An Interview with Kai Spitzley

Actually, not Rob Hubbard. Besides the divine IK song I haven't played many games with Rob tunes in them. I like Chris Huelsbeck, Jeroen Tel, Martin Galway, David Whittaker and will discover even more on my way through the HVSC.

Ok, here we go. Katakis,The Last Ninja Trilogy, Pacey (Ninja Mix), Double Dragon 2, Rollerboard, To Be on Top, Iron Lord, Times of Lore, IK , Ninja, Power Drift (great while driving!! >😉, Slaine, Driller and Acidgroove come to mind. 😊

The Dead Guys (PeaperBoayh!), they have such a simple and very unique style. I could listen to a tune on the radio and say: Hey, this sounds like some Dead Guys song! Personal milestones in remix history are DJ Lizards Hypaball Remix, Reyn's Nexus CD, G²'s Katakis medley, Future-Eater's Last Ninja song and Tim Forsyth's Ghouls n Ghosts cover.

Easy: Puffy64. We were chatting via ICQ when he brought up the subject, we discussed it a bit further and it seemed to be an excellent way to bring the remix community together which at that time was spread over dozens of sites you had to scour for new mixes. Except for Triad MP3z of course which was the first step towards RKO.

Since I already had some experience with mailling lists I started collecting eMail addies and checked all remix pages I could find, added eMails from virtually everyone involved in C64 music apart from pure SID and sent out the initial invitations.

Sure! It seems most people were fed up with trying to find remixes all over the net so subscribers (thanks to many people spreading the word) started pouring in pretty quickly. I'm glad the list members are such a nice bunch. Whenever I eMail someone (I admit sometimes I'm a bit too trigger happy) to nicely point out that a mail doesn't concern anyone on the list, isn't related to C64 remixes etc. I in most cases get a polite Hey, you're right. 😊 reply or a polite Hey, that may be true but (insert nifty reason here) and both of us are a wee bit wiser afterwards. 😊 The occasional bloke might show up but that's normal. (they're everywhere you know)

Good question. (literally😉 As a rule of thumb, think before posting whether most people on this list will be more happy after reading your message. For this I've developed a happiness point system. The goal is to _evenly_ increase general happiness. A new remix announcement gives everyone two happiness points. Replying to this message saying you hate this remix makes the composer lose 5 points. (uneven distribution - bad) Saying you like it gives the composer 5 points (his happiness increased - good, though still uneven) but you'd have achieved the same via a personal mail. You can download the MYhapp manager from… Oh ok - you get the point. Only reply in public if you think everyone is concerned. Easy as that. =)

I'd say Linus Walleij gave the *scene* the biggest push since Triad MP3z was the first place where composers could upload their remixes and is imho RKO's daddy. 😊 Michael Schwendt gave the *remixes* a huge boost with his Sid2Midi utility which (I'll boldy assume) most remixes are based on.

Heh, playing Decathlon with my pals is the first that comes to mind. It still great fun using an emulator (and C64 sticks). Another great memory is a whole night playing Sentinel Worlds and trying to find the Book of Spells which I did find in the end. And nothing beats playing Last Ninja 1 for the first time at a friend's place. He had one of those crappy quickshot sticks which made jumping over the swamps horrible. (for me at least) Of course (like so many other people) I tried recording some of the music to tape by holding my cheapo cassette player to the monitor. I still have that tape. 😊 Other memories include my Action Replay cartridge (two words - Strip Poker!) and accidentally cutting off the power while saving my game in Curse of the Azure Bonds and thus erasing several months of dungeon exploring. That's how Kai was introduced to redundant backups. 😊

There wasn't anything like it at the time (mid 97) and I was just trying to put some content on my otherwise crappy site. While playing the games on my emulator I always thought that those neat C64 screenshots could be used for some animated walkthroughs which you could watch like a little slideshow. I soon found out I wasn't the only one with fond memories of LN, I got many eMails urging me to further expand the site since LN was their favourite game as well. Then the rumour on LN 4 started and the site just keeps growing…

People remix because it's fun, that's what I appreciate. No dislikes about the 'scene'. (except the name perhaps😉

It is definitely more than just a consideration. I will start composing again, just gimme a decade or two and eventually I'll whip up a C64 remix myself. 😊

No C64 stuff at all, just things that were floating in my head which I wanted to track down. Which explains why I made 86 songs, of which 90% are less than 5 groovy patterns, the rest actually consists of whole songs. 😊 I really need to be more consistent next time.

Great idea and I hope there will be lots of talk & reports & media afterwards and that this won't be the last one.

Nah, not really.

I guess the most time-consuming tasks were creating the LN walkthroughs and sifting through that huge pile of smutty C64 software I downloaded for Girls of '64. That was no fun at all, no no. 😉 Nowadays the LN Archives don't take that much time to maintain since most content I add is created by someone else and I just sort it into the site - it's mostly admin stuff now. Until LN4 comes out, that is. 😊 Girls of '64 takes the most time right now. Several times I thought I had seen it all just to get an eMail from someone who still had some disks with even more dirty files! There's no end to it! It looks like Arnold will soon take over though, right now I'm checking (along with the other admins) incoming and existing files and renaming them but there will soon be some new features, a news script, a message board, etc. which I've already set up, there's only a little tweaking to be done but that's a big secret for now so don't tell anyone. 😉

99.9% instrumental stuff. I don't like vocals at all since I believe the music should convey the feel of the song, not some dude whining about lost love. I dig acoustic (I like irish & celtic folk) & new age music as well as all sorts of electronica. I'm a sucker for ambient, rave & goa stuff, love Tangerine Dream (sadly I somehow entirely missed Jarre) and Electric Universe as well as triphop & big beat. Add Vivaldi, White Zombie and all sorts of game music on all sorts of systems and you've got a broad view of my musical taste. 😊

Sure: McRollerboard.sid - song #2 (aaawesome groovy C64 feeling) Other songs are Firetrap (#1) (I bet the Dead Guys would have fun with it 😊 or Pacey Ninja by Jon Wells!

Hm, we'll just have to see about that… =)

The music & people are more important than the scene. 😊