Interview with Amiga game music legend: Olof Gustafsson

Long-time gamers like me will fondly remember the Commodore Amiga computer, and the amazing games that were produced for it.  The Amiga kicked off the careers of many gaming industry legends, with many having roots in the Amiga demoscene.  One such legend is composer/musician Olof Gustafsson, pictured above. Olof, using the handle Blaizer, originally composed tracker music for a demogroup called The Silents.  The original members went on to form Digital Illusions, and release the awe-inspiring Pinball Dreams, followed by Pinball Fantasies and Pinball Illusions.  



These games were lauded for not only their brilliant graphics and gameplay, but also their amazing soundtracks, which were composed by Olof.  Needless to say, Olof went on to compose many more great tunes for other Digital Illusions games. The reason I thought to post an article about Olof?  Well, I recently stumbled across an embarrassingly-inane interview with him on YouTube.  Take a look and you'll see what I mean.  I don't think language is the stumbling-block here, I think it's just a plain lack of research and knowledge.  Eg, the interviewer:

• Thinks Olof was a member of Razor 1911 (0.57 mins)
• Asks if Digital Illusions still exists (3.25 mins)
• other examples I couldn't be bothered to document

Maybe it's just me, but does Olof look like he wanted to escape at around the 2.54 min mark? 

Fans of Olof's might not realise that he is still active in the demoscene, and that he composed the music for the amazing Starstruck Amiga demo by TBL, which was the winning demo at the Assembly demo party 2006.  You can see the demo below.  It's even more impressive when you consider that it is running on an Amiga, with the music playing courtesy of the Amiga's 8-bit 4-channel 'Paula' sound chip!  The music is up to Olof's best, and I love the choreography of many parts of the demo, eg. at the 5.35 minute mark.

A higher quality version of the demo and an mp3 of the soundtrack can be downloaded here from pouet.net.

Good news for Xbox 360 gamers: in the interview Olof reveals that his new company, Epos Game Studios, will be releasing their first game via Xbox Live Arcade.  I for one can't wait!...