Sculptured Software
| Sculptured Software, Inc. | |
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| Founded | 1984-??-?? |
| Closed | 1995-10-09 |
| Headquarters | 3269 S. Main St. Suite 270 Salt Lake City, UT 84115 |
| Other Names |
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Sculptured Software was an American game developer founded by Bryan Brandenburg, George Meteos, and Peter Adams. The company was known mostly for porting arcade games to home consoles. One for example is Pac-Mania. In the NES days, Paul Webb was the only sound designer for Sculptured Software. Later, Neuromantic Productions and other composers worked there with Webb. Neuromantic Productions would usually port Webb's Nintendo music to Sega consoles. Due to the success of the company, in October 1995, Acclaim bought out the company and renamed it to Acclaim Studios Salt Lake City, but closed down a few years later in December 2002 due to Acclaim closing its doors. Some staff moved on to Avalanche Software, Saffire, Flashpoint Productions, Kodiak Entertainment, Xantera, Semi Logic Entertainments, Alpine Studios and MachineWorks Northwest.
In the early '90s, Active Enterprises sent their developers over to Sculptured Software so they could use their official Nintendo development systems to make NES games.
Contents
Games
(Note: Sculptured Software did not publish games.)
Music Development
Amiga
This section includes games for Arcadia, a coin-op platform based on the Amiga 500.
The following games use the same driver:
- Aaargh! (AMI)
- Aaargh! (ARC)
- Destroyer (AMI)
- Global Control Program (ARC) (the only game out of these six with no known relation to Sculptured)
- Ninja Mission (AMI) (arranged by Brad Dahl)
- Ninja Mission (ARC)
Magic Johnson's Fast Break (ARC) a.k.a. Magic Johnson's Basketball (AMI) uses Sonix.
NES
Paul Webb used his Ensoniq EPS sampler to sample the sounds of the NES, so he could get a better idea on how to make music on it. Ken Moore programmed Sculptured Software's sound driver, with supervision by Webb. The music then had to be painstakingly entered in 6502 assembly machine code.
When Active Enterprises developed their unlicensed video games Action 52 and Cheetahmen II at Sculptured, they used the company's development systems, including their audio driver. While the source code for the driver was never released, its audio code has been reverse engineered. For Action 52, Mario would compose his music on an Alesis sequencer and then code his music into Sculptured's sound driver.
Game Boy
Ken Moore developed sound driver in 6502 assembly, which similar to his NES sound driver.
Outside of company, this sound driver was used by Origin Systems on Ultima: Runes of Virtue.
The driver was also used on Total Carnage, as well as the unreleased Akira. We contacted the programmer of both of these games, Stephen Curtis, but he said he didn't know who did the music and guessed it was outsourced.
It is very likely Sculptured Software themselves did the music and sound for both games.
Genesis
The company used GEMS, but Paul Webb used a custom sound engine for Pac-Mania. Because of how much time has passed, Paul Webb does not remember who programmed the sound driver, though it could have been the game's programmer Arti Haroutunian. It can be Mark Miller's SEGA Music Development System, a precursor of GEMS.
Most of Sculptured's Genesis games were composed by Neuromantic Productions, and if the game was a port of a SNES game, Dean Morrell would usually (but not always) arrange the music.
SNES
Paul Webb designed and wrote some pieces of software with the other Sculptured developers. One of these was BMus (the B meaning Berlioz, referring to Hector Berlioz), which was used to create music and sound effects. It was a very tedious program to use, according to some of the audio staff that used it. Another program was Wolfgang (presumably named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) which sampled the instruments. He would then convert MIDI files to Sculptured's sound driver. Three versions of the driver are known to exist: The first by David Ross and Bill Williams; the second by Ross, Steve Aguirre and Ricky Loynd, and the third by Aguirre.
BMus was licensed to several different developers including Mindscape, and Synergistic Software.
The documentation for it was released by Rob Schmuck on 2023-06-04 and announced on Twitter.
Nintendo 64
The composers used Iguana Entertainment's sound driver, since the company was bought by Acclaim.
Audio Personnel
These are the composers that worked for Sculptured Software:
- Bill Williams (Programmer of BMus sound driver)
- Brad Dahl arranged David Whittaker's song for Ninja Mission in 1987
- Bob Dayley (Sound effect designer from 1993-1998)
- Chris Braymen (In-house composer from 1993-1998)
- Dan Forden (Contractor from Midway Games)
- David Ross (Co-programmer of BMus sound driver)
- Dean Morrell (In-house composer from 1992-1998)
- Eric Nunamaker (In-house composer from 1993-1994)
- George Sanger (Contractor; scored on the Tecmo NBA Basketball series.)
- James Hebdon (In-house composer from 1994-1998)
- Ken Moore (Programmer of NES and Game Boy sound drivers)
- Kingsley Thurber (Main in-house composer from 1992-1995)
- Mark Ganus (Main in-house composer from 1992-1996)
- Mark Miller (Contractor from Neuromantic Productions)
- Paul Webb (Lead/main in-house composer from 1987-1998)
- Rick Rhodes (Contractor; scored on Tecmo Super Baseball)
- Ricky Loynd (Co-programmer of BMus sound driver)
- Rob Hubbard composed one song for Ninja Mission freelance in 1986, probably contracted by Mastertronic
- Roy Wilkins (In-house composer from 1995-1998)
- Sam Powell (In-house composer? from 1992-1994)
- Steve Aguirre (Co-programmer of BMus sound driver)
- Victor Crews (In-house composer? from 1994-1995)
Picture Gallery
1985-1993
1993
1994-1995
1995-1998
Links
- mobygames.com/company/676/acclaim-studios-salt-lake-city/ - MobyGames.
- gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/72582-sculptured-software - GameFAQs on Sculptured.
- gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/company/80817-acclaim-studios-salt-lake-city - GameFAQs on Acclaim.
