The Ur-Quan Masters

Back in 2002, Tore Aune Fjellstad and I joined the official remake team for Star Control 2, one of the greatest games of the 90s. The name of the remake was The Ur-Quan Masters because the trademark for the original name itself belonged to Activision, though the rest of the game content is owned by Toys for Bob who officially sanctioned the remake.

We made quite a few remixes for the project, all of which can be found at the Precursors homepage (Precursors was the name of both the remix team and a race of highly advanced beings in the Star Control galaxy). These remixes have turned out to be our most popular works by a wide margin, generating as much as 2.4 GB average bandwith in downloads every day for many months before finally calming down somewhat. The original creators of the game also downloaded and reportedly enjoyed the music enough to burn it to CD to listen to it while driving.

The remixes for The Ur-Quan Masters generated a massive amount of interest and discussion (some of which can be seen at the Precursors website), both good and bad. Some of the remixes were very faithful and garnered the largest amount of positive feedback. Others were more derivative and became the subject of much debate between purists and the rest of the fans. In general however, the majority of the feedback was overwhelmingly supportive of the project, and it was very common for us to receive requests for more music.

BattlePawn

BattlePawn was an online boardgame engine which would let people from across the world play popular boardgames with each other in full 3D. I created the music for both the engine's title screen as well as its first game, Descent - Journeys in the Dark. Almost all the music from the project is available to download from the music page on this site.

Board Games Online, the company behind the BattlePawn engine, went bankrupt in 2008 and development was stopped.

Project Aqua

Project Aqua was a free sci-fi RPG game, among other things inspired by popular Japanese RPGs. I thought the project looked interesting and contributed a mysterious and relaxing piano piece for a space station where the early game would take place. The plan was to contribute more music as the project went on, but it soon appeared that progress was alarmingly slow.

To the best of my knowledge, development of Project Aqua has been discontinued and their website has been closed.

Anigma

I was approached in 2008 by one of the people behind Project Aqua, who wanted me to compose original music and create sound effects for their upcoming iPhone game called Anigma.

Anigma is a commercial puzzle game with attractive graphics and what appears to be compelling gameplay (I haven't had the opportunity to try it myself). The music I made for the project is soothingly electronic and attempts not to attract too much attention to itself. This was the first time I made music to spec, as long as you don't count general remixing.

The game has not yet been released to the general public.

Trax in Space

Trax in Space was one of the Internet's biggest music sites back at the end of the 90s. For a few years until the site collapsed for a variety of reasons, I was a member of the Reviewers Overseeing Committee, a small group of people who helped new music reviewers attain the level of quality that people expected from the site.

In 2007 TiS relaunched in beta form, and I was featured as its first Artist of the Month in September 2007, which among other things meant I was interviewed for the site. I have released about 30 tracks on the site, almost all of which have received between 4 and 5 stars out of 5 in average review/feedback scores from listeners.

© 2009 Espen Gätzschmann. All rights reserved.
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