ANTIC Interview 194 - David Thiel, musician and interactive audio

David Thiel, musician and interactive audio

David Thiel is a musician and interactive audio designer. At Gottlieb, he did the sound for arcade games including Reactor, Q*Bert, and Mach 3. At Action Graphics, David created the sound for Artillery Duel for the Atari 2600, and Beamrider and Pitstop for the Atari computers. And at Free Radical Software/Incredible Technologies, he worked on Winter Games for the Amiga and Atari ST. He has created the sound and music for dozens of other computer games and pinball games.

This interview took place on May 17, 2016.

GDRI's list of David's games: http://gdri.smspower.org/wiki/index.php/David_Thiel

2013 interview with David: http://www.c64.com/gt_display_interview.php?interview=31

Teaser quotes:

"In coin op, I had a sound board. I had a processor. It's my sandbox, I can do anything I want. But the minute you're doing console work, you're now seen by the programmer as a parasitic element that eats CPU and storage, and poops out sound."

"I think, ultimately, doing the Q*Bert voice was the finest destiny of that technology."