Richard Joseph (23 April 1953 – 4 March 2007) was an English computer game composer, musician and sound specialist. He had a career spanning 20 years starting in the early days of gaming on the C64 and the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and significantly improved graphi ...

and onto succeeding formats.

Biography

Prior to working in games Richard had a fleeting career in the music industry working with artists such as

Trevor Horn Trevor Charles Horn (born 15 July 1949) is an English music producer, label and recording studio owner, musician and composer. He is best known for his production work in the 1980s, and for being one half of the new wave band The Buggles (wit ...

and

Hugh Padgham Hugh Charles Padgham (born 15 February 1955) is an English record producer and audio engineer. He has won four Grammy Awards, for Producer of the Year and Album of the Year for 1985, Record of the Year for 1990, and Engineer of the Year for 1 ...

. Richard released one solo single on EMI and was part of the group CMU which released two albums (although Richard was only involved with the second, Space Cabaret) on Transatlantic before evolving into jazz funk band

Shakatak Shakatak is an English jazz-funk band founded in 1980 by Nigel Wright and former Wigan Casino DJ Kev Roberts. Following an initial white label release 'Steppin', the band's name was derived from a record store in Soho, London Record Shack. I ...

. Richard was noted in game audio for bringing "real" voice actors into a game for the first time (''

Mega Lo Mania ''Mega-Lo-Mania'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Sensible Software. It was released for the Amiga in 1991 and ported to other systems. It was released as ''Tyrants: Fight Through Time'' in North America and ''Mega-Lo-Mania: Jikū ...

''), the earliest use of interactive music ('' Chaos Engine''), working with established recording artists (

Betty Boo Alison Moira Clarkson (born 6 March 1970 in Kensington, London), better known as Betty Boo, is an English singer, songwriter and rapper. She first came to mainstream prominence in the late 1980s following a collaboration with the Beatmasters ...

on ''

Magic Pockets ''Magic Pockets'' is a platform game developed by the Bitmap Brothers and published by Renegade in October 1991. It was released for the Atari ST, Amiga, Acorn Archimedes, and MS-DOS. The title track of the game is the instrumental version of ''" ...

'',

Captain Sensible Raymond Ian Burns (born 24 April 1954), known by the stage name Captain Sensible, is an English singer, songwriter and guitarist. Captain Sensible co-founded the punk rock band The Damned (band), the Damned, originally playing bass before switc ...

on ''

Sensible Soccer ''Sensible Soccer'', often called ''Sensi'', is an association football video game series which was highly popular in the early 1990s and which still retains a cult following. It was developed by Sensible Software and first released for Amiga ...

'',

Brian May Brian Harold May (born 19 July 1947) is an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, and astrophysicist, who achieved worldwide fame as the lead guitarist of the rock band Queen (band), Queen. May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Fredd ...

on ''

Rise of the Robots ''Rise of the Robots'' is a fighting game released by Time Warner Interactive in 1994 in video gaming, 1994. Originally developed for the Amiga and DOS by Mirage's Instinct Design, it was Port (video gaming), ported to various video game conso ...

'' and

John Foxx John Foxx (born Dennis Leigh; 26 September 1948) is an English singer, musician, artist, photographer, graphic designer, writer, teacher and lecturer. He was the original lead singer of the new wave band Ultravox, before leaving to embark on a ...

on ''

Gods A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater ...

'' and '' Speedball 2''), and featuring vocals in title tunes, which was revolutionary for the time. In the late 1980s and early '90s, he produced soundtracks for development teams

Sensible Software Sensible Software was a British software company founded by Jon Hare and Chris Yates that was active from March 1986 to June 1999. It released seven number-one hit games and won numerous industry awards. The company was well known for the exa ...

and

the Bitmap Brothers The Bitmap Brothers are a British video game developer founded in 1987. The company entered the video game industry in 1988 with the scrolling shooter ''Xenon''. They quickly followed with '' Speedball''. Prior to becoming the publisher of th ...

. He is also credited with the soundtrack to the C64 version of the hit Defender of the Crown. He then went on to set up Audio Interactive at

Pinewood Studios Pinewood Studios is a British film and television studio located in the village of Iver Heath, England. It is approximately west of central London. The studio has been the base for many productions over the years from large-scale films to te ...

and, along with composer

James Hannigan James Hannigan (born 23 July 1971) is a British composer with credits in the ''Harry Potter'', ''The Lord of the Rings'', ''Command and Conquer'' (including Red Alert 3's well-known Soviet March), ''Dead Space'', ''Warhammer'', ''Cloudy With ...

, helped

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

to win the

BAFTA Award The British Academy Film Awards, more commonly known as the BAFTA Film Awards is an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) to honour the best British and international contributions to film. The cer ...

for best audio in 2000 for ''

Theme Park World ''Theme Park World'', also known as ''Theme Park 2'', and in North America as ''Sim Theme Park'', is a 1999 construction and management simulation game developed by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts. The direct sequel to ''Th ...

''. From 1990 onwards Richard was a frequent musical collaborator with

Jon Hare Jon "Jops" Hare (born 20 January 1966, Ilford, Essex, England) is an English computer game designer, video game artist, musician and one of many founder members of the early UK games industry as co-founder and director, along with Chris Yates, ...

with whom he co-wrote and arranged all of

's best known musical tracks including the soundtrack for ''

Cannon Fodder Cannon fodder is an informal, derogatory term for combatants who are regarded or treated by government or military command as expendable in the face of enemy fire. The term is generally used in situations where combatants are forced to deliberatel ...

'' the GBC version of which was also nominated for a BAFTA in 2000, and is still the only small-format soundtrack to be recognised by BAFTA to this day. In 1995 Hare and Joseph embarked upon an epic 32 track soundtrack for the multimedia product Sex 'n' Drugs 'n' Rock 'n' Roll, signed to Warner Interactive, however in 1998 Warner bowed out of the games market and their Magnum Opus was only ever released as a limited edition audio CD. After working as Audio Director on '' Republic: The Revolution'' and '' Evil Genius'' for

Elixir Studios Elixir Studios was a British video game developer. The company was founded in 1998 by Demis Hassabis, formerly a prominent figure at Lionhead Studios. At its height, it employed around sixty people, and was based in London London is th ...

(music composed by

), both winning BAFTA nominations for Hannigan's scores, Richard moved to France where he ran SoundTropez, a company offering next-technology soundtracks. Richard came from an entertainment family. Brother Eddy is a BAFTA-winning sound supervisor, working on films such as

Harry Potter ''Harry Potter'' is a series of seven fantasy literature, fantasy novels written by British author J. K. Rowling. The novels chronicle the lives of a young Magician (fantasy), wizard, Harry Potter (character), Harry Potter, and his friends ...

and

James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have ...

. Brother Pat is a director of The Mill which won an Oscar for ''

Gladiator A gladiator ( la, gladiator, "swordsman", from , "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gla ...

''. Nephew Alex is a foley supervisor. Richard's Father Teddy (1918–2006) was a production executive working on, amongst many others, films by

John Schlesinger John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' an ...

and

Alfred Hitchcock Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in the history of cinema. In a career spanning six decades, he directed over 50 featur ...

. After being diagnosed with lung cancer, he died on 4 March 2007 aged 53 years.

Works

References

External links

Profiles

Richard Joseph
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

Richard Joseph
at

OverClocked ReMix OverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-commercial organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs, both with new technology and software and by vari ...

*
Richard Joseph
at CVGM

Articles and interviews

C64.COM audio interviewsIdlethumbs interviewGamemusic article
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joseph, Richard 1953 births 2007 deaths Amiga people British composers British male composers British people of Jewish descent Commodore 64 music Deaths from lung cancer Sensible Software Video game composers 20th-century British male musicians