to the Game Boy and NES ports called Castelian by the famous David Whittaker. Coincidentally, Phillips worked on the Genesis version of Xenon 2 while Whittaker worked on the Game Boy version, though both of them only did sound programming.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1984-??-?? | Nutcraka (C64) | ||
| 1987-??-?? | Tower Toppler (C64) | |
|
| 1988-??-?? | Eliminator (AST) | ||
| 1988-??-?? | Tower Toppler (AMI) | ||
| 1991-??-?? | Castelian (GB) (キョロちゃんランド) | Title Screen, arranged by David Whittaker. | |
| 1991-06-?? | Castelian (NES) | |
Title Screen, arranged by David Whittaker. |
| 1991-??-?? | Back to the Future Part III (GEN) | |
Arranged Barry Leitch's music. |
| 1991-??-?? | Battle Master (GEN) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-??-?? | Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe: Arena (GEN) | Sound Driver | |
| 1992-??-?? | Xenon 2: Megablast (SMD) | Sound Programming |
Picture Gallery
The One issue #1, October 1988.
