SToRAGE Crash

When Gravity Crash was announced at E3 2009 for release on the PlayStation Network it’s very modern, yet retro vector graphics and gameplay caught my attention, but it was the news that came out about it slightly later that day that had me sold on it straight away. That news was that Tim Wright, also known as CoLD SToRAGE was creating the soundtrack for the game. Now why would that news alone sell me on a game that I had only seen one short trailer for? Well to understand that you need to understand who Tim Wright is.

When it comes to video game soundtracks you often hear people saying how amazing a composer Nobuo Uematsu is for example thanks to his work on the Final Fantasy series, or some other Japanese video game composer, but it seems far less often that you hear people mention the names of composers who have worked on western developed videos game. Part of that might be down to the fact that in the Japanese video games industry a lot of focus is put on a few key individuals who worked on a game such as the producer, while in the western games industry more of the focus is put on the development studio that developed the game and not a single member of the team. That is something which may be partly thanks to The Bitmap Brothers who during the Amiga days helped the games developers get recognised for there work, not just the publishers.

Gravity Crash Anthems, new CoLD SToRAGE album

As for who Tim Wright is? Well he is a British video game composer, and musician who has been writing music since the 1980′s. He is perhaps best known for his work on the Wipeout series during his time at Psygnosis in the early PlayStation days, when as a developer and publisher Psygnosis lead the way it creating some of the greatest games to be released on the PlayStation. Such as the already mentioned Wipeout series, G-Police, Destruction Derby and Colony Wars which was another game which Wright created the soundtrack for and still to this day is perhaps my favourite video game soundtrack off all time. Before the PlayStation era though, Psygnosis and Wright left a massive impact on the Commodore Amiga. It was while creating music for Amiga games that Tim Wright started to create a name for himself, and the some of his work is still the most recognised from the Amiga era. Perhaps the best example of this are the opening theme for Agony and his work on Lemmings, though without question it is the visual and audio beast that was Shadow of the Beast 2 which will be the best known of Wright’s work on the Amiga to any fans of the system. (The Psygnosis effect is something for another blog post I think)

Also worth noting when it comes to Tim Wright’s career during the time of the PlayStation is his founding of Jester Interactive, who as a development studio went on to create the music creation software for the PlayStation platforms known as “Music”. If your thinking Rockstar’s recent release of Beaterator for the PSP was the first music creation software to be released on a PlayStation platform then I advise you to take a trip back in time to check out what Jester Interactive created.

In more recent years Tim Wright has been running his own company and releasing his own albums. But 2009 seen him stepping back into the role of video game composer for a game being released on a PlayStation system. That game being Gravity Crash, developed by Just Add Water Ltd. To go along with the release of Gravity Crash on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable Tim has been working to release the games soundtrack, and that has taken the form of the Gravity Crash (Vinyl Single) which is two remixes of tracks from the game, and on Monday 11th January 2010 he also released for download the Gravity Crash Anthems album which includes sixteen remastered tracks from the game and new remixes.

The best thing I can suggest for you to do is follow the links in this post and listen to Tim’s work for yourself. Just remember the next time someone mentions there favourite video game composer, Japan wasn’t the only part of the world to produce great video game music!

CoLD SToRAGE music store front – Listen to full tracks from all Tim Wright’s albums before buying them. You might also find a few free downloads

CoLD SToRAGE Soundcloud page – Lots of remixes from Tim and some experiments. All downloadable aswell

CoLD SToRAGE archives – Tim’s past video game work from the Amiga and PlayStation, plus more remixes. All downloadable for free.